dmvpiranha wrote:

Best Fans: Davidson
Worst Fans: Dayton

I had the same responses DMV.

One of the questions that I thought about for a while was who GW's rival is.  

Obviously, George Mason is our "Revolutionary Rival" and I think if you ask the current undergrads or young alumni they'd say Mason.

Ever since they came into the league, I've always looked at VCU as a rival because they've been so tough to beat.  ML's teams only beat them in Richmond once and their fans always invade the Smith Center.  

From an overall program standpoint, maybe Davidson and Richmond should be our rivals because they are similar to us both financially and educationally?  Good way to measure how serious we are competing in the A10.

Lastly, our true but unrequited rival is Georgetown.  

GW0509 wrote:

dmvpiranha wrote:

Best Fans: Davidson
Worst Fans: Dayton

I had the same responses DMV.

One of the questions that I thought about for a while was who GW's rival is.  

Obviously, George Mason is our "Revolutionary Rival" and I think if you ask the current undergrads or young alumni they'd say Mason.

Ever since they came into the league, I've always looked at VCU as a rival because they've been so tough to beat.  ML's teams only beat them in Richmond once and their fans always invade the Smith Center.  

From an overall program standpoint, maybe Davidson and Richmond should be our rivals because they are similar to us both financially and educationally?  Good way to measure how serious we are competing in the A10.

Lastly, our true but unrequited rival is Georgetown.  

It's an interesting question. The only things GMU and GW have in common is that they both start with "George" and are located in the DC area. The hiring of CC figures to make the "Revolutionary Rivalry" more of a friendly one in the short-term as well. I will say the close games against them recently have made things more interesting but they just don't feel like a true rival yet. Also from a historic perspective weren't the two friends?

I dread the games that GW has to face off against VCU more than any other team in the league (this year especially with our turnover issues lately). I usually dislike their teams but for whatever reason I haven't felt the same away about their fans. Both Dayton and VCU fans pack the Smith Center but from my interactions the Flyer fans usually have a superiority complex while the Ram fans are just passionate but usually respectful. Of course every fanbase has good and bad fans. Don't think I've met a bad Davidson fan though.

GW seems financially (from an athletics standpoint) closer to Davidson than Richmond, but of course we should aspire to have UR's fan support. I think Richmond could be a good rival though it feels like we have been consistently losing to them of late after years of beating them (hopefully that changes Wednesday!).

For an OOC rival, I think it would be interesting to play James Madison yearly and brand it as the presidents game or something like that. I was surprised to find out we haven't played in over 10 years. At the very least a home-and-home - at least playing them would make more sense unlike Radford. JMU moved to the Sun Belt which is an (interesting?) move geographically but it's obviously football driven. Still, I think they are financially committed enough in basketball that it could make for an interesting game yearly.
 

GW used to have a great rivalry (and one of the longest-standing in the country) in the A10 with West Virginia, alas no more. Women´s hoops used to have good rivalries with Rutgers and St Joe´s (when all three were national powers and in the A10). And, of course, That School Down the Street attempts to rival GW at everything except men´s hoops (where their true chickenshit colours show). The Mason "rivalry" is as contrived as the plot of a Marvel Comics movie, but is what we have right now.
As for A10 fan bases, hard to find fans with more basketball smarts than those in Philly, so my nod goes to St Joe´s (even if that stupid bird suit and their fans in white sweaters are annoying). As for the worst fans, I have neither forgotten the "USA! USA!" chants from Dayton nor the (muttered under their breath) "Jew School" crap from St Bona; both of their fan bases can rot insofar as I am concerned.
 

I certainly wouldn't mind if we were as good as Georgetown in other sports like track, xcountry, soccer and probably a few others (except basketball).

Gwmayhem wrote:

The only true rivalry in our conference is VCU-Richmond.  UMASS-URI is close but URI would rather beat Providence.  St. Joe's would likely still rather knock off Temple or Nova than notch a conference win over La Salle.

I would consider Dayton-St Louis a rivalry. They even have a name and a trophy for it: The Arch Baron Cup (where that name comes from I have no idea). I question the authenticity of the rivalry but as people have alluded to, it is difficult to produce an organic rivalry in the modern day. I figure the Dayton-SLU rivalry came about because they're among the best teams in the A10 and were the two westernmost schools in the conference. They've certainly had some pretty entertaining games in recent years and I think a lot of the players genuinely do not like the other school (wasn't there an incident last year where a former SLU player was kicked out of the arena mid-game last year against Dayton for getting into an altercation courtside??)

As for GW's rivals, I put George Mason but I feel like Georgetown should be GW's main rival. But that is obviously contingent on them being willing to play us... I also know of plenty of current GW students who do not like URI because of the Brayon Freeman angle, although that is definitely not enough to consider them a rival