The dirty little secret that we have to acknowledge here is that Mountain West teams have to sully their NET rankings by playing teams like Air Force far fewer times. Teams like Fordham, La Salle, and, yes, lately GW, have been anchors on the VCUs and the Daytons of the world, because as much as the conference has tried to protect them by avoiding home-and-homes between the expected best and expected worst, there's still too much crap in the conference. Contraction is the best path to a multi-bid league at this point. 

With UMass leaving, I think voting Fordham and La Salle off the island would make sense with the NET rankings. If McGlade has the killer instinct, I'm also looking at trying to boot Duquesne and maybe GW to raid the MAAC for a better New York team (Iona?) and a new Boston-metro team (Merrimack?). 

GW is an original member, and is back to mid-conference form, but the last 8 years have been rough for us as conference members. Mason can carry the A-10 in the DC Metro. I'm hoping we're projecting where folks are no longer looking at us as dead weight, but memories are short in this business these days.