Is it the end of the holiday Festival . . .?

syracuse and pitt should be frozen out of the garden for any "holiday" festival..along with west virginia, miami, boston college and virginia tech.

i would have loved to have seen an eight game festival with all solid locals taking part. st john's doesn't want it..so forget it.

it's a shame how far the tournament has fallen. in 1986, three of the final four teams took part. we beat louisville and they went on to win the national championship.
 

Great post! A tournament filled with 8 local teams will pack the Garden.BUt like you said, St Johns has to be the flagship team and get involved. Maybe Lavin will some guts and endorse this
 

Yeah, I don't think so. This year how many people were there for STJ, Fordham, Rutgers and Stony Brook? You'd have to drop Rutgers since you couldn't have two BE teams in the same tourney so you'd replace them with Manhattan, Iona, LIU, St Francis and Hofstra I assume? That's going to fill up the rest of the seats with their rabid fan bases? I sincerely doubt it, especially after four teams are eliminated the first day.
 

rutgers would be dropped because they're new jersey. i think a good tournament would draw locals. especially if it's well priced.
 
What I don't understand is that at the same time as the Holiday Festival has been losing significance, other random college BB games are popping up on the garden's schedule in November and December.

The 2k Sports classic, the preseason NIT, Jimmy V, Champions Classic, etc etc

There were a slew of pre-conference play games held at MSG that we weren't a part of. Clearly teams like UK, UNC, Duke etc want to schedule games in NYC ... why aren't they being recruited to play in the Holiday Festival, rather than the Autozone Classic or whatever sponsor held the Duke-Washington game?
Most or all of those other tournaments are exempt games-that is they don't count toward the 28 game limit. Plus they say the big schools don't want to commit to 2 games on their schedule and instead prefer to play home games and pocket more money. 
 
Back
Top