Thu 11/21 BE Game Thread (2 Games)

[stever20]

I think we're decent- but like we haven't played anyone else. We need the top 25 wins. until we get those- it's not good. tomorrow is huge for us- after playing only 7 games against the ESPN 9, we get 3 tomorrow.

[TheHall]

So as a conference, I think we're 29-6.
Of the 6 losses, 3 were against Top-20 teams.
Of the 3 other losses, in each game our teams had 10+ point leads that they blew; one was in 2 OTs on the road.
The Northeastern loss is a bad one.
The Seton Hall loss shouldn't have happened..
The DePaul loss shouldn't have happened, but Southern Mississippi is the C-USA favorite and was good last year.

Of the 29 wins, in only 2 did we have to make significant comebacks-- Creighton at St Joe's, and Bucknell at St John's.

Compare this to other conferences... odds-wise, it's amazing that our first true brainfart didn't happen til the 34th game.

Exactly, it's all relative.

[stever20]

There is no way to spin the losses vs Mercer and Northeastern. They were/are bad losses. We are 0-3 vs top 20 teams. So no good wins and 3 bad losses- not a good mix. At best we're neutral, and with how poorly Marquette and especially Georgetown have started the season, not sure how anyone could spin the start of the season as anything positive. One thing to remember, with only 10 teams, if 1-2 are down, it matters a lot more than in a 15-16 team conference like we had before.

[billyjack]

There is no way to spin the losses vs Mercer and Northeastern. They were/are bad losses. We are 0-3 vs top 20 teams. So no good wins and 3 bad losses- not a good mix. At best we're neutral, and with how poorly Marquette and especially Georgetown have started the season, not sure how anyone could spin the start of the season as anything positive. One thing to remember, with only 10 teams, if 1-2 are down, it matters a lot more than in a 15-16 team conference like we had before.

Umm... okay, that's your opinion. I don't feel like spending the rest of the weekend arguing with you about this. I broke down the games a few posts ago. Three losses against ranked teams (2 of which will soon be Top-10). In no games (except Marquette-OSU (Top-10 team) maybe...?) did we get blown out of the arena.

Do you want to know what an awful game looks like...? (My opinions)
1. VCU last night against an unranked ACC team got run out of the building by 20 or 30... ok, that is by far a worse loss than any of ours.
2. UNC lost to Belmont at home.
3. Va Tech at home losing to USC Upstate.
4. BC run off the court in Boston to UMass.
5. BC losing at home to Toledo.
6. Miami down at home by 10 all game in their loss to Central Florida.
7. Miami losing at home to Saint Francis of New York.
8. NC State losing at home to "North Carolina Central".

Couple of observations from the list above (my opinions):
a. Thanks to VCU sucking dung last night, we will now be subjected to looking at undeserving Florida State's sorry a$$es in the Top-25... great.
b. BC's 4 (four!) losses will be a freaking godsend for us... BC is good enough to beat the bottom 8 ACC schools, and will probably beat Virginia and Florida State and/or Pitt or Notre Dame... BC will probably finish around 8-10 or 9-9 in the ACC, killing their league bids-wise.
c. Northeastern (not as bad a team as you're making them out to be, in a game played in front of 21 people on a Thursday at noon in Puerto Rico) and Mercer (good team, played at home, was losing by 14, won in double-overtime) and Southern Mississippi (best in C-USA, bubble team last year) will be ranked in the 100's at worst... ok, these aren't disaster losses like you're saying... these 3 losses are in no way comparable to losing to NC-Central, Toledo, Saint Francis (NY), or USC Upstate... also, again, in those 3 losses, the Big East team was winning by 10+, 14+, 16+ and probably lost focus like PC did vs Brown (see the comment above about playing at noon on a Thursday in front of 21 people)... compare those three losses to Belmont at UNC, where Belmont led all game, lost the lead late, then made a last minute comeback... do you see the difference between how the games played out...?

FInal Thought: (my opinion)
I would recommend that you don't make such declarative statements when expressing your opinion... remember you're sharing your opinion... in my opinion we've exceeded where I thought we'd be, with the exception that I thought we would've won one against the Top-10 schools.

[Bill Marsh]

There is no way to spin the losses vs Mercer and Northeastern. They were/are bad losses. We are 0-3 vs top 20 teams. So no good wins and 3 bad losses- not a good mix. At best we're neutral, and with how poorly Marquette and especially Georgetown have started the season, not sure how anyone could spin the start of the season as anything positive. One thing to remember, with only 10 teams, if 1-2 are down, it matters a lot more than in a 15-16 team conference like we had before.

Umm... okay, that's your opinion. I don't feel like spending the rest of the weekend arguing with you about this. I broke down the games a few posts ago. Three losses against ranked teams (2 of which will soon be Top-10). In no games (except Marquette-OSU (Top-10 team) maybe...?) did we get blown out of the arena.

Do you want to know what an awful game looks like...? (My opinions)
1. VCU last night against an unranked ACC team got run out of the building by 20 or 30... ok, that is by far a worse loss than any of ours.
2. UNC lost to Belmont at home.
3. Va Tech at home losing to USC Upstate.
4. BC run off the court in Boston to UMass.
5. BC losing at home to Toledo.
6. Miami down at home by 10 all game in their loss to Central Florida.
7. Miami losing at home to Saint Francis of New York.
8. NC State losing at home to "North Carolina Central".

Couple of observations from the list above (my opinions):
a. Thanks to VCU sucking dung last night, we will now be subjected to looking at undeserving Florida State's sorry a$$es in the Top-25... great.
b. BC's 4 (four!) losses will be a freaking godsend for us... BC is good enough to beat the bottom 8 ACC schools, and will probably beat Virginia and Florida State and/or Pitt or Notre Dame... BC will probably finish around 8-10 or 9-9 in the ACC, killing their league bids-wise.
c. Northeastern (not as bad a team as you're making them out to be, in a game played in front of 21 people on a Thursday at noon in Puerto Rico) and Mercer (good team, played at home, was losing by 14, won in double-overtime) and Southern Mississippi (best in C-USA, bubble team last year) will be ranked in the 100's at worst... ok, these aren't disaster losses like you're saying... these 3 losses are in no way comparable to losing to NC-Central, Toledo, Saint Francis (NY), or USC Upstate... also, again, in those 3 losses, the Big East team was winning by 10+, 14+, 16+ and probably lost focus like PC did vs Brown (see the comment above about playing at noon on a Thursday in front of 21 people)... compare those three losses to Belmont at UNC, where Belmont led all game, lost the lead late, then made a last minute comeback... do you see the difference between how the games played out . . .

Nice post. You raised some points in your analysis that I hadn't thought about. I feel smarter already.

[billyjack]

As always, thanks Bill...!

[stever20]

my question though is what win do we have that is really a big win. A guaranteed NCAA tourney team?

In all of those that you are mentioning- ACC and A10- the conferences have 15 and 13 teams. So if a few teams are down- it doesn't matter anywhere near as much as it does in the BE(or any 10 team league).

Northeastern lost to Stony Brook and Boston U. They aren't that good. That loss is on the level of Va Tech, St Francis NY, NC Central. Belmont would blow them out. UMass probably makes the tourney and blows them out.

End of the day- RPI(which does matter)- and in terms of w-l record(which does matter- as I said no tourney team last year made it at large with fewer than 20 wins)- a 1 point loss and a 30 point loss are the same thing.

And your final thought- if you thought we'd have beaten one of the top schools, than how can you say that we've exceeded your expectations? Other than those schools, we haven't played but a few games against decent teams. 20+ wins are vs tomato cans(and is the same for all conferences quite frankly). You are judged on the other 12-13 games at this point, and we're at best .500 in those games.

[Vill]

For many conferences - excluding teams that played in made for a TV events - the best non-con games come in the MTE tourney. Not having great league wins at this point isn't my concern. It's having bad losses that is.

[billyjack]

my question though is what win do we have that is really a big win. A guaranteed NCAA tourney team?

In all of those that you are mentioning- ACC and A10- the conferences have 15 and 13 teams. So if a few teams are down- it doesn't matter anywhere near as much as it does in the BE(or any 10 team league).

Northeastern lost to Stony Brook and Boston U. They aren't that good. That loss is on the level of Va Tech, St Francis NY, NC Central. Belmont would blow them out. UMass probably makes the tourney and blows them out.

End of the day- RPI(which does matter)- and in terms of w-l record(which does matter- as I said no tourney team last year made it at large with fewer than 20 wins)- a 1 point loss and a 30 point loss are the same thing.

And your final thought- if you thought we'd have beaten one of the top schools, than how can you say that we've exceeded your expectations? Other than those schools, we haven't played but a few games against decent teams. 20+ wins are vs tomato cans(and is the same for all conferences quite frankly). You are judged on the other 12-13 games at this point, and we're at best .500 in those games.

How can I say we've exceeded expectations even with those three losses...?

Because it's an incredibly small sample size. 3 games...! And in those three-- the Georgetown-Oregon game was a 1 or 2 possession game, the St John's- Wisconsin game was a 4 point game with under 8 to play, and I didn't see the Marquette-OSU game but from what everyone here said OSU won comfortably.

A larger sample size includes the 36 total games we've played as a group. Half of us are undefeated. 9 of us have 1 or fewer losses. In only one game did we lose handily (again, I didn't see it). Of the 36 games, we've won 29, and of the 29 we've had like 24 cakewalks. And the 29 include KEY wins (though not Top-20)-- wins against BC and Tennessee and Vanderbilt, each of whom will finish around 4-5-6-7 in their respective conferences.

Sorry, earlier I completely forgot about Notre Dame getting waxed at home by Indiana State... add that to the list too... that's a worse loss than any of ours... losing by 10+ AT HOME to Indiana State.

[TheHall]

There is no way to spin the losses vs Mercer and Northeastern. They were/are bad losses. We are 0-3 vs top 20 teams. So no good wins and 3 bad losses- not a good mix. At best we're neutral, and with how poorly Marquette and especially Georgetown have started the season, not sure how anyone could spin the start of the season as anything positive. One thing to remember, with only 10 teams, if 1-2 are down, it matters a lot more than in a 15-16 team conference like we had before.

Yes it is. At the end of the season teams are compared against each other regardless of conference for NCAAT bids & seeding. So how can you say making the NCAAT isn't relative to wins & losses by other teams not just BE teams?