Why is everyone so worried?

[TJ]

Is it?  A team that has struggled with UConn, St. John's, Villanova, heck barely beat the likes of LSU, SELA, and NCCU.  A team that even has some struggles with cupcakes and seems to have a lack of blowout wins is not a team I look to be a 3 seed.  We have some good wins, but one of our wins against Pitt and our win vs Notre Dame came without the respective opposing teams' arguable best player playing healthy.  Based on these alone, I think objectively a 5 or 6 seed is where we belong.  However, be it as it may that we won those games, and finished the season relatively well, we get a 3 seed (though the fact that we play an underseeded 14 seed tells me they may have done that to make up for the fact that they overseeded us in the first place).

Your opinions about how they won games have no bearing on the selection committee's process. I agree with your points in general, but they have nothing to do with NCAA seeding.  We won the games. End of story. It doesn't matter how we did it.  We won the Big East. We deserve our seed.

Instead of agonizing over your opinion of how our season went, compare us to the teams behind us.  A 6!!!  You're friggin' nuts.  You have to find teams to put in front of us to move us down, and every team behind us has more "flaws" than us.

This is getting stupid.  I wouldn't comment if you said we deserve a 4, but a friggin' 6?!  We don't play in a bubble and get the seed we deserve based on how well our team plays.  It's all about how you compare to other teams and our team falls in line at around the 12th best resume.  If you're not going to compare us to other teams I guess it's stupid trying to explain this.

[Canned Goods n Ammo]

I was going off the prediction thread for Rutgers...a bunch of folks having us win by double digits on the road I interpreted as a roll....that may be a poor proxy to use.  I think we were a bit more inline with the SJU game considering how we played against Rutgers.

http://www.muscoop.com/index.php?topic=36641.0

Ah ha.

Totally fair. I don't participate in the predictions threads, so I didn't see this.

And, you're right, I think it's crazy to predict double digit roads wins in conference. I'm not saying it never happens, but most road games are tight affairs because it's tough to win on the road.

[GGGG]

Instead of agonizing over your opinion of how our season went, compare us to the teams behind us.

I'll take this even one step further.  Why "agonize" over how our season went at all?  Even if you think we are over-seeded, and I think we should have been a four rather than a three myself, we still have a decent path to the S16 with two winnable match-ups in front of us.

[dgies9156]

Look, I'm not worried at all. As President Franklin Roosevelt once said, "The only thing we have to fear....... is fear itself!"

Everything points to the fact that we will beat them handily, though I think they will give us a game at times. That fact alone induces needless worry.

Still, if I wanted to worry, all I have to do is think of a very dark March day in 1978. A defending national champion and what today would be a one seed (and probably overall number 2) went into Indianapolis' Market Square Arena to play an also-ran that, today, would be a 15 or 16 seed. That Defending National Champion got taken down by the 15 or 16 seed in a game that spelled the end of the defending national champion's co-dominance of college basketball. It sent the defending national champion's program into a tailspin that lasted for a decade and a half.

Mitigating factor: We ain't national champions, Buzz ain't Hank and I don't think we're looking past Davidson. Haven't seen too many Marquette "Meet Me in Atlanta" t-shirts..... either, at least not yet!

[ChicosBailBonds]

I have never seen Davidson play, but here's the reason I'm worried - the guys in Vegas who make a living doing this make us a 4 point favorite, while the other 3s (and 4s) are mostly double digit chalks. Nate Silver gives Davidson a one in three chance to beat us. Hope we breeze, but this game feels like Holy Cross in 2003 or Utah St in 2008 - real taffy pulls.

Yup.

He almost got it right and it was very similar to Holy Cross and Utah State.


http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/ncaab-the-dagger/davidson-heartbreaking-collapse-allows-marquette-escape-first-round-214704253--ncaab.html

[Groin_pull]

Oky, now I understand why everyone was so worried.

[ChicosBailBonds]

Oky, now I understand why everyone was so worried.

We have a way of playing down to expectations.

[Dr. Blackheart]

We have a way of playing down to expectations.

.

So does that IU grad Alford...I mean Harvard doesn't even give athletics scholarships. One of the all-time legendary NCAA choke jobs.  Three Seed goes down in flames to a guy fired or moved on from his last two jobs.  Wow, just wow...that is a peeing dog.

[Lennys Tap]

We have a way of playing down to expectations.

We were a 3 (in some places 3.5) point favorite. So we played a basket under (or Davidson played a basket over) expectations. I know you think Marquette played like crap. I guess you think Davidson did too, since the game finished pretty much the way Vegas figured. We didn't see the same game.

[Silkk the Shaka]

.

So does that IU grad Alford...I mean Harvard doesn't even give athletics scholarships. One of the all-time legendary NCAA choke jobs.  Three Seed goes down in flames to a guy fired or moved on from his last two jobs.  Wow, just wow...that is a peeing dog.

C'mon doc - it's CHOKING dog that pees itself. Get it right or pay the price.

BTW - love the "wow, just wow" and legendary reference.

[Dr. Blackheart]

C'mon doc - it's CHOKING dog that pees itself. Get it right or pay the price.

BTW - love the "wow, just wow" and legendary reference.

Biologically, one cannot choke and pee at the same time.  Multi-tasking is a fallacy.