At 80 I'll just be happy for lunch... Or I will have been dead for like 20 years.
Kentucky moves up in AP despite Tuesday loss
- Thread starter ThroughBlue
- Start date
Don't underestimate aged veal cutlets. As I get older,I realize loose meat is the future.
I should take a break for a bit.
Last edited:
Gonzaga at #2 is laughable. The fact that they actually received 6 first place votes is a real knee-slapper. Good to see the Zags continuously rising in the polls by playing their last 15 games against schools nobody has ever heard of. While the rest of the country is clawing through a grueling schedule. In the last 2 weeks they’ve hopscotched Virginia who lost to the #1 team in the nation and Tennessee who lost on the road to a top 5 opponent.
That’s like Durant playing 1 on 1 with LeBron and losing. Harden playing 1 on 1 with Curry and losing. Meanwhile Brian Scalabrine has won 15 games in a row against random 8th graders from Indiana’s children’s school of the blind and is now considered the 2nd best player behind LeBron.
That’s like Durant playing 1 on 1 with LeBron and losing. Harden playing 1 on 1 with Curry and losing. Meanwhile Brian Scalabrine has won 15 games in a row against random 8th graders from Indiana’s children’s school of the blind and is now considered the 2nd best player behind LeBron.
So far things work even with cancer.
Oh I am okay. I think that I told every one here about it at the time. 25 months cancer free, the goal is 60 months.
I would have been here sooner, but I missed the tag. I've got a z at the end of my username.
Okay, yes, I do like the WCC. I'll admit I'm a still little salty that Saint Mary's missed the tournament in 2016 and 2018. Two of the better snubs that I can recall. The WCC is slightly better than the Pac-12, IMO (11-9 head-to-head). I large reason why the WCC is better than the Pac-12 is simply because the Pac-12 doesn't have a team like Gonzaga.
IMO this Gonzaga team isn't as good as the 2017 team. Their offense, however, is off the charts. They're the 2nd highest rated offense during the KenPom Era (2002-current). Their defense leaves a little to be desired (currently #24). They have been improving, but it will be interesting to see how they perform against a top-level team. Brandon Clarke is 3rd in the country in blocks. But I still can't get over the UNC game. I mean, UNC sliced and diced them anyway they wanted. So, I have reservations about this Zag team, even though their offense is very, very good. Good enough to win it all? Yes. But After Duke, I think I'd still put Virginia, Kentucky, and maybe Tennessee ahead of them.
I do want to give them a little credit, though. They played Tennessee and UNC without Geno Crandall, their top guard off the bench. Crandall has been giving them a solid 20 minutes a game during conference play. Also, check out this 4-game stretch here. They put the beatdown on these teams. I know it's the WCC, but we're still talking about top 100 programs here.
BYU (#76) - won by 30
San Diego (#105) - won by 16
San Francisco (#52) - won by 30
Saint Mary's (#47) - won by 48
Saint Mary's, FWIW, took LSU down to the wire. They lost 78-74.
I would have been here sooner, but I missed the tag. I've got a z at the end of my username.
Okay, yes, I do like the WCC. I'll admit I'm a still little salty that Saint Mary's missed the tournament in 2016 and 2018. Two of the better snubs that I can recall. The WCC is slightly better than the Pac-12, IMO (11-9 head-to-head). I large reason why the WCC is better than the Pac-12 is simply because the Pac-12 doesn't have a team like Gonzaga.
IMO this Gonzaga team isn't as good as the 2017 team. Their offense, however, is off the charts. They're the 2nd highest rated offense during the KenPom Era (2002-current). Their defense leaves a little to be desired (currently #24). They have been improving, but it will be interesting to see how they perform against a top-level team. Brandon Clarke is 3rd in the country in blocks. But I still can't get over the UNC game. I mean, UNC sliced and diced them anyway they wanted. So, I have reservations about this Zag team, even though their offense is very, very good. Good enough to win it all? Yes. But After Duke, I think I'd still put Virginia, Kentucky, and maybe Tennessee ahead of them.
I do want to give them a little credit, though. They played Tennessee and UNC without Geno Crandall, their top guard off the bench. Crandall has been giving them a solid 20 minutes a game during conference play. Also, check out this 4-game stretch here. They put the beatdown on these teams. I know it's the WCC, but we're still talking about top 100 programs here.
BYU (#76) - won by 30
San Diego (#105) - won by 16
San Francisco (#52) - won by 30
Saint Mary's (#47) - won by 48
Saint Mary's, FWIW, took LSU down to the wire. They lost 78-74.
.....so did Georgia the other day.
'Cept UGA was playing at home, and they're a sub-100 team, while Saint Mary's is in the top 50. Beating a top 50 team by 48 points is kind of impressive.
Net Rankings:
45. Ohio State
46. St.John's
47. (Saint Mary's)
48. Syracuse
49. Butler
I think we would all take notice if anyone beat one of the other four schools by 48 points. When it's Saint Mary's, though, we just gloss over and think it's another easy WCC game.
Can you unequivocally guarantee that a team like Georgia, or Vanderbilt (teams that are currently outside of the top 100, but still have good-to-very good talent along their rosters) couldn't perform as "efficiently" as a team like Saint Mary's, or San Francisco in that conference? Understand that their team is facing other programs in the WCC. They're facing WCC level talent week in and week out. They have players all across their rosters that would s*** all over WCC teams if they played in that conference. On a more level playing field, they don't hold the same athletic and physical advantages that they would have in the WCC.
My entire argument is that if you stick Saint Mary's in the ACC, or the SEC, or the Big XII, do you think that their ranking as the #47 team in the country holds up? Or do you think their lack of athleticism and talent would catch up to them in the stronger conferences? I feel that most rational minds would agree with the latter. Their recruiting is consistently in the top 3 of the WCC, so it's no surprise that they would be a very efficient and superior team to their peers in that conference, but they would be at the bottom of possibly every single power conference not named the PAC-12 over a 4 year period, and they would be in the bottom quarter of the PAC-12 in recruiting over that time as well.
Point being, adjustments made by computers or not, your team can be consistently efficient against low level teams, but consistently terrible against power five (or six in basketball) level teams simply because the talent may be superior to your common opponents, but still vastly inferior to the talent found in power conferences. The computers make an effort to adjust for this, but as of right now, there is not a computer model that can measure a team's efficiency vs various levels of talent, and in the case of the WCC teams, they have such a small amount of games against the power conferences, there isn't enough data provided to draw a truly accurate statistical analysis.
What are you trying to find? Whether Gonzaga is a legit top 5 team, or how strong the WCC is? Gonzaga is a top 5 team - probably closer to #5 than #2, IMO. The WCC isn't a power conference, I would never argue that they're anywhere in that ballpark. But they have had the better of the Pac-12 this year. They're 11-9 against the Pac-12, and only one of those 11 wins involved Gonzaga.
And Georgia and Vanderbilt had plenty of time to pad up their non-conference resume. Georgia got crushed by Georgia State (#132) and Vanderbilt lost to Kent State (#135) at home. Those programs are both solid mid-majors, but they're a step or two below the likes of San Francisco or Saint Mary's, who I think are both in the top 10 for mid-majors. If they're losing to sub-100 teams, if they struggle to crack the top 100 in the OOC, if they combine for 1 conference win, then yes, they would also struggle in the West Coast.
San Francisco was #27 and Saint Mary's was #47 before the conference season even started (Bart Torvik). It's not like the WCC suddenly boosted them up in the computer models. If anything, they've slipped up a little bit. I don't think Georgia or Vanderbilt would do very well in the WCC, personally, simply because neither team is very good. Maybe 8-8, but I'd side closer to saying 7-9 or 6-10. Heck, LMU is 5-8 in the WCC and they beat Georgetown (#80). San Diego is 5-7 in league play and they beat Colorado (#73). I think it's easy to dismiss the WCC because they play in essentially high school gyms and we're used to Gonzaga crushing every single one of these schools.
Now, how well would Saint Mary's or San Francisco do in the SEC? Idk. Probably not great. But still good enough to make the NIT, I would imagine. I think SF, SMC, and BYU are all NIT-worthy teams. So yes, Gonzaga certainly isn't battle-tested like other ranked teams, but they have fewer gimmes this year than prior years, IMO.
I have no beef with Gonzaga being a top 5 team. Would I put them there? Eh, probably not. I think I would have them in the bottom half of the top 10, but I have an extremely difficult time putting them ahead of any one of Duke, Kentucky, Virginia, and Tennessee.
You cite Georgia's loss to Georgia State, and Vanderbilt's loss to Kent State, but Saint Mary's has lost to Harvard (#118), UC Irvine (#106), Western Kentucky (#128), and Pepperdine (#159).
Georgia and Vanderbilt deserve to be hammered, they suck. You said it yourself, they combine for 1 conference win between the two of them. That loss to Georgia State was UGA's only loss outside of the top 100 though. Vanderbilt has lost to one other team outside of the top 100 aside from Kent State, and that was.... Georgia.
All of this to make the point that, no matter how bad UGA and VU have been (which is absolutely miserable), they still have fewer losses outside of the top 100 combined than Saint Mary's (the 3rd place team in the WCC, and probably 3rd best behind Gonzaga and San Francisco). I think it's perfectly reasonable to say that there's a solid chance of them being a 2nd or 3rd place team in the WCC, and these are the absolute worst teams that the SEC has to offer.
In regards to the performance of Saint Mary's and San Francisco in the non-conference portion of the schedule, their NCSOS were ranked 186 and 322 respectively, which is horrendous to say the least. They played almost nobody in the non-con, specifically San Francisco. I think at that juncture of the season, your preseason ranking heavily influences all the computer models as well, and neither of those teams set the world on fire in the non-con (I think San Francisco would have 3 losses in the non-con if they had to play Arizona State, which they didn't.) Neither were far off from VU or UGA in NCSOS, except for the fact that the losses that UGA and VU sustained were not as bad as the losses sustained by the 2nd and 3rd best teams in the WCC,
I just find no reason to subscribe to the notion that the WCC is anything more than a bad conference. They may possibly be comparable to the PAC-12 (a putrid conference in their own right), although I would say the PAC-12 is more balanced with average caliber teams, and power conference talent, whereas the WCC is riddled with below average caliber teams, and headlined by one very good team.
So, when you said
you actually meant
and when you said
you actually meant "I've already made up my mind and nothing anyone can say is going to change it". Do I have that correct?
you actually meant
and when you said
you actually meant "I've already made up my mind and nothing anyone can say is going to change it". Do I have that correct?
WCC is #8 in the conference RPI ratings. So there's that. They're not a great conference, but they're a good conference for a mid-major.
Also, not really comparable when SEC teams don't play as nearly as many sub-100 teams as a WCC school. Buffalo, for example, is considered by most to be a top 25 school. But they also have 2 sub-100 losses. When you play 15-20 sub-100 games, you're obviously much more likely to have a sub-100 loss.
I've created a little spreadsheet which details the breakdown of Quad 1-4 games between 5 WCC Schools and Georgia and Vanderbilt. One commonality is all 7 schools suck in Quad 1 games, and they do very well in Quad 4 games. That's expected, right? How about Quad 2 and Quad 3 Games? 4 of the 5 WCC schools win at least 2/3 of those games. Meanwhile, Georgia and Vanderbilt are both sub .500. So yes, I stand by my statement. They would struggle in the WCC.
Similar threads
