Fieldhouse Flyer wrote:Dayton won 17 post-season games (NCAA Tournament and NIT) during the 60’s.
Dayton Season • W-L • Post-season Tournament Results1960–61 • 20–9 • NIT Final Four
1961–62 • 24–6 •
NIT Champions (
Dayton did not appear in the AP Poll at any point during the 1961-62 season.)
1962–63 • 16–10
1963–64 • 15–10
1964–65 • 22–7 • NCAA Sweet 16
1965–66 • 23–6 • NCAA Sweet 16
1966–67 • 25–6 •
NCAA Tournament Runner-up (
Dayton did not appear in the AP Poll at any point during the 1966-67 season.)
1967–68 • 21–9 •
NIT Champions (
Dayton did not appear in the AP Poll at any point during the 1967-68 season.)
1968–69 • 20–7 • NCAA 1st Round
The percentage of AP Polls that Dayton appeared in during the 1960’s does not reflect the quality of Dayton’s basketball program during that decade, and for three significant reasons:
1. The AP regular-season polls from 1949-60 had 20 teams,
from 1961-68 had 10 teams, from 1969-1989 had 20 teams, and 1990-present has 25 teams.
2. The Final AP Polls were conducted prior to the post-season tournaments, meaning that none of Dayton's (nor any other teams’) tournament wins were considered in the AP Polls.
3. The
The ESPN/Sagarin All-Time Rankings (which you have confirmed is 'malarkey') takes into consideration
all of the games that each team plays – not just the
regular-season games on which the AP Polls are based.
I would contend that an evaluation methodology which considers all of a team’s games has more validity than sports writer's polls based solely on regular-season games. If you do not like the results of a methodology, that does not mean that the methodology is 'malarkey'.
Ok I'm going to move away from Dayton, focus on the major error I found, then point out that because of a glaring error such as this you can't quite trust the rest of the rankings to be spot on with programs that I'm not as familiar with.
UNC went 239-65 during the 1970s, they made the NCAA tournament 6 times with 4 NIT appearances. They won the NIT in 71, were NCAA runner up in 77 and made the Final four in 72.
During that same period Marquette went 251-41, they made the NCAA tournament 9 times with 1 NIT appearances. They won the NIT in 70, were NCAA runner up in 74 and won the tournament in 77.
There is no logical reason that ESPN could put UNC over MU during that period and that goes for if they're weighing Tournament or regular season success as more important MU wins both categories. Because of this I stand by my statement that the list is "malarky" and cannot be trusted. Sorry the list that shines Dayton in the greatest light is not valid.