The Holy Land of Hoops

What we need for the conference to get 5 bids is for the tourney caliber teams to distinguish themselves from the lower level teams. WE DO NOT WANT PARITY! I know this board has been more of a hold hands, don't say bad things to each other, kumbaya fest. But it is time to get real. We are not all going dancing, the world needs ditch diggers too.

The projected rpi has us now at:
Nova in,
Creighton in,
Georgetown just needs to hold serve
Xavier, right side of the bubble
Butler, wrong side of the bubble
St john,s just out of bubble talk

These are really the teams who still have a shot at an at large bid. I guess marquette could too, but that seems unlilkely.

I think the mix of gtown, x, but, and sju are pretty equal, and it really could shake out any way. I think the best way for it to shake would be something like this:

- Nova dominates, but drops a couple games to our 4 and 5 teams (would be nice for one of those to be in philly). Creighton similar to nova. That would give us two "quality" wins teams that get distributed through the bubble teams, and they get good seeds for a tourney run.

- georgetown is in the best shot of our 3-6 teams (the early january bubble teams). Gtown finishing 5th is not bad from a conference view, as they are still a viable at large team.

- we need 2 of the 3, butler, xavier, and/or sju, to get their rpi into the top 50 with a win or two against nova and creighton. And we need the odd man of this bunch to fall off a bit.

Ideally, we could enter the big east tourney at:
Nova - top 10, 2 or 3 seed
Creighton - top 15, 3 or 4 seed
Butler - top 40, 7 or 8 seed'ish
Xavier, top 40, 7 or 8 seed'ish
Georgetown - 40's or low 50's.
The other 5 teams need to fall off a bit.

I would feel good about us earning 5 bids at that point. Then st johns or marquette beats georgetown or xavier or butler in the big east tourney and we get 6 bids!!

I fear it will loolk like this:
Nova - top 15, 3 or 4 seed
Creighton - top 30, 5 or 6 seed
Georgetown - 30's, 7 seed
Xavier - 48 - bubble (and an early exit in nyc popping the bubble)
Butler - 60, nit
St johns - 61, nit
Marquette, 65, nit
Providence, 85, cbi
Seton hall - 99, cbi
Depaul - 110

That would be balance, but it would be only 3 ncaa teams, not very good seeds, and the mid-major tag would apply.

Actually one of the best ways to get 5 is have Nova finish 4-5 b/c their OOC success will put them in. If CU finishes top 4 they are prob in, especially with an AA on the roster. DM gives them a great storyline that if they are close, they are in. If an XU, BU, SJU, Marq, or PC finish top 3 in conference they are prob in if they have 11+ wins. Add to that an outlier winning in NYC at the BET and 5 is absolutely possible. Lots of hoops still to play...

GumbyDamnit! wrote:Actually one of the best ways to get 5 is have Nova finish 4-5 b/c their OOC success will put them in. If CU finishes top 4 they are prob in, especially with an AA on the roster. DM gives them a great storyline that if they are close, they are in. If an XU, BU, SJU, Marq, or PC finish top 3 in conference they are prob in if they have 11+ wins. Add to that an outlier winning in NYC at the BET and 5 is absolutely possible. Lots of hoops still to play...

Gumby, don't forget, FriarFan2 said PC's season is basically over because they lost to Seton Hall. PC just needs to pack up the basketballs now or lay down and let the rest of the conference steam roll them (should be easy enough if SHU could do it apparently). According to FF2, PC is going nowhere.

GumbyDamnit! wrote:Actually one of the best ways to get 5 is have Nova finish 4-5 b/c their OOC success will put them in. If CU finishes top 4 they are prob in, especially with an AA on the roster. DM gives them a great storyline that if they are close, they are in. If an XU, BU, SJU, Marq, or PC finish top 3 in conference they are prob in if they have 11+ wins. Add to that an outlier winning in NYC at the BET and 5 is absolutely possible. Lots of hoops still to play...

Agree, Nova needs to lose a few games to the bubble teams and finish 4th or 5th in order to share their great OOC RPI with the rest of the Big East. That was why I was kinda rooting for Butler a few days ago.

Friarfan2 wrote:What we need for the conference to get 5 bids is for the tourney caliber teams to distinguish themselves from the lower level teams. WE DO NOT WANT PARITY! I know this board has been more of a hold hands, don't say bad things to each other, kumbaya fest. But it is time to get real. We are not all going dancing, the world needs ditch diggers too.

The projected rpi has us now at:
Nova in,
Creighton in,
Georgetown just needs to hold serve
Xavier, right side of the bubble
Butler, wrong side of the bubble
St john,s just out of bubble talk

These are really the teams who still have a shot at an at large bid. I guess marquette could too, but that seems unlilkely.

I think the mix of gtown, x, but, and sju are pretty equal, and it really could shake out any way. I think the best way for it to shake would be something like this:

- Nova dominates, but drops a couple games to our 4 and 5 teams (would be nice for one of those to be in philly). Creighton similar to nova. That would give us two "quality" wins teams that get distributed through the bubble teams, and they get good seeds for a tourney run.

- georgetown is in the best shot of our 3-6 teams (the early january bubble teams). Gtown finishing 5th is not bad from a conference view, as they are still a viable at large team.

- we need 2 of the 3, butler, xavier, and/or sju, to get their rpi into the top 50 with a win or two against nova and creighton. And we need the odd man of this bunch to fall off a bit.

Ideally, we could enter the big east tourney at:
Nova - top 10, 2 or 3 seed
Creighton - top 15, 3 or 4 seed
Butler - top 40, 7 or 8 seed'ish
Xavier, top 40, 7 or 8 seed'ish
Georgetown - 40's or low 50's.
The other 5 teams need to fall off a bit.

I would feel good about us earning 5 bids at that point. Then st johns or marquette beats georgetown or xavier or butler in the big east tourney and we get 6 bids!!

I fear it will loolk like this:
Nova - top 15, 3 or 4 seed
Creighton - top 30, 5 or 6 seed
Georgetown - 30's, 7 seed
Xavier - 48 - bubble (and an early exit in nyc popping the bubble)
Butler - 60, nit
St johns - 61, nit
Marquette, 65, nit
Providence, 85, cbi
Seton hall - 99, cbi
Depaul - 110

That would be balance, but it would be only 3 ncaa teams, not very good seeds, and the mid-major tag would apply.

Seton Hall would never accept a bid to the CBI. They've turned that down a couple of times before. Who wants to pay to play in a postseason tournament that takes teams with losing records? NCAA is always the goal with NIT as a consolation prize for the Pirates. They will never play in the CBI, I guarantee it.

I wish they would get rid of the CBI. This isn't college football where mediocrity is rewarded and everyone gets a bowl bid.

What we need is every team to stay as healthy as possible and play great basketball, up to their full potential. If that happens, then every team in the league that's deserving of an NCAA Tournament bid will get one. If that's 5 or 6 teams- awesome. If it's only 4 (I'd be surprised if it was any less), then at least the teams that do go are battle tested and prepared to represent us well. Having the bottom half of the league be doormats will leave the NCAA Tournament teams in position to be sent home early and, quite frankly - would hurt the tournament chances of the bubble teams because half of their conference wins would be garbage.

Trying to fix the ideal final standings for the league is absolutely ridiculous.

The whole idea of "we want some healthy teams playing competitive basketball and see where that lands us" theory is great for message board comradarie. But in terms of maxing our bids, it is not the best route.

If our league performed better out of conference, sure. But we really dipped a bit out of conference. It wasn't a disaster, as we managed to avoid bad losses, but it wasn't good enough for us to think parity in the league will be good.

If we get a lot of parity, if we have lower teams beating bubble teams, the result will be a 3 bid conference and bad seeds.

If we can have five teams distinguish themselves, that is best. And the lower teams aren't horrific, even though they struggled, so they can stay 150-200 rpi (instead of going 200+)

Some years, we could root for parity and still maximize our bids. This is not one of those years. Too many losses and not enough good wins.

Also, I would like to see creighton and nova remain ranked. I think that is better than seeing them drop to 4th or 5th. You need a team that looks on paper to be sweet 16 good. We don't want 5 teams seeded in the 6-12 range. Better to have a 2 and maybe a 4 seed in the mix. It would pick up everyone's profile.

And for those who are complaining about my comments about pc's season being over, I sense you just started watching college basketball. A team can absolutely blow their tourney chances in the first third of the season. Absolutely. Seton hall, depaul and providence have already done so. Marquette doesn't have the bad losses, so I don't put them in that group, but the bottom three are done. Stop acting like they have a shot at an at large bid and throwing your pom poms in the air. Look at reality. They have dug a hole, there are not enough good win opportunities for them to bounce back on.

Nova is not going to run away with the league. In fact, I still don't think they win the league outright. I have been around this conference log enough to know that anyone can beat anyone - especially in this new incarnation. Nova is going to have a few losses. We can still get five in - the RPIs are not bad and there are still 17 conference games left to play. It's way to early to make any predictions. I think it is safe to say that Nova is essentially a lock for the NCAA tourney as they will likely have a winning record in conference and their out of conference performance was very good. Everyone else is still really up for grabs.

Who said nova is running away with the league?

I think the best thing would be for nova and creighton to lose 3-5 games to teams like xavier and butler (or st john's).

What we don't want is creighton and nova losing to seton hall or providence or depaul or marquette (or the odd man out between xavier/butler/st john's)

JOPO wrote:Seton Hall would never accept a bid to the CBI. They've turned that down a couple of times before. Who wants to pay to play in a postseason tournament that takes teams with losing records? NCAA is always the goal with NIT as a consolation prize for the Pirates. They will never play in the CBI, I guarantee it.

I wish they would get rid of the CBI. This isn't college football where mediocrity is rewarded and everyone gets a bowl bid.

After Xavier didn't get an NIT invite last year, they turned down CBI and CIT invites. There are only two tournaments worth the time in college basketball, one for champions and one for pretty good teams that didn't quite make the cut.