Morning Mashup: Evaluation, Acquisition and Consolidation

Interesting tidbits out there for you to nibble on this morning, oh ye fans of the mid majors - and yes, there's even some madness thrown in.

SI.com's Rob Dauster has a piece on last season's most disappointing players, among which some mid-major names appear.

• Memphis' Tarik Black and Joe Jackson underperformed? Most certainly.
• Gonzaga's Elias Harris was disappointing because his numbers were better than his sophomore year but not as good as his freshman year? Extremely shaky.
• Indiana State's Jake Odum was a disappointment because he improved across the board statistically but his team didn't win? Absolute hooey. I assure you MMM will have more to say about this.

Last week, the Big South Conference announced that they will no longer do the old school edition of rewarding top seeds with home court advantage in playoff games. They will instead use Coastal Carolina's new arena for the entirety of their postseason tournament (with the extra perk of using Myrtle Beach in early March to draw fans). An extra neat detail is that the men's and women's tournaments will occur at the same time.

Finally, little old Florida Gulf Coast is making even more waves these days. A couple weeks after snagging a 6'10" transfer from Georgia Tech, an Eagles squad that made the Atlantic Sun Conference Championship in their first year at the D-I level nabbed 6'6" athletic wing Jamail Jones from Marquette. Obviously adding big athletes is good, but I will hopefully take a look soon at what difference this might really make when the two are eligible next season.