FORBES: AAC May Have Strongest Teams in the Dance

[billyjack]

Ok, c'mon, let's be real here:
Houston is terrible. And they're the 6th best team in the AAC.

How weak is Houston?
They have 8 OOC wins.
Of those eight, 5 are vs 300+ RPI teams.

The other 3 OOC wins are vs:
229 Lehigh.
248 Corpus Christi.
289 Texas State.

They lost OOC to:
42 Stanford.
121 Texas Tech.
123 Texas A&M.
126 UL-Lafayette.
259 San Jose State.

Any wins they got vs Memphis or UConn are a poor reflection on the top of the AAC.
Houston actually playing 500 ball in the AAC should be an embarrassment.

At least DePaul beat Oregon State, Northwestern and teams like Wright State that are semi-competent.
Butler beat non-comatose schools like Vanderbilt, Washington State, Purdue, Princeton, and played Okie State to OT.
Butler beating 221 North Dakota is a better win ooc than anyone that Houston beat ooc. Let that sink in.

Butler and DePaul would both mop the floor with Houston or any of the other bottom five in the AAC.

[billyjack]

P.S. Bonus question. Multiple choice.
Q. What is SMU's best OOC win?
a. Sam Houston.
b. Wyoming.
c. McNeese State.
d. UT-Pan American.
The winner gets to carry Larry Brown's suitcase full of cash on his next recruiting trip.

[chicagojayfan]

P.S. Bonus question. Multiple choice.
Q. What is SMU's best OOC win?
a. Sam Houston.
b. Wyoming.
c. McNeese State.
d. UT-Pan American.
The winner gets to carry Larry Brown's suitcase full of cash on his next recruiting trip.

Great couple of posts on the AAC. I looked through that SMU schedule just this morning before you posted and was struck with how awful their wins are this year.

This is what makes the top to bottom conference record comparison so misleading. If they were playing a BE schedule they would look a lot different (and that is what top to bottom RPI shows us)

I think the biggest oddity in RPI so far this year has to do with the B10. I question the level of talent they have this year and think that they got far too much credit at the start. Now that they are scuffling there aren't OOC games to baseline their RPI more accurately (although the MSU/Georgetown game should tell us something, even with MSU missing a couple of guys)

[WaitingPatiently]

It's socking that two groups of 10 play each other home-home...and when done the standings look similar. That is not something that compares the strength of the two groups. That's a statistical likelihood. If you put the 1-10 teams in one group and 330-340 in another it'd wind up the same very similar way. The BE is very tight top to bottom in quality. The AAC is 5 strong, 5 weak. The fact that the 5 and 6 wind up similar in conference record....mind blowing.

[Bill Marsh]

Right now Bracketmatrix has Cincy as a 4 seed. Very possible if Cincy or Louisville wins that they get a 3 seed, with an outside shot of a 2 seed.

If either of them wins out from here- they have a top 10 RPI.

Well after the results of this afternoon's UConn game, Cincy's not winning out.

[Bill Marsh]

not sure how reasonable it is to think that...
Xavier beats both Creighton and Villanova both on their home court
or
Providence does something they haven't done since 2007 and beat Marquette- twice.

if those don't happen, the favorable brackets you have just don't happen.

Of course it's reasonable.

What's unreasonable is to say it's not reasonable just because you don't agree with it. All 3 of these games are expected to be close and could go either way. I'm making a best guess as to which way I think they'll go. But seriously, Steve, how can you possible call it to say that Xabier can't win 2 games that are supposed to go down to the wire? Neither Creighton nor Villanova ate heavy favorites, nor is either game supposed to be a blow out.

As for the Matquette-PC game, Providence is the favorite. But it's unreasonable for me to expect them to win??? Please.

Of course the brackets don't happen if my predictions are wrong. That's why they're called predictions.

But I've got news for you. If you go with the chalk. And simply forecast based on the favorites, the results will be wrong. There will be upsets. I'm making my best guess where the upsets are most likely to come.

[Bill Marsh]

Right now Bracketmatrix has Cincy as a 4 seed. Very possible if Cincy or Louisville wins that they get a 3 seed, with an outside shot of a 2 seed.

If either of them wins out from here- they have a top 10 RPI.

Well after the results of this afternoon's UConn game, Cincy's not winning out.

Neither is Louisville. The results of the Memphis game is just in.

[marquette]

4 pages for a troll thread. Man, we all need lives.

Stever, put your spreadsheets away, let the doom and gloom hypothesizing be, go out, get a drink (or smoke a bowl, whatever is your thing, no judgment), get happy, and come back here to make your first positive post about the Big East. Come on, I promise it won't be so bad. I do find a lot of your posts informative and interesting, but you have to stop pounding the funeral drums at some point. The Big East isn't dead yet.

[Bill Marsh]

not sure how reasonable it is to think that...
Xavier beats both Creighton and Villanova both on their home court
or
Providence does something they haven't done since 2007 and beat Marquette- twice.

if those don't happen, the favorable brackets you have just don't happen.

Of course it's reasonable.

What's unreasonable is to say it's not reasonable just because you don't agree with it. All 3 of these games are expected to be close and could go either way. I'm making a best guess as to which way I think they'll go. But seriously, Steve, how can you possible call it to say that Xabier can't win 2 games that are supposed to go down to the wire? Neither Creighton nor Villanova ate heavy favorites, nor is either game supposed to be a blow out.

As for the Matquette-PC game, Providence is the favorite. But it's unreasonable for me to expect them to win??? Please.

Of course the brackets don't happen if my predictions are wrong. That's why they're called predictions.

But I've got news for you. If you go with the chalk. And simply forecast based on the favorites, the results will be wrong. There will be upsets. I'm making my best guess where the upsets are most likely to come.

With Creighton trailing by 9,my Xavier pick is looking pretty good at this point.

[Bill Marsh]

Deleted.