Re: Wed Feb 18th - 2G - XU-Cinc, PC-DePaul...
Posted: Fri Feb 20, 2015 9:50 am
Bill Marsh wrote:Straw Man argument, Stever. You're the only one who's used the word "collapse" in association with the AAC.
Regardless of how good the top of that league is in any given year, the bottom half is horrible. That's why it's a bad league. Who wants to watch games in a league when half the time, the opponent has no shot of winning?
The worst team in the Big East this year is Creighton with an RPI rank of 145. But that would put them middle of the pack at 7th if they were the 12th team in the American, God forbid. Here are the RPI ranks of the bottom 5 teams in the AAC:
160 - Tulane
218 - UCF
229 - East Carolina
238 - South Florida
266 - Houston
Those are the teams against whom the teams in top half of the league are building their records against, teams that are non-competitive, any one of whom would easily be the worst team in the Big East.
What has the league done to build itself up? Their league SOS out of conference is 12th. They simply have done nothing to compensate for their dead weight. Contrast that with the Big East. Out of conference SOS for the BE is #1.
That's the difference between the 2 leagues and that's why people get their backs up when you try to put then AAC on par with the Big East. It's not a league that was built for basketball. It just happens to have a few good basketball schools in the mix, but that was just dumb luck.
no, Steve Lavin on here used the word collapse...
One thing to remember is they did gerrymander the schedule a bit, where the teams aren't playing 10 games against those bottom 5 teams. So especially with those playing vs Tulane- only 6 games much worse than the Big East really.
The question for that league will be can those 5 schools improve quick enough with the extra exposure they're getting(well all but USF).
OOC SOS- the gap between #8 Big Ten and #12 Pac 12 projected in RPI forecast is .5116 and .5103. AAC is 11 at .5107. OOC SOS is more what the Big East, SEC, and the SWAC did than anyone else didn't do. (yes, I said the SWAC).
The AAC might not be a league built for basketball, but it's still a good basketball league. Definitely with the A10 the 2 best non F5/BE basketball leagues.