The Holy Land of Hoops

I couldn't easily find our old thread, plus i think we're ready for a new one...

Sunday Feb 1st:
Florida State 55, Miami (Fla) 54.
Houston 70, UConn 68. <--- crowd was 3,500 in Houston.
East Carolina 50, Cincinnati 46. <--- crowd was 4,500 at ECU.

RPI's:
Cincinnati still at a safe 34.
Miami (Fla) at 56.
UConn at 106.

Miami spent a well-deserved week at #24 in the polls, getting spanked by 20 at home to Georgia Tech (105), and losing to Florida State (121). Thanks Gary Parrish... "whatever"...!

St John's has improved to 48 after this weekend's weird mix of results.

A bit over 7,000. Florida State fans are terrible as well.

Those are 2 terrible losses for two AAC bubble teams. Is it possible that league only gets 2 bids: SMU and Tulsa?

Haha, AAC bubbles bursting....love it. 3500 in Houston? I watched some of the UCONN/Houston game last year and there were probably only a couple thousand there last year as well...

GumbyDamnit! wrote:Those are 2 terrible losses for two AAC bubble teams. Is it possible that league only gets 2 bids: SMU and Tulsa?

it may be possible- but it's sure not likely.
Cincy's RPI right now is 34- even after the ECU loss. Temple is up to 44 right now.

stever20 wrote:

GumbyDamnit! wrote:Those are 2 terrible losses for two AAC bubble teams. Is it possible that league only gets 2 bids: SMU and Tulsa?

it may be possible- but it's sure not likely.
Cincy's RPI right now is 34- even after the ECU loss. Temple is up to 44 right now.

Stever, are you including Temple based on RPI alone or their one victory vs Kansas? Show me a 2nd win vs a tourney team. Also look at some of the losses. Not sure how you could say definitively that this is a tourney team at this point. The AAC is BAD this year. The BE has a better chance at 7 than the AAC had at a 4th.

Temple:
UNLV - L
Nova - L
SMU - L
Tulsa - L
St Joe's - L
Cincy - L
KU - W

Next best win?

And if Cincy loses more games vs 150+ teams, like Houston, UCF, or ECU, those losses will start to mean more than the decent wins.

GumbyDamnit! wrote:

stever20 wrote:

GumbyDamnit! wrote:Those are 2 terrible losses for two AAC bubble teams. Is it possible that league only gets 2 bids: SMU and Tulsa?

it may be possible- but it's sure not likely.
Cincy's RPI right now is 34- even after the ECU loss. Temple is up to 44 right now.

Stever, are you including Temple based on RPI alone or their one victory vs Kansas? Show me a 2nd win vs a tourney team. Also look at some of the losses. Not sure how you could say definitively that this is a tourney team at this point. The AAC is BAD this year. The BE has a better chance at 7 than the AAC had at a 4th.

Temple:
UNLV - L
Nova - L
SMU - L
Tulsa - L
St Joe's - L
Cincy - L
KU - W

Next best win?

And if Cincy loses more games vs 150+ teams, like Houston, UCF, or ECU, those losses will start to mean more than the decent wins.

I'm not saying they would be in right now, but it's not likely that both Cincy and Temple would get left out.

As far as Temple- one thing that will get ignored some is if they get a few good wins here- the early losses before they were at full strength.

And your question was about the AAC gets only 2 bids. That's just not likely at all.

If you want a conference that might only get 2 bids, what about the Pac 12? Arizona and Utah of course. But Stanford is interesting. They are 15-6 right now and projected at 20-10 with a 37 RPI. 1 more loss though and 19-11 with a 48 RPI. With losses to DePaul and Washington St now.

stever20 wrote:

GumbyDamnit! wrote:Those are 2 terrible losses for two AAC bubble teams. Is it possible that league only gets 2 bids: SMU and Tulsa?

it may be possible- but it's sure not likely.
Cincy's RPI right now is 34- even after the ECU loss. Temple is up to 44 right now.

Temple is currently ranked 51 by RPI Forecast with a projected RPI of 55.9. If they were a Big east team, you'd be giving us all the reasons why they have no shot at the tournament.

Bill Marsh wrote:

stever20 wrote:

GumbyDamnit! wrote:Those are 2 terrible losses for two AAC bubble teams. Is it possible that league only gets 2 bids: SMU and Tulsa?

it may be possible- but it's sure not likely.
Cincy's RPI right now is 34- even after the ECU loss. Temple is up to 44 right now.

Temple is currently ranked 51 by RPI Forecast with a projected RPI of 55.9. If they were a Big east team, you'd be giving us all the reasons why they have no shot at the tournament.

At least Temple has a good win. It's more than undefeated AAC leader Tulsa can say. They lost to a DII school and their best non-conference win RPI wise is Incarnate Word (reality wise it's Creighton). They could potentially run the table in the AAC and still not get an at-large bid.

Monday Feb 2nd, some people will be watching Virginia and UNC. But not me. The ACC is Snooze City. With no Big East action tonight, after i shovel more snow today (6 to 8 inches), i'll try to find time watch CBS-SN, where American plays at Holy Cross, from the Hart Center on-campus in Worcester.

I'm also going to pay attention to another game (again, can't watch it cuz ACC too boring), which could go a long way in further making the Midpack ACC teams look like cow patties:

Bryant at Pitt, 7pm.

Why would Pitt have scheduled this game for February? This can only be a net negative. I can't imagine Pitt will be motivated at all. Two games ago they lost to Virginia Tech. They have their next 5 games vs Syracuse, Louisville, UNC, Virginia and Syracuse again. Plus why did Pitt schedule Bryant of all teams? Is this the only way Jamie Dixon can get exposure in New England recruiting grounds? I mean, why doesn't he schedule Robert Morris or Youngstown State or something else in metro Pittsburgh as a tomato can?

Bryant has a great head coach, Tim O'Shea, who has built the Bulldogs program from scratch as they upgraded to Div-1 around five years ago. They also have Al Skinner as a bench coach.

Bryant used to be a commuter business school on the East Side of Providence, near Brown and RISD. In the 60's or 70's, the Tupperware guy built a new campus in the woods, on a mini former airport in Smithfield, around 8 miles up the road to the northwest. It remained mostly a commuter business school thru the 80's, but really expanded after that, and now has a bunch of dorms and a modern campus.

I grew up around 3 miles from Bryant (and 3 miles from PC). From around 1976 til Gillette Stadium was built, the Patriots held training camp at Bryant. Summers as a kid we would bump into Patriots players around town. I met Mike Haynes just before he moved to the Raiders.

As late as 1981 (which turned out to be a disastrous 2-14 season), the Pats training camp didn't get too much attention, and at night we could go to Bryant and run around the practice fields, toss footballs arounds, try to unsuccessfully move the blocking dummy sleds (on the front of the sled was the slogan "I'm the smart dummy!")... meanwhile nobody was around, no security, only crickets and opossums and squirrels... and Ron Erhardt's coaches' tower which seemed to be around 40 feet high.

Anyway, keep one eye on Bryant tonight. Pitt's plodding offense should allow Bryant to stay in the game.