Big East championship team, and Final Four contender?
Quote from: 4everwarriors on December 20, 2011, 09:00:14 AM
Big East championship team, and Final Four contender?
3-seed. BE contender and dark(as night)horse contender for the Final Four.
Why not? Because we lost road game to an SEC team? Unless anyone expected MU to go undefeated, I'm not sure what has really changed. Sometimes you lose.
Right now? No. The Tournament starts in 3 months though so our potential seed right now doesn't matter.
Quote from: NavinRJohnson on December 20, 2011, 09:05:41 AM
Unless anyone expected MU to go undefeated, I'm not sure what has really changed. Sometimes you lose.
A LOT of people here thought we were going to win en route, thats the only thing thats questioning the loss. I think the rankings get to everyone especially (the players) when Im watching games hoping the higher ranked team loses.
Nope. And we never were a 2 seed.
People were basing our elite status on 6 cupcakes, and 3 decent wins: UW, Ole Miss, Washington. Sorry, beating the crap out of cupcakes doesn't mean you are elite.
UW is clearly a great win. But would anyone like to bet that if we played that game 10 times, UW wouldn't win most of em? I wouldn't.
Washington? Washington has been exposed as a bubble team, if not headed to the NIT, losing to Nevada and South Dakota State, among their 5-5 record.
Ole Miss is another bubble team, more likely NIT. Add a loss to another NIT team, LSU, and that should not give anyone the idea this is the year we'll win the Big East, who oh by the way, has 6 top 15 teams.
Just like always, we have a narrow margin of error in every top 20 game we'll play this year.
Don't get me wrong .. Marquette isn't terrible .. just not as elite as a 1-2-3 seed needs to be.
Quote from: 4everwarriors on December 20, 2011, 09:00:14 AM
Big East championship team, and Final Four contender?
Big East championship team, yep. Final four contender is a stretch. I still love this team. Like another poster said, we lost to an SEC team on the road--and that SEC team was shooting lights out including hitting some circus shots. These things happen, and they'll likely happen a few more times before the 2011-2012 campaign comes to an end.
Quote from: mu_hilltopper on December 20, 2011, 09:52:54 AM
UW is clearly a great win. But would anyone like to bet that if we played that game 10 times, UW wouldn't win most of em? I wouldn't.
I do. UW is not a very good team. We are much better than them.
If we get a healthy Otule back sooner than later we will be a top 3 seed.
Yo Dudes, anyone who's half objective and has a basketball IQ above 50 (put this in to exclude F*ckin'), can ready see this team has major exploitable warts.
Quote from: mu_hilltopper on December 20, 2011, 09:52:54 AM
Don't get me wrong .. Marquette isn't terrible
Really going out on a limb there.
Have to be at least 12-6 in conference and win at least 2 games in NY. Then we could be 4-5 seed. It is along ways away. Otules comeback is critical. Need more height, Chris
would have been a big help last night against there center. Gardner and Wilson are to small. The gauntlet starts with Vandy, then Villy, GT, Syracuse, Pitt and Louisville. You will
no soon enough if they can be a top seed. 3-2 would be a great start.
I know we lost one game...but lets be honest here, there is a lot of overreaction. We all know that size is an issue, but i believe we have been able to win a good amount of games the past couple years without it.
Who cares at this point what seed we might be. You are telling me if we go 12-1 in OOC, or even 11-2 we go from a 2 seed to a bubble team? It seems like that is what many here are thinking...
Quote from: 4everwarriors on December 20, 2011, 09:00:14 AM
Big East championship team, and Final Four contender?
4ever asks, as he runs naked in the middle of Wisconsin Ave. with a hard hat on, screaming "the sky is falling".
Quote from: NavinRJohnson on December 20, 2011, 09:05:41 AM
Why not? Because we lost road game to an SEC team? Unless anyone expected MU to go undefeated, I'm not sure what has really changed. Sometimes you lose.
I think that after beating Wisconsin, people had a reasonable expectation that MU would enter BE play udefeated. Now, I'd say look out for Vandy.
With Otule at 100%? Yes. Without him, 4-5 seed, 4-5th in Big East. Still a very good season, but not amazing like it could be. We need 40 mpg from a true center. Hope he's able to give it a go.
Quote from: ATWizJr on December 20, 2011, 10:21:36 AM
I think that after beating Wisconsin, people had a reasonable expectation that MU would enter BE play udefeated. Now, I'd say look out for Vandy.
Beware of the Panthers.
Quote from: ATWizJr on December 20, 2011, 10:21:36 AM
I think that after beating Wisconsin, people had a reasonable expectation that MU would enter BE play udefeated. Now, I'd say look out for Vandy.
I think that many people understood that once Otule went down we were going to be in a world of trouble against the LSUs and Vandys of the world.
Teams with athtletic size are going to beat us all year, unless Chris gets healthy enough to return.
I would add that we've played 4 top 100 teams so far this year. Two on the road, two neutral, and zero at home. We've gone 3-1, and two of those games were played without our starting center.
Last year we played 4 top 100 teams in the non-con portion of our schedule. Two neutral, one home, one away, and we went 0-4.
We have two more coming up, both at home. Win those and we have an excellent resume heading into conference season. Get Otule back by the end of January, close out the season strong and we definitely still have a shot at a 2 seed. It's going to be harder now, but it can happen.
Quote from: ATL MU Warrior on December 20, 2011, 10:27:29 AMI think that many people understood that once Otule went down we were going to be in a world of trouble against the LSUs and Vandys of the world.
Teams with athtletic size are going to beat us all year, unless Chris gets healthy enough to return.
+1
If Otule played yesterday, we win that game.
And I don't just mean that as an Otule-lover...if DJO holds on to the ball, or the other guards hit their shots, or LSU doesn't hit those few wild threes, we also win, but Otule would have made the difference.
Quote from: Jamailman on December 20, 2011, 10:22:33 AM
With Otule at 100%? Yes. Without him, 4-5 seed, 4-5th in Big East. Still a very good season, but not amazing like it could be. We need 40 mpg from a true center. Hope he's able to give it a go.
Otule is the only "true center" on the roster. He averaged less than 18 minutes per game last season and MU seemed to do OK.
Henry Sugar, is there a large enough sample size available yet to determine MU's defensive efficiency with and without Otule?
Quote from: MerrittsMustache on December 20, 2011, 10:43:16 AM
Otule is the only "true center" on the roster. He averaged less than 18 minutes per game last season and MU seemed to do OK.
So you're saying now we're playing zero minutes with a "true center"?
I'm definitely counting Gardner. He is a college center. He operates exclusively on the low block. We need both of them ready and able to play 40 mpg combined to reach our full potential.
Quote from: 4everwarriors on December 20, 2011, 09:56:44 AM
Yo Dudes, anyone who's half objective and has a basketball IQ above 50 (put this in to exclude F*ckin'), can ready see this team has major exploitable warts.
Just like when your superior basketball IQ to the rest of the board let us all know we had no shot at beating Wisconsin. We lost one game so far. Did you expect us to be 13-0 in non-conference? I didn't, and I know you didn't because you expected a loss over Wisconsin at least. Teams lose games they shouldn't and win games they shouldn't. It happens. It's a long season and a lot can happen. Get over yourself.
Quote from: MerrittsMustache on December 20, 2011, 10:43:16 AMOtule is the only "true center" on the roster. He averaged less than 18 minutes per game last season and MU seemed to do OK.
MU got to the Sweet 16, but a lot of people were griping all year long as the 14 losses mounted up. CO will never be a 40-minute player, but I think he'd have seen 22-24 mpg this season, with Ox picking up the rest. We'd at least have 35-38 minutes of true center play per game.
Seeing how DG playing extended minutes leads to diminishing returns from him offensively and defensively, Buzz clearly knew what he was doing in how he allocated minutes at the 5.
Quote from: tower912 on December 20, 2011, 10:46:55 AM
Henry Sugar, is there a large enough sample size available yet to determine MU's defensive and offensive efficiency with and without Otule?
There is not a large enough sample size for significance. However, I've been struggling with it as well, and just haven't had enough time to do a deep dive. But here's the current level of thinking.
Simple Averages (pre vs post)
Offense
Efficiency (1.16 vs 1.07)
eFG% (56.5% vs 50%)
Defense
Efficiency (0.82 vs 0.97)
eFG% (40.9% vs 51.6%)
It's easy enough to just run an average and just say "hey, our offense and defense are both worse with Otule out". One could say "boom - roasted"... Otule made all the difference. But there's not enough data to answer that definitively.
Washington was a poor game, but also the injury happened mid-game. Looking a little bit deeper, the question for me was the cupcake games. In the first half of both games, MU was really good defensively. It was the second half where the defense suffered. Was that bad defense, or was it just letting off the gas against a clearly overmatched opponent? No matter what, the eFG% numbers against LSU really concern me. 62% allowed? 78% allowed in the 2H?
So there's one game against UW where Otule first went out, two cupcake games where MU crushed in one half and was weak in the second half, and LSU, which was bad by any measure.
Part of what I wanted to do was see how MU was comparing to how we were expected to do. In other words, if MU was supposed to beat UWGB by an efficiency margin of 30, how much did we actually beat them by? Just haven't done that yet.
Now we drop to 20, which is prolly where we should be, without a center.
Quote from: Henry Sugar on December 20, 2011, 11:25:38 AM
Part of what I wanted to do was see how MU was comparing to how we were expected to do. In other words, if MU was supposed to beat UWGB by an efficiency margin of 30, how much did we actually beat them by? Just haven't done that yet.
I have. Using kenpom predictions from before the Washington game:
Beat Washington by 7 (Otule went down in the 2nd minute of play) - we won by 2
Beat UWGB by 22 - we won by 18 (got shat on by their C)
Beat Northern Colorado by 21 - we won by 21 (their starting C went down immediately)
Beat LSU by 11 - lost by 8 and got dominated in the paint
I think it would have been the same had Gardner gone down instead, too. We're missing a dimension we absolutely need without a true center in the game for close to 40 minutes. You can get by with Wilson or Crowder filling in for a few minutes, but if they're relied on for extended minutes at the 5, more times than not it won't turn out well. When we had Hayward playing C we got abused in the paint, giving up 50% on 2 point shots, good for 263rd in the country. With the way we extend our guards on the perimeter, we need a guy with Otule's size and shot blocking ability to maximize our potential. Before he went down, we had gotten our 2P% defense down to 38% - 11th best in the country. That's how you win games in March.
One point, Henry. Otule went out 2 minutes into the Washington game. Technically, he played, but for the purpose of your statistics, it should really count as a DNP.
Quote from: HOOP24/7 on December 20, 2011, 11:57:30 AM
Now we drop to 20, which is prolly where we should be, without a center.
We will not drop to 20. Xavier dropped 4 spots after losing at home to Oral Roberts by 20 points. I get that their 2 best players were out, but my guess is the voters were looking to drop them as far as they could based on their fight with Cinci. We lost a road game to an SEC team. It is not going to drop us 10 spots.
Should be interesting to see where we land in relation to Wisconsin
I always thought we were a three seed, so I do not think this loss changes anything. However, we now have greater pressure to beat Vanderbilt. Even with Otule I did not think this team would get past the sweet 16. There are more than 8 teams that are better than us.
We're not as good as some people thought yesterday, and we're not as bad as some people think today. Fortunately, I think we're closer to the good side. This is a very good team and is going to be a lot of fun to watch this season.
BTW, Parrish/Goodman have us at 12 after the loss. Still talking up Mayo as the surprise of the year...
http://www.cbssports.com/collegebasketball/rankings/top25
4Ever, you certain about this, as certain as you were that Bucky was going to curbstomp us a few weeks back?
Quote from: mu_hilltopper on December 20, 2011, 09:52:54 AM
Nope. And we never were a 2 seed.
People were basing our elite status on 6 cupcakes, and 3 decent wins: UW, Ole Miss, Washington. Sorry, beating the crap out of cupcakes doesn't mean you are elite.
UW is clearly a great win. But would anyone like to bet that if we played that game 10 times, UW wouldn't win most of em? I wouldn't.
Washington? Washington has been exposed as a bubble team, if not headed to the NIT, losing to Nevada and South Dakota State, among their 5-5 record.
Ole Miss is another bubble team, more likely NIT. Add a loss to another NIT team, LSU, and that should not give anyone the idea this is the year we'll win the Big East, who oh by the way, has 6 top 15 teams.
Just like always, we have a narrow margin of error in every top 20 game we'll play this year.
Don't get me wrong .. Marquette isn't terrible .. just not as elite as a 1-2-3 seed needs to be.
This
Quote from: ringout on December 20, 2011, 10:18:37 AM
4ever asks, as he runs naked in the middle of Wisconsin Ave. with a hard hat on, screaming "the sky is falling".
Make sure to call him Chicos, too.
Quote from: Jamailman on December 20, 2011, 12:09:05 PMI think it would have been the same had Gardner gone down instead, too. We're missing a dimension we absolutely need without a true center in the game for close to 40 minutes. You can get by with Wilson or Crowder filling in for a few minutes, but if they're relied on for extended minutes at the 5, more times than not it won't turn out well. When we had Hayward playing C we got abused in the paint, giving up 50% on 2 point shots, good for 263rd in the country. With the way we extend our guards on the perimeter, we need a guy with Otule's size and shot blocking ability to maximize our potential. Before he went down, we had gotten our 2P% defense down to 38% - 11th best in the country. That's how you win games in March.
I love DG, I think he's been playing far above expectations. I thought he had a better game against LSU than he's gotten credit for. But there's no way our defense tanks four games in a row if we lose him as opposed to Otule. And maybe our offense falls off a bit, but I think we'd still see production from the other 5 guys that were averaging more ppg than he was when CO went down.
I know...I've beaten the Otule injury to death, but if our precipitous drop in defensive ranking isn't clear evidence of how he was the most important part of our defense (and thus our team, imo) then I don't know what is. LSU and Washington gave us fits with length and pounding us inside. Alec Brown had career highs and as a team, Northern Colorado was far more efficient than I'd have liked. It's not like all our opponents were chopped liver before, either -- we held down Bucky at the KC and dominated a pretty solid Ole Miss team that has similar length to the two that gave us fits in the past couple weeks.
*Sigh*
I really hope he can get back this year. This feels like Dominic James, only with more time to mull over how much it sucks to be tied down to these railroad tracks.
And in response to the original question, we haven't been a 2-seed since CO went down. I felt like with him we were a definite 2-3, possibly a 1 if all went well, without him we're a 5-6. Nothing has changed.
As far as comparisons...with Otule we absolutely pounded a mid-level SEC opponent away from home, without him we lost to a mid-level SEC opponent away from home. With Otule we controlled one of the best teams in the country start to finish on their floor, without him we white-knuckled our way to a win against a good-not-great Washington team.
With him we were a dominant force against NIT teams and still fairly comfortable against the NCAA-level teams we faced. That's pretty much the recipe for the NCAA. Beat the teams you should beat, which we did with ease, and do well enough against the quality opposition.
Bottom line, Otule is worth 3-5 seed lines come Selection Sunday. Nothing changed after LSU...it's been this way since the second minute of the Washington game.
Quote from: Hoopaloop on December 20, 2011, 09:27:49 PM
Make sure to call him Chicos, too.
We all know who Chicos is ;)