Stock Down: MSG Holiday Festival Tournament

[BigEastPhil]

Once such a proud holiday tournament - now it's a snoozefest....

This year's games were announced per Jon Rothstein:

St Johns vs St Francis NY

Hofstra vs Appalchian State

 

[Knights 1212]

What a come down this holiday festival has become.

 

[PatrickRU92]

stock down: Madison Square Garden

 

[Scarlet Shack]

Big east Phil

The holiday festival lost it's cache when the preseason nit (and all the sxhedule exempt games) caught on.

Combine that with the timing of the tournament (many teams don't want to fly during finals) and that it's not during the holiday anymore (the bowls took that over...there hasn't been a big hoops tourney during Xmas-NYE week in 20 years) and that some confrences start their league play that week or just want to tone it down before league play...killed it

Plus no one wants to share a gate 4 ways anymore

You know this ....just it's how it goes

 

[shields]

Liked it when you won the game and played in final. Ohio State vs. RU in 1978.

 

[Scarlet Shack]

shields

that predates everything I wrote about in my above post

I was there for both double headers. AWESOME

 

[PiscatawayMike]

As a Rutgers fan, the last time the Holiday Festival had any juice was in 1990. We played well vs. Maryland, leading by eight points midway through the second half before Walt "Wizard" Williams took control of the game to lead the Terps to victory. We destroyed BYU, with Shawn Bradley, in the consolation game.

http://www.nytimes.com/1990/12/28/s...aryland-and-south-carolina-win-at-garden.html

 

[Local Shill]

'92 was pretty fun, too as I recall.. RU lost to Jamal Mashburn and Kentucky before beating Manhattan in OT in the consolation game.

http://www.nytimes.com/1992/12/29/s...-for-the-holidays-kentucky-and-st-john-s.html

 

[PiscatawayMike]

'92 was pretty fun, too as I recall.. RU lost to Jamal Mashburn and Kentucky before beating Manhattan in OT in the consolation game.

http://www.nytimes.com/1992/12/29/s...-for-the-holidays-kentucky-and-st-john-s.html

I sat through that Rutgers/Kentucky game. Believe me, it was no fun. No fun, at all.

 

[Scarlet Shack]

I was at the 90 and 92 Holiday Fesitval...they were still dead arenas

 

[wheezer]

The Ohio state game was the most exciting game RU has ever been involved in.....so happy to have been there....

That said, I think the festival was mostly concerned with having two nationally recognized teams playing two lesser teams, to hope for a nice final game......so the St. John's opponent does not shock me, but the other pairing shows how far the tourney has fallen

 

[RUPete]

What a shame. This has to be a low for this tournament and they don't even play for a championship any more. Think about some of the groups we saw in this thing over the years such as the famous RU, St. John's, Duke and Ohio State group that we all remember. I also remember going to see St. John's, Kansas, Villanova and Indiana one year. That's not even thinking back to the years when the field was much bigger than four. I wonder why they bother. MSG must make some money off concessions or they wouldn't keep doing it.

 

[RUfinal4]

The owners of the tournament need to rethink the participants.

Maybe a formula like:
- 1 local Big East team (St Johns, Seton Hall, Villanova, Georgetown)
- B10 / ACC team (Cuse, Rutgers, Maryland,Pitt, Notre Dame, Michigan, Ohio St)
- strong local mid major from the area (Manhattan, St Joes, UConn, Temple, etc...)
- non area team (Pac 12, B12, Gonzaga, AAC, CUSA, Missouri Valley)

 

[RUPete]

The owners of the tournament need to rethink the participants.

Maybe a formula like:
- 1 local Big East team (St Johns, Seton Hall, Villanova, Georgetown)
- B10 / ACC team (Cuse, Rutgers, Maryland,Pitt, Notre Dame, Michigan, Ohio St)
- strong local mid major from the area (Manhattan, St Joes, UConn, Temple, etc...)
- non area team (Pac 12, B12, Gonzaga, AAC, CUSA, Missouri Valley)

I think they would love that, but they can't get any of those teams any more. I agree with Shack, the pre-season tournaments (NIT, etc.) killed this thing. Throw in the made-for-TV conference challenges and there aren't as many good non-conference match-ups to go around.

 

[Knights 1212]

The only good thing about this anymore is if we are scheduled we would have a game at MSG to see RU play. A few years ago we played Stony Brook (Dec 2012) and Iona (2011) and this past season we played Manhattan at MSG in December. It is still nice to play a game at MSG every once in a while.

 

[Seton75]

SJU is rebuilding and probably wants to win the tourney. This makes it easer. Haven't lots of recent Holiday tourneys been pretty similar. I haven't been to the remodeled MSG. Man, the old one was a f'ig dump.

 

[Knights 1212]

It is no longer a tourney. Now each team only plays one game as part of a doubleheader.

 

[BoroKnight]

The Holiday Festival has gone the way of the big college football rivalries that ended with realignment. It's sad in a way, but the other matchups we get now -- and the number of them -- are better for fans and better for TV.

It's those of us who treasure tradition that are getting our balls kicked in every other week or so ...