[Cracked Sidewalks] Who has Marquette beaten this year? More ranked teams than anyone but UConn

[CrackedSidewalksSays]

Who has Marquette beaten this year?  More ranked teams than anyone but UConn

Written by: noreply@blogger.com (bamamarquettefan1)

The most ludicrous argument I’ve heard in many a year is the “Marquette hasn’t beaten anyone” argument that has been repeated so many times this year it is being taken as Gospel even among some of our own fans.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

I knew from my past research that MUs 5-1 start against ranked teams going into Tuesday’s game at Villanova was the best record against ranked teams in the history of the program.  I couldn’t believe there were many other teams in the country that had beaten more ranked teams that MU this year, so I went back through the week-by-week ESPN rankings to see how the current Top 25 had done against ranked teams each week.  Guess what, if “who we have beaten” is your criteria, Marquette is now the No. 2 team in the country.

The only other team to beat five ranked teams this year is the No. 1 team in the land, UConn, which is now 7-1 against ranked teams.  As I noted a week ago, UConn is the only team in the country with six future NBA players according to the latest NBA mock draft, so I won’t argue with any UConn fan who claims we haven’t beaten the teams they have.

But the rest of the Top 25?  Why isn’t any criticism being handed to Memphis, UCLA or Kansas, who are ranked despite still not winning a single game against a ranked team this year?  Not saying these teams don’t have great talent and don’t deserved to be ranked, buy let’s get the analysts on them instead of Marquette about who they’ve beaten.  If we reordered the current ESPN Top 25 based on how many ranked team’s they’d beaten this year (with fewest losses against ranked teams as the tie-breaker), the following would be your new Top 25:

Connecticut    7 1
Marquette     5 1
Oklahoma   4 0
Syracuse     4 4
Wake Forest     3 0
Louisville     3 1
Michigan State   3 1
North Carolina   3 1
Washington     3 1
Duke      3 2
Gonzaga     3 2
Pittsburgh     3 2
Minnesota     3 3
Clemson     2 2
Illinois      2 3
Purdue      2 3
Texas      2 3
Villanova    2 4
Arizona State     1 0
Butler     1 1
Utah State     1 1
Xavier     1 1
Kansas      0 2
UCLA     0 2
Memphis     0 3

It's true we have knocked four teams out of the Top 25 by beating them, and that adds to another question.  Is it more impressive to beat a team when they are ranked or to have beaten a team that later gets hot and gets into the Top 25?  This is where I differ with a lot of the analysis that is done.  Clearly Georgetown is a much easier team to beat right now than they were when they were ranked.  Just ask UConn, Syracuse and Memphis, who all lost to the Hoyas while they were ranked before MU ran them off the court and exposed their weaknesses.

West Virginia isn’t ranked now, but they came into Marquette confident coming off a three-games stretch of a 28 points win at Ohio State, a 26 point win at Seton Hall, and a narrow 6 point loss to UConn.  The fact that we destroyed them by 75-53 to send them out of the Top 25 means they weren’t ranked AFTER we exposed weaknesses and broke their confidence.

WE DO NEED TO SCHEDULE FEWER CREAMPUFFS

I think a fair criticism, and one that MU really needs to address in scheduling for future RPI ratings, is that Marquette does play too many really bad teams â€" but that’s different than NOT playing good teams.  We need to replace a few of our games against non-Top 200 teams with a few teams that rank in the middle, somewhere between the Top 25 and the bottom 143 of 343 teams.  Seven of the teams we’ve played are really bad, and by  really bad, I mean teams not in the Top 200 according to www.kenpom.com.  We are talking going out to play scheduling teams that aren’t even Mid-Majors, or terrible, terrible teams like Tom Crean’s Indiana (ranked 210th).

The teams currently in ESPN’s top 25 are 127-0 against teams not in the Top 200, so these really are free wins.  So the average ranked team played 5 of these “cream puffs,” and Marquette has played two more than the norm, seven teams not in the Top 200.  Only Utah State (10), Purdue (9) and Butler (8) have played more cream puffs than MU.  This is an issue moving forward, because no matter how badly you kill these teams, just playing them really hurts the team’s RPI.  We would have a much better RPI if we had dropped two or three of these teams from the schedule this year.
My contention is that these freebee wins should simply not count toward your ranking at all.  Let’s just throw those games out of consideration completely and pretend they never happened.  If we take away each teams freebee wins, and just reorder the current Top 25 based on their winning percentage against Top 200 teams, the new Top 25 looks like this:

Connecticut  18 1
Oklahoma 17 1
Utah State   13 1
Pittsburgh   19 2
North Carolina   18 2
Butler   13 2
Xavier   17 3
Duke   16 3
Memphis   15 3
Clemson   14 3
Marquette   13 3 (would be 6th without USF)
Wake Forest   12 3
Louisville   15 4
Michigan State   15 4
UCLA   15 4
Kansas   14 4
Villanova   13 4
Arizona State   13 5
Syracuse   15 6
Gonzaga   12 5
Illinois   12 5
Minnesota  11  5
Washington   13 6
Purdue   8 5
Texas   9 7

So throwing out every team’s creampuffs, we have the 11th best winning percentage.  If Lazar’s stickback had fallen against USF then we would move up just behind UNC in 6th.

I’m not ignoring the loss to the 103rd best team in the land, USF â€" yes it hurt.  But even No. 2 Oklahoma lost to a worse team in 114th ranked Arkansas.  The key is obviously how the team bounces back against a Villanova team that www.kenpom.com gives us only a 30% chance of winning on the road.  But win or lose that game, to say MU hasn’t beaten anyone this year is simply a ridiculous claim that every MU fan should be combating any place we can.

Repeat to everyone you know that Marquette has beaten more ranked teams than anyone in the US - except UConn.  Case closed on that ridiculous attack.

http://www.crackedsidewalks.com/2009/02/who-has-marquette-beaten-this-year-more.html

[warrior_jr]

Nice analysis.  Thank you for the much needed shot of optimism.

[reinko]

Optimism after a loss will not be tolerated.

[ChicosBailBonds]

The thing about the rankings this year is that many of those we have beaten might not even make the NIT the way things are going.

G'Town was ranked, they lost again yesterday at home to Cincinnati.  They are now 4-7 and in 11th place.

Notre Dame was ranked when we beat them, they have lost 7 in a row and find themselves in 12th place.  They're likely to lose their 8th in a row tomorrow night.

Wisconsin was ranked when we beat they but they have lost 6 of 8 and aren't receiving any votes as of now. 

I'm not disputing the premise of the article, it's factually correct and very well done.  But I think we need to also evaluate who we beat and whether their ranking was even worthy?  Always a subjective matter, of course.

In my mind, Nova, at least as of today, is worthy of a top 25 ranking.  WVU is close, but not quite.  GU, ND, UW-Madison...not a chance.  Our loss to a top 25 team was to UT, who also isn't ranked any longer nor should they be (but they're close).

Does it mean parity is alive and well?  Probably.  I do love the optimism, but I also question whether a bunch of these teams were worthy of any kind of ranking to begin with.

[Pardner]

There is no team 6-20 that we couldn't beat...or who couldn't beat us.  MSU lost to Northwestern and PSU at home, for example.  Everyone has bad losses.  Hell, I think we match up well with Duke.  In the end, we are a Top 10 team if we finish well...by beating SJU, SH, Syracuse at home.  And win one on the road between Louisville or Nova.  Top 5 if we beat Pitt or UConn on top of it. 

We won the first half of the BE.  We are 0-1 in the 2nd half to date.  Nova would be a huge win for us--maybe the biggest since the F4.  We'll have our hands full with Cunningham.

[77ncaachamps]

Does it mean parity is alive and well?  Probably.  I do love the optimism, but I also question whether a bunch of these teams were worthy of any kind of ranking to begin with.

Oh, heck yes.

This season, the motto "Any given night" applies more than ever!

[bamamarquettefan]

Chicos, I realize I'm arguing with you a lot and I do respect that you know your facts, but the problem with your argument is that it assumes teams are just as good the entire season.  By your logic, if a team shouldn't be ranked now, then they shouldn't have been ranked when we played them, and that's just not true.  Teams get hot, peak early, freshman at Gtown think they can beat the world and then their confidence gets shaken when we feed them their lunch. Looking at our 5 wins over ranked teams:

We agree on Nova, currently 12th in the RPI and might be even higher in the polls tomorrow.  Let's look at the rest.

West Virginia is still 7th in Pomeroy, 15th in RPI today, and when we played them was coming off destroying Ohio State and Seton Hall on the road and playing UConn very tough.  The only reason WVU isn't ranked today is we made them look so bad in beating them 75-53, which is by 16 points MORE than UConn beat them the game before.

Gtown is 36th in RPI now and doesn't deserve to be ranked today, but clearly they did earlier this year wins at UConn and over Syracuse and Memphis.

Wisconsin's win over the ranked Illini this week leaves them at 37th in the RPI, but coming into our game they did deserve to be ranked coming off a win AT Virginia Tech, which is 5-3 in the 2nd best conference in the US and won at #1 Wake Forest.  Another December win was their destruction in Ann Arbor of a Michigan team that looked pretty good to me against UConn yesterday.

Obviously our 5th win against a ranked team, Notre Dame, is the only poor team on the list TODAY at 81st in the RPI.  But as terrible as they are on the road, UConn and MU are still the only two teams to beat them at South Bend, and they had beaten Texas and put up 87 points against UNC early when they were playing well.  Clearly they were one of the top 25 teams when playing at home when we beat them.

So my contention is these are all wins against teams that were among the best when we beat them, and when you start looking around and realize the other ranked teams have only average TWO wins over ranked teams a piece, you realize Marquette should not be getting the "Who have you beaten?" argument.

I'll look forward to celebrating with UCLA, Kansas and Memphis when each of them beat their FIRST ranked team this season, but right now, UConn, Oklahoma and Wake Forest are the only three teams that have played better against ranked teams than Marquette.

[ChicosBailBonds]

There is no team 6-20 that we couldn't beat...or who couldn't beat us.  MSU lost to Northwestern and PSU at home, for example.  Everyone has bad losses.  Hell, I think we match up well with Duke.  In the end, we are a Top 10 team if we finish well...by beating SJU, SH, Syracuse at home.  And win one on the road between Louisville or Nova.  Top 5 if we beat Pitt or UConn on top of it. 

Yes but PSU and Northwestern aren't 6-20 (neither is USF for that matter).  NU and PSU having winning records and are fighting for NCAA berths.  USF won't even get a bid for the NIT, they were 7-14.  I don't consider those MSU losses anywhere close to as bad as this loss.

Even though at the beginning of the year I saw this as a loss (it was in my predictions), it ended up being a much worse loss considering we were 9-0 and they were 2-7.  I don't get disagree on any given night, but we have to win these types of games.  A blown opportunity in a big way.

[Pardner]

Yes but PSU and Northwestern aren't 6-20 (neither is USF for that matter).  NU and PSU having winning records and are fighting for NCAA berths. 

MSU lost those two at home...those two who are realistically fighting for a NCCA NIT berth.  NU lost to Iowa for god's sake...a team who lost to, shall I dare say it...Quad I.

The rest I can agree with.

[Lennys Tap]

Where would PSU and NU be if they were playing in what Jay Bilas has called without question (and it's not even close) the best conference in the country? Would they be fighting it out for an NCAA bid? I think not. And if you had picked MU as a top 5 team in the BEast would you be denigrating their wins over ND and Georgetown? I think not. This is all about defending your position(s) and it's equal parts obvious and pathetic.

[1617novakn]

"Even though at the beginning of the year I saw this as a loss (it was in my predictions)"

If that wasn't the most obvious "subtle" (forgive the oxymoron) pat on the back I have ever seen, I don't know what was. How are the rest of your picks doing? Did you have us 20-3?

I just cant fathom that you actually believe the things you say. 18-22 year olds play with confidence, enthusiasm and energy. As a poster already mentioned, when that feeling of invincibility turns into embarassament, that team is completely different. It was not wrong to have Notre Dame and Georgetown in the top 15 in the beginning of the year because they have the talent to be there. If Notre Dame or G-Town or WVU ripped off a decent Big East tournament (WVU doesnt really need to) and snuck into the NCAAs as a 11 seed, would you want to play them? Would they even be underdogs when playing against a 6 seed? Doubtful. These were good teams that we beat fairly convincingly. Call it what it is.

[krocheck]

This year there are simply no stand-out 'perfect' teams.  Everyone's been loosing a little (even Uconn w/ their 1 loss).  There are simply a lot of teams bringing their A-game this year, and as Joe Lunardi says: "Strange thngs happen on the road."  Our loss came during an OK week considering the other Top 25 losses, as the other topic points out.  We can sit here and debate which of those losses is worse than others (and ours was pretty bad), but the indicator for the rest of the MU season will be Tuesday.

Never under-estimate the power of knocking your opponent down and letting others kick the snot out of them while their down there.  That's what has happened (though Uconn started ND for us).  The Big East (even a little of the ACC) is filled with that this year.  We can only hope that Nova won't kick us while we're down.

Keith

[Avenue Commons]

Who wrote this blog entry?

It was well researched and well written. Good job.

[NYWarrior]

Who wrote this blog entry?

It was well researched and well written. Good job.

John Pudner.  He officially joined CrackedSidewalks over the weekend along with BMA725