stever20 wrote:The problem with your post at the start of the year was that you failed to acknowledge that a majority of Big East Recruits sign early. So Big East is always going to be the pacer, but that's always the high point.
The thing is, looking at the metrics that you espouse, this class is the worst since the league reformed. It's not a great class. 1st class ever where no 5 stars signed.
Also, the problem is that you are seeing more and more guys signed by the p5 schools. Look at flipping Missouri's class for gosh sakes.. That's not a good development for non p5 schools. Only 8 of the top 50 classes this year are non p5. The thing that's so funny to me is folks here want to see the AAC fail, but fail to recognize if they do fail, the ones that benefit will be the P5 schools, not the Big East schools.
And the AAC is in major trouble? Going to have quite possibly 3 teams in the preseason top 25. Some major, major trouble. The problem with folks on here is that they think that the AAC is always going to be like they have. The AAC has never had a year where they've put it all together, winning a lot of the close games. In a lot of ways, they've been the complete opposite of the Big East. While Big East has had everything go absolutely right for making tourney, AAC has had almost everything go absolutely wrong. Could recruiting be better? Sure it could. But they're going to be one of the 7 top conferences this year, and quite probably going forward. It's a top 7, and then everyone else. You can see that in recruiting just this year. 10 of the 12 AAC schools have top 100 classes. CUSA has 5, MWC 4, A10 4, and then no one else more than 2. Top 80 even more pronounced. AAC with 8, CUSA 3, MWC 3, A10 2, Southland 1, Sun Belt 1. What this year has done is put the AAC as being unquestionably in the top 7.
billyjack wrote:- Big East Lucky To Get 7 Teams/ Things Broke Perfectly For Them: The flipside to this statement, which MUST be understood, is that the trade-off with getting 7 teams in this year was that Watson and Sumner were lost, meaning Xavier probably is a Final Four team, and Creighton is minimum Elite-8 as they rolled through their Watson-led games.
So you can't dismiss our 7 bids AND dismiss the probabilty of possibly getting Final Fours from XU and Creighton. One must be true.
GoldenWarrior11 wrote:Competition is a zero-sum game. The reason Houston, UCF and SMU are up right now is because UConn, Temple and Memphis are down.
stever20 wrote:I don't think you can say for certain that either Creighton or Xavier would have been a final 4 team. Xavier was not playing well all year long even with Summer. They were only 15-6 at the time of injury, and 4 of the 5 BE wins were vs Georgetown and St John's. Just had come off of a period of losing 4 of last 5 games. So to say with Summer they would have been final 4 is a reach.
Creighton sure looked great with Watson, but at the time of the injury, due to the soft schedule, they were only #19 in ken pom. So tough to say that they would have gone much further outside of the fact they would have been a top 3 or 4 seed instead of 6, and thus a better early round matchup of course. But to say final 4 is a stretch.
So don't think you can say that Big East had to have had either 7 bids or getting final four from at least 1 of Xavier or Creighton. But then again, I'd argue that even w/o final 4's- the number of units had the injuries not happened and league only gotten 4 or 5 bids would have been at least the same, if not more, than what actually happened.
You are right about Georgetown. The thing I'll say about it is thank God it happened because JT3 finally got shown the door. I just find close games to be a lot about a bounce here and a bounce there. Game played 100 times, one team would win 50 and the other team 50.
I just think the AAC is far more solid than folks here want to make it out. 3 likely top 25 teams in Cincy, SMU, and Wichita. Some up and coming teams in Houston, UCF(seems SO strange to say that). The thing that's strange is looking at them, the key is Memphis, UConn, and Temple. If those 3 can return to where they have been before- the league is super deep. Not sure how anyone objectively could look at the AAC and say they're in major trouble right now.
It's funny, just like in the Big East if we had said 4 years ago Georgetown, St John's, and Marquette had been nothing in the Big East- one would have been majorly concerned- if you had said back when AAC formed that SMU, Houston, and UCF would be as improved as they have- you would have thought with that the AAC would be doing pretty well. But just not the case.
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