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This post may seem like a passionate Lakes-like one, which may not be for everyone. The intention is to strategically increase South Dakota State women's basketball awareness. As per most of my posts, it will be long and full of passion. I will lay out the paths that I have thought of to strike while the iron is hot. Any suggestions, comments, etc. are welcome and encouraged.
Generally, I've tried my best to avoid using pronouns when referring to fandom, but I'd like to make an exception here.
What got us here:
From my perspective, one could argue that we owe the 2 AP votes we have received from ranking these past two weeks to the fan that questioned Talia Goodman a while back. She has tweeted the heck out of her polls, and I assume our champion, Mitchell Northam, has seen them at some point as he and 10 other voters follow Ms.Goodman. On the other hand, Mr. Northan has voted for the team this year on at least one or two occasions, so he is well aware of what the team is capable of.
Why we are here:
Lack of national media coverage, a Summit League Network that even men's hoop heads can't even figure out how to find/purchase (screenshot of interaction re: NDSU/SDSU men's game), SDSU basketball and Summit League twitters that could be a little more aggressive with sharing pro SDSU things (as it applies to resume, etc, retweets of player stats or accolades from other accounts outside of weekly awards, etc), lack of pro-SDSU women's stuff on twitter in general outside of SL and SDSU twitter
What we know:
Poll voters follow one another and NCAAW media members in general. Some poll voters follow Conference twitter pages and team pages. I counted at least 10 voters following South Carolina's page, a bunch following Duke, even Vandy, etc. I'm following like 80% of the voters and other NCAAW media members and only Charlie Creme is following the SDSU women's page.
What I am proposing:
Many voters often receive @'s, comments, etc on twitter from fans wondering, "Hey why did you rank X over Y?" Here(screenshot) is Mitch explaining why he voted Indiana over SC last year. This is a better example from this year where he is retweeting a fan question. The men's side of things is obviously a bit more hostile in terms of interactions. I counted at least 10 voters following Mitchell Northam.
With that being said my suggestions are as follows since we know voters follow one another:
1) we flat ask out him why he voted for SDSU and hope he justifies his answer in either retweet or comment
2) we have someone like a Nebraska or Creighton fan ask why he ranked SDSU over them and hope he takes the bait
3) we provide value to him (he mentioned in his latest podcast he is a cord-cutter and sometimes struggles finding games - ie had to go to bar for espn2) via DM and thank him for being one of the few to vote for SDSU -> and then maybe ask him via DM if he's comfortable with putting him on the spot publicly as to why he voted for the team.
4) we come up with an appealing graphic that clearly justifies why SDSU should be ranked over the other teams and mention him and hope he retweets (or flat out share the graphic with him in the step 3 dm)
5) we do nothing
Repercussions:
The downside with doing 'something' is that it could backfire. Do you piss the guy off and now he no longer votes for the team? On the flip side, if he actually justifies his response then at least something positive is occurring. As of now, my approach to the voters has been to sometimes like their content or tweets that I find enjoyable and chime in when I can contribute something that is appropriate. Since I joined twitter in late December, I have done this with Eden Laase (she does a good job at interacting with her twitter people) and Mitchell Northam, both people who voted for SDSU this season. I've branched out to the other AP individuals this week. Some of the individuals I can't really relate to since I don't follow Iowa hoops or HS hoops closely (Linder granted he's far east Iowa) and Sam McKewon (I can't talk Nebraska sports). There's a U of Minn voter, but I have the same issues. Some voters only have like 3-5k followers and nobody comments on their stuff, so one could make an impression if you can relate to them. These guys host podcasts. They write articles. They're producing content that asks for interaction.
Ethics:
Is this whole thing slimy? Is pm'ing a voter, even if you're giving him streaming links so he can watch basketball games ethical?
Timeframe:
Just like with email visibility, there's a certain time when you want to tweet. When I review my 'following' feed in the morning, the first thing I see is like 6 tweets from Jon Rothstein at 6am talking about hoops.
If time is of the essence and we don't know if he's voting for us again next week (presumably once the team is on someone's list, they should remain there until they lose depending on how voter justifies things, like Talia and removing SDSU this past week because of Vandy/FSU wins), this week is the time. So the messages would need to occur before the voting submission and also while the resume looks the best (presumably following SDSU wins and Creighton/Oregon/Ball State wins) -> Creighton needs to rise 8 spots in net for the win to be q1. Oregon needs to move 2. Ball State needs to move 7. After an Oregon win makes sense since that's most likely to push us to q1. It'll take > 1 game for the other two teams.
Off-season questions to be addressed later:
- Where are voters getting their information? Which sites are they using to make their decision? What is the information they are looking at?
- What are the voter trends? Some voters added Creighton this week because of the close UConn loss. Some removed Creighton. In his week 12 poll Mitchell had us over Creighton, which might give you an indication on where he stands on November games (see Talia comment in the other thread). link to list of polls by week with voter breakdown. this week is Week 13
- Should the team be gaming the system from a scheduling perspective knowing what we know about how the voters operate? If you think they're going to start ranked, schedule easy games to stay ranked and pepper the harder ones after you've already won a few games so you can stay in poll if you lose. If you're not starting ranked, maybe do what you did this year and start with a ranked opponent in first two games knowing that could push you into the poll with an upset.
Final Note
The men's basketball team just retweeted this out regarding Oscar (twitter link). This is the kind of thing we would want the women's handle to retweet (if it were more team based) if more voters followed the twitter. As of now the SDSU WBB twitter is just tweeting the team being #1 in the mid-major poll. If I'm USD's handle, I am retweeting the good Grace related items so I can get her more recognition.
Yes, it's overboard. Yes, it's excessive. The team has gotten this far without any significant traction, so who will fight for the team? AJ can't do it. He can't ask the media why we aren't getting votes. My fear is that it is too late for the team this season to be making AP waves since we couldn't even get in when our resume was at its best compared to the other teams while we were still in non conf. I don't think this issue will go away though. SDSU is about as household as it gets for mid-majors and we still didn't get votes.
in the meantime, I've also joined reddit's NCAAW community (they will have a game thread for SDSU since the team is RV in their poll) with the intention of spreading more mid-major knowledge and once settled in, spreading things that may paint SDSU in a favorable light. Part of me feels like recognition will come with more national fan support (and very large upsets since Oregon and Creighton didn't cut it), so that's why I'm branching out in hopes of bringing more awareness (and fans!) to the team (and this community too, if that's okay). I haven't been too aggressive on twitter, and in hindsight, I may have made a mistake by not filling my twitter with SDSU resume graphics compared to the other schools prior to interacting with the voters.
If you've made it this far, anyone brave enough to give their thoughts on suggestions 1-5?
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