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Tommorow's bracketology will have Cuse and Nova in the first 4 out meaning only 7 will be in the field. By selection Sunday, I gotta think 8.
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Originally Posted by allen3xis
didn't Gavin Grant say NC State would only lose 4 games this year??
Originally Posted by jrellcuse10
Originally Posted by SCuse7
Originally Posted by jrellcuse10
Andy Rautins is going to play for Canada again this summer.
Damn you serious? We need him next year.
Johnny
Devo
Harris
Greene
Arinze
Scoop
Rautins
Mookie Jones
Kris Joesph
Kristoff
Rick Jackson
That is top ten right there, even though i think Scoop might go.
2008-2009 is going to be our best chance to win it in a long time.
Fixed it. What do you mean Scoop might go? His *%@ not NBA ready. Nowhere near it.
Andy said he's going to play again. They aren't going to qualify so why risk his health again. I swear his dad is an idiot when it comes to this.
Yezzir...top 6 seeds in the Pac, and we're currently number 5. I think we can pull it off. Care to answer the question?
Good point. ASU isn't bad but I thought they went kinda downhill....
Texas jumps Kansas and Duke. Other than that, that's pretty close.Originally Posted by petey yup
1. Tennessee
2. Memphis
3. UNC
4. UCLA
5. Kansas
6. Duke
7. Texas
8. Stanford
9. Xavier
10. Wisconsin
11. Gtown
12. Indiana
13. Butler
14. Louisville
15. Uconn
16. Drake
17. Purdue
18. Mich St
19. Vanderbilt
20. Notre Dame
21. Wash St
22. Marquette
23. St Marys
24. Kent St
25. Cornell
As long as Stanford doesn't lose tonight, Book it. And #25 is not a joke
Thats the way it should be but i doubt it happensOriginally Posted by Nowitness41Dirk
Texas jumps Kansas and Duke. Other than that, that's pretty close.Originally Posted by petey yup
1. Tennessee
2. Memphis
3. UNC
4. UCLA
5. Kansas
6. Duke
7. Texas
8. Stanford
9. Xavier
10. Wisconsin
11. Gtown
12. Indiana
13. Butler
14. Louisville
15. Uconn
16. Drake
17. Purdue
18. Mich St
19. Vanderbilt
20. Notre Dame
21. Wash St
22. Marquette
23. St Marys
24. Kent St
25. Cornell
As long as Stanford doesn't lose tonight, Book it. And #25 is not a joke
Stanford is going to be such a tough out for smaller teams... those Lopez kids are getting better by the week, I'm coming around on them as a team and am sort of putting them in my "sleepers" list right now.. though if they keep winning, they'll be a 2 seed and won't be able to carry that label of sleeper.
I agree....
although I don't think they will be a 'popular' pick when people start filling out their brackets.
I wana take them to go far, but if they have to match up with an athletic team with some guards and at leas serviceable guys on the inside...it's a toughcall
*****, cornell is ranked 25th!?!?
. No...that's his projected 25 for today
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February 25, 2008
[font=times new roman, times, serif]The Case for Davidson[/font]
Ignoring the RPI
by Ken Pomeroy
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The nice thing about the NCAA Tournament selection process is that it is not a secret. You can review the guidelines for the process here. The simplest part of that document is the section that refers to the selection of at-large teams:
The committee shall select the 34 best teams to fill the at-large berths, regardless of conference affiliation.
Even with the last four words being superfluous, it's a very simple statement of the committee's task. Most of the speculation from the media in the next three weeks will involve using data from the RPI to tell us who should be in the tournament. However, it's worth remembering that ultimately, committee members must select which teams they feel are best. That's the only thing that matters when it comes to filling out the field.
There isn't a formula in existence that can do that for them. If there was, or if there were some sort of objective blueprint for the entire process, there would be no need for a committee. One person could simply look at a checklist and pick the best teams based on pre-established criteria. However, there is room for subjectivity--there has to be. Among even the most knowledgeable group of basketball fans, there will be differing opinions on which two or three teams should be the last in the field.
Of course, objective data has a place in the process, and I would hope for it to have a prominent place. It appears it does, based on this provision in the section labeled "General Principles for Selection, Seeding and Bracketing":
Among the resources available to the committee are complete box scores, game summaries and notes, various computer rankings, head-to-head results, chronological results, Division I results, non-conference results, home and away results, results in the last 12 games, rankings, polls and the NABC regional advisory committee rankings.
That's a lot of data, and none of it is useful on its own--every bit of it has context and is open to interpretation. Contrary to what will be implied over the next three weeks, a team's worth is not defined by its RPI, or its SOS (which is merely a subset of the overall RPI calculation), or even its record against the top 25 of the RPI. It all comes down to whether a committee member feels that a particular team is among the best 34. That's a problem that the RPI can't solve on its own.
This brings us to the case of Davidson. Based on what everyone has done to date, I think Davidson would be one of the 34 best at-large teams. What this really means is that they're one of the 45-50 best teams in the country, since automatic bids will be occupied by some of the teams in that group. I can't use the RPI to prove it, however.
The Wildcats stand at 21-6 after Friday's win at Winthrop. Among their losses are games against UCLA, North Carolina and Duke, all of whom are expected to find themselves on the top two seed lines. As expected, Davidson went 0-3 against those teams. If the committee is looking for the best teams, however, Davidson's record in those three games should take a back seat to their performance in them.
The UNC game wasn't decided until the final minute, and while the UCLA game was not as close down the stretch, Davidson managed to put UCLA as far down (18 points) as they've been all season during the game. The Duke game wasn't as suspenseful, with the Blue Devils going into clock-milking mode after taking a 12-point lead with five minutes to go. Where Davidson's case loses steam is its three other non-conference challenges, losses to Western Michigan, Charlotte and NC State. Each of those teams are respectable in the sense that they are better than Davidson's Southern Conference brethren, and each game was on the road, but each is also inferior to an at-large quality team. Overall, the Wildcats went 1-6 against D-I non-conference teams in November and December, recording their only win in a home game against D-I newcomer North Carolina Central.
At some point, a team needs wins to prove their worth. Davidson has wins--they may well close the regular season with 21 consecutive against SoCon competition plus the road win against Winthrop. There's not a quality win in the bunch, but collectively, that group of wins is an achievement worth considering. We can't know how bubble teams from bigger conferences would fare with such a slate, but UCLA, Tennessee and Kansas have shown that being much better than the rest of your conference does not mean you can roll through your conference schedule, even when it's just 16 or 18 games. There's enough baggage in each team's portfolio to suggest that what Davidson has done shouldn't be ignored.
I often get frustrated that people think 27-30 games are enough of a sample to distinguish among the last three or four at-large teams. In fact, we know it's not, because every season there are a couple teams that cry bloody murder after the bids are revealed. If a full college season were a big enough sample to judge teams by, everybody's guess at the bracket would agree. So imagine the issues in judging a team on what is essentially a six-game sample. The fact that the sample includes all losses will no doubt disqualify Davidson from consideration for an at-large should they need it. However, were I somehow serving on the committee, I could not be so sure the Wildcats weren't deserving. Based on how they have played, and based on non-RPI data, they would be one of the best teams left out of the field.
The good news for Davidson is that the RPI is less relevant than it's ever been. Over the past two seasons, five teams ranked in the top 30 of the RPI failed to make the NCAA Tournament. In the ten seasons prior to that, no member of the top 30 of the RPI was left out. The other piece of good news for Davidson fans is that if they really are as good as I believe, they won't need the committee to tell them so. They'll win the remainder of their games against inferior Southern Conference competition and get an automatic bid.
Ken Pomeroy is an author of Basketball Prospectus. You can contact Ken by clicking here or click here to see Ken's other articles.
[h1]Memphis ready to regroup[/h1]
posted: Monday, February 25, 2008 | Print Entry
Memphis coach John Calipari isn't fretting the loss to Tennessee. As his former assistant and good friend Bruiser Flint of Drexel told him early on Sunday: "It's all lined up again,'' Calipari said Sunday night. "He reminded me that the year before at UMass [1995], we went to the Elite Eight and lost in New Jersey and then went to the Final Four in New Jersey the next year [1996]. We won our first 26 games [in 1995-96] and then lost at home to a team we didn't want to lose to [George Washington] and we regrouped, and now we'll regroup and be on our way.'' Memphis lost to Ohio State in San Antonio last year in the Elite Eight. The Final Four this year is in San Antonio. Calipari added that, "there's no question that this team has what it takes to win the national title. Will we? I don't know. We had breakdowns. It happened against Ohio State where we had a couple of guys go south. We can't have that.'' Calipari isn't pointing fingers but he knows there are some areas of concern after the 66-62 loss to Tennessee on Saturday night. He said he's not focusing on free throws (8-of-17), and he's not upset about the 3-point shooting (8-of-27 overall, 8-of-20 in the first half and 0-of-7 in the second). However, he is miffed by the 17 offensive boards the Vols had Saturday. "Their inside people played a tougher game than our people,'' Calipari said. "They were able to score inside with four or five buckets that you would think we would score on them and we didn't. We can't let that happen again.'' Calipari also was frustrated by a series of tip backs on one of the final possessions by the Tigers that ended up with Joey Dorsey tying up Robert Dozier for a travel call. Calipari said Dorsey, who was 0 of 3 from the field, had six boards and four fouls in 28 minutes, did struggle. "He struggled in another big game,'' Calipari said. "We'll look at the tape. Joey will look at the tape. He needs to see this.'' Calipari said he's not upset that neither Dorsey nor Chris Douglas-Roberts talked to the media after the game. He said he was actually pleased that freshman Derrick Rose did (since it was the first game he had lost as a collegian). But more than anything, Calipari doesn't want to lose focus on what the Tigers have accomplished to date. "We won 26 games to start the season; we need to talk about what we just did,'' Calipari said. "Individual players need to take responsibility for themselves. If you're not playing well, everybody saw it [Saturday]. They've got to own it and come back from this.'' So, Calipari is making sure the players understand that the staff isn't going to come up with some sort of elixir. The players will have to make plays, grab rebounds and convert shots to improve and to ensure the Tigers still are in the hunt for the national title. It was one game, one game at home, one game to their rival, which happened to be ranked one spot behind in the polls. But there is still enough of a concern that the Tigers need to refocus themselves going forward in the final two weeks of Conference USA.