Didn't see this posted anywhere else, but Mark Titus has a nice, brief little meditation on the Big East under Villanova's "capsule" in Grantland's power rankings. http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/10157404/mark-titus-top-12-ncaa-power-rankings-ohio-state-winning-arizona-stays-top
"I expected the Big East to get two or three teams into the NCAA tournament. If they were lucky, I thought, one of those teams would make the Sweet 16. But now the Big East looks like a strong contender to earn six bids to the dance, and because of Villanova's balance, experience, and chemistry, a Final Four berth isn't out of the question. So if at the beginning of the season you were like me and you assumed that the Big East would basically be a mid-major conference, it's time to re-evaluate the conference and start paying attention. I have a feeling that the Big East will be the nation's most competitive conference from top to bottom besides the Big Ten."
Well, we are 4th right now and once you get the conference play it is tough to move up much. Hopefully he is right, but I think 4th or 5th is likely where it ends. 6 teams would be fantastic....color me skeptical. I'm thinking 4 and hopefully 5.
6 bids absolutely isn't happening. Not enough scalps in OOC by the conference, as a whole. 4 sounds about right, which is nothing to be ashamed of (40% of the conference).
Creighton, Villanova, Georgetown, Marquette, Butler, Xavier, St. Johns. I bet at least 5 of those get in. I'd include providence too before the injury to Dunn
Quote from: MUEagle1090 on December 19, 2013, 05:43:22 PM
Creighton, Villanova, Georgetown, Marquette, Butler, Xavier, St. Johns. I bet at least 5 of those get in. I'd include providence too before the injury to Dunn
St. John's, Xavier, and Butler probably not. I'd put Providence above those 3.
Up in the air as to which teams get in, but theres only two teams ('Nova for sure, Gtown probably) thats done enough OOC to justify going .500 in the big east. Figure a few teams go a few games over .500 in the conference and those are the ones that get in.
Villanova definitely. The problem is right now they're the only definite. Us, Creighton, and Georgetown are all in pretty good position if we win 11+ conference games. The only bad loss of those three is Georgetown to Northeastern, and the VCU win helps offset that a bit. Still, no locks there.
Xavier, Butler, and St. John's are in decent shape. No real bad losses and some decent wins. But again, at least 11 wins, maybe 12 in conference. Pretty much the same goes for Providence.
We obviously won't get 8 in. Six will probably only happen if you have a severe divide between the top-6 and the bottom 4. And even then, probably only if the top-6 are all within 2-3 games of each other so they are hard to separate. I'd put the over/under right now at 4.5. It just seems like you'll probably have three teams really going for the title, I'd guess 3 of the four in the first paragraph will win 13+. Then you probably have 4-5 teams all scrapping to get 10-11 wins. The 1-3 teams that succeed in getting to 10 will have a good shot. What may be the bugaboo is if you have 5 teams with 11 wins and a sixth team get the auto-bid. That's probably the only way we get 6 bids this year.
Quote from: brewcity77 on December 19, 2013, 06:03:24 PM
Villanova definitely. The problem is right now they're the only definite. Us, Creighton, and Georgetown are all in pretty good position if we win 11+ conference games. The only bad loss of those three is Georgetown to Northeastern, and the VCU win helps offset that a bit. Still, no locks there.
Xavier, Butler, and St. John's are in decent shape. No real bad losses and some decent wins. But again, at least 11 wins, maybe 12 in conference. Pretty much the same goes for Providence.
We obviously won't get 8 in. Six will probably only happen if you have a severe divide between the top-6 and the bottom 4. And even then, probably only if the top-6 are all within 2-3 games of each other so they are hard to separate. I'd put the over/under right now at 4.5. It just seems like you'll probably have three teams really going for the title, I'd guess 3 of the four in the first paragraph will win 13+. Then you probably have 4-5 teams all scrapping to get 10-11 wins. The 1-3 teams that succeed in getting to 10 will have a good shot. What may be the bugaboo is if you have 5 teams with 11 wins and a sixth team get the auto-bid. That's probably the only way we get 6 bids this year.
Don't necessarily agree with that. We are tied for last in the Big East so far. To be quite honest, just about every team in the Big East has a resume that is as good or better than ours outside of Seton Hall. Is ours bad? No. We don't have any bad losses. But at the same time, we have 4 losses and have no truly good wins. You don't get in just by beating the bad teams on your schedule. Somewhere along the way you have to beat someone good.
If we are in "good position" to get in with 11 wins, then so is anybody in the Big East.
Quote from: wadesworld on December 19, 2013, 06:38:05 PM
Don't necessarily agree with that. We are tied for last in the Big East so far. To be quite honest, just about every team in the Big East has a resume that is as good or better than ours outside of Seton Hall. Is ours bad? No. We don't have any bad losses. But at the same time, we have 4 losses and have no truly good wins. You don't get in just by beating the bad teams on your schedule. Somewhere along the way you have to beat someone good.
If we are in "good position" to get in with 11 wins, then so is anybody in the Big East.
We are doing fine. All our losses are to either top 25 teams or fringe top 25 teams. We took the number 4 team in the nation down to the wire on the road. To suggest that we are at the bottom of the Big East and any team is in as good of position as us is ridiculous.
Do we have our problems yes. But our record does not reflect the teams performance/ability.
Quote from: wadesworld on December 19, 2013, 06:38:05 PM
Don't necessarily agree with that. We are tied for last in the Big East so far. To be quite honest, just about every team in the Big East has a resume that is as good or better than ours outside of Seton Hall. Is ours bad? No. We don't have any bad losses. But at the same time, we have 4 losses and have no truly good wins. You don't get in just by beating the bad teams on your schedule. Somewhere along the way you have to beat someone good.
If we are in "good position" to get in with 11 wins, then so is anybody in the Big East.
I'd agree with that. I think anyone that gets to 20 wins and 11 in conference will have a good shot to get in. Unless we have 6 teams with 11-13 wins, which seems highly unlikely, anyone that fits that profile should be okay.
Quote from: forgetful on December 19, 2013, 06:52:57 PM
We are doing fine. All our losses are to either top 25 teams or fringe top 25 teams. We took the number 4 team in the nation down to the wire on the road. To suggest that we are at the bottom of the Big East and any team is in as good of position as us is ridiculous.
Do we have our problems yes. But our record does not reflect the teams performance/ability.
I'm not saying we are going to finish at the bottom of the Big East. I am saying that if Marquette gets into the tournament with 11 conference wins, then so does any other team in the conference with the exception of Seton Hall, because so far our resume is no stronger than any other team in the Big East (again, with the exception of Seton Hall).
I think it's been implied already, but doesn't conference RPI stay relatively still after conference play starts? We're 4th right now at RealTimeRPI. Once conference play starts teams start beating up on each other so conference RPI shouldn't change terribly much, right?
2nd best conference seems a bit of a stretch but its nice to hear that the conference is very respectable. As far as how many teams get invited my guess is 4 or 5 also very respectable considering what was lost.
He says the 2nd most competitive from
Top to bottom, not 2nd best conference.
More importantly, did Mark Titus catch Dylan Flood's Club Trillion performance on Tuesday?
Quote from: wadesworld on December 19, 2013, 07:40:55 PM
I'm not saying we are going to finish at the bottom of the Big East. I am saying that if Marquette gets into the tournament with 11 conference wins, then so does any other team in the conference with the exception of Seton Hall, because so far our resume is no stronger than any other team in the Big East (again, with the exception of Seton Hall).
Actually, as of right now our win against George Washington is the 4th best RPI win by any team in the conference (On wins vs. KU and Iowa by Villanova, and Butler's win over Princeton trump our victory).
Villanova: #6 Kansas, #31 Iowa, #69 USC
Butler: #34 Princeton, #81 Vanderbilt
Marquette: #37 George Washington
St. Johns: #51 Bucknell, #100 Fordham
Xavier: #62 Cincy - only top 100 win / Bad loss to 103 Tennessee
Georgetown: #73 VCU - only top 100 win / Bad loss to 203 Northeastern
DePaul: #74 UWM - only top 100 win /
Creighton: #79 Arizona State, #85 Nebraska
Providence: #81 Vanderbilt--no other top 100 wins
Seton Hall: #92 Virginia Tech / bad losses to #192 FDU, #248 St. Peters
There just isn't a lot of quality in the W column, league-wide.
Quote from: wadesworld on December 19, 2013, 07:40:55 PM
I'm not saying we are going to finish at the bottom of the Big East. I am saying that if Marquette gets into the tournament with 11 conference wins, then so does any other team in the conference with the exception of Seton Hall, because so far our resume is no stronger than any other team in the Big East (again, with the exception of Seton Hall).
Got it...misunderstood the previous post. I agree with this logic.
Do we know how good Villanova is? Sure the Kansas win is big-time and Iowa has a good chance to make the tournament, but that's all they've played so far. But other than USC on a neutral court, they have all been cupcakes at home.
Quote from: ChicosBailBonds on December 19, 2013, 04:50:03 PM
Well, we are 4th right now and once you get the conference play it is tough to move up much. Hopefully he is right, but I think 4th or 5th is likely where it ends. 6 teams would be fantastic....color me skeptical. I'm thinking 4 and hopefully 5.
6 teams ain't happening - the logistics of a 10-team conference won't allow it.
Otherwise I agree. I think 4 and hope for 5.
All it takes is for an otherwise going to miss the dance St. John's or Providence to catch fire in the Garden at March, and poof, there's an extra bid that get's us to to 5 or 6.
Quote from: ChicosBailBonds on December 19, 2013, 04:50:03 PM
Well, we are 4th right now and once you get the conference play it is tough to move up much. Hopefully he is right, but I think 4th or 5th is likely where it ends. 6 teams would be fantastic....color me skeptical. I'm thinking 4 and hopefully 5.
I'd take 4th. Its hard for someone to say you are not a power conference if you are the 4th best in the country. Hopefully that's our conference's basement. If we are consistently 4th or better, that's not a bad place to be.
Quote from: Bleuteaux on December 20, 2013, 09:14:25 AM
I'd take 4th. Its hard for someone to say you are not a power conference if you are the 4th best in the country. Hopefully that's our conference's basement. If we are consistently 4th or better, that's not a bad place to be.
So would I
Quote from: brandx on December 19, 2013, 09:37:23 PM
6 teams ain't happening - the logistics of a 10-team conference won't allow it.
Otherwise I agree. I think 4 and hope for 5.
Not very likely, although not out of the realm of the possibility. For the sake of argument, if the other four teams got swept by the rest of the league, each of the top 6 teams would already have 8 wins. Split with every other team in the top 6, and they all have a total of 13 wins, 5 losses in conference, with a good handful of "good wins". Not to mention what could happen in conference tourney (as already posted, a team making a miracle run to grab the autobid could be a 6th team).
Now, I definitely agree that it would take an unusual season for it to play out this way, and don't see it happening this year, but it isn't impossible for us in the right year to get more than half of our teams in the tourney.
Quote from: ChicosBailBonds on December 20, 2013, 09:17:07 AM
So would I
...4th best is a quality finish. The conference loses Louisville, UCONN, and Syracuse and doesn't fall out of the top 5 (that is a win).
Quote from: Babybluejeans on December 19, 2013, 04:01:04 PM
Didn't see this posted anywhere else, but Mark Titus has a nice, brief little meditation on the Big East under Villanova's "capsule" in Grantland's power rankings. http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/10157404/mark-titus-top-12-ncaa-power-rankings-ohio-state-winning-arizona-stays-top
"I expected the Big East to get two or three teams into the NCAA tournament. If they were lucky, I thought, one of those teams would make the Sweet 16. But now the Big East looks like a strong contender to earn six bids to the dance, and because of Villanova's balance, experience, and chemistry, a Final Four berth isn't out of the question. So if at the beginning of the season you were like me and you assumed that the Big East would basically be a mid-major conference, it's time to re-evaluate the conference and start paying attention. I have a feeling that the Big East will be the nation's most competitive conference from top to bottom besides the Big Ten."
Let's not put words in the man's mouth. He didn't say 2nd best conference, he said 2nd
most competitive top to bottom.
But if it is the most competitive top to bottom, it is impossible to get 6 teams in the tournament. The numbers simply do not allow it.
Unless someone would like to give a mathematical analysis on how.....
Quote from: brandx on December 20, 2013, 01:52:23 PM
But if it is the most competitive top to bottom, it is impossible to get 6 teams in the tournament. The numbers simply do not allow it.
Unless someone would like to give a mathematical analysis on how.....
I sort of fail to get how my pointing out that the Big East is not the second best conference means that I'm saying that said conference will get six teams in the tournament.
Quote from: LittleMurs on December 20, 2013, 07:25:45 PM
I sort of fail to get how my pointing out that the Big East is not the second best conference means that I'm saying that said conference will get six teams in the tournament.
I was referring to someone else's comment. I guess my reply was right after one of yours, so it may have seemed like I was talking about you.