Honestly feel like if we get blown out we’ll be out. It’ll be fresh on people’s minds
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I feel like the committee will look at our resume and then just say “F it send them to Dayton”. I don’t think we are in much position to be out completely given our “body of work” vs others.
Longwood won the big south tourney
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They won. WCC will be a 2 bid league with no bid thief.
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There are now 104 brackets with yesterday’s date. Not much changed, but St. Johns slipped past us. We were leading 49 to 47 after the first 51 brackets. Now it’s 96-95 Johnnies.
-----------------last four byes------
TCU 104/104
Michigan St 104/104
Seton Hall 104/104
Mississippi St 99/104
----------------last four in-----
St John’s 96/104
UVA 95/104
Colorado 89/104
Indiana St 75/104
------out-----
New Mexico 55/104
Villanova 35/104
Texas A&M 35/104
Wake 7/104
Pitt 4/104
Providence 3/104
Iowa 1/104
Ohio St 1/104
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Mickey Mouse league. Insane those teams get rewarded for blowing out terrible teams.
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Per KenPom they’re 21 and 15 and both deserve to be in. Not really sure how they’re rewarded by anything. They will be in the tournament because they deserve to be in the tournament
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St Mary’s was lucky Papi wasn’t available to carve them up inside.
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JMU in as well.
Kinda wish we were able to keep him for this year.
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They (specifically SMC) play their games with KenPom and NET in mind. When given the opportunity to beat teams by 30, 40, or 50, they will do just that. The WCC gives them plenty of opportunities to do so and the efficiency metrics haven’t figured out a way for this to not skew the data. SMC was over ranked via KenPom/NET last year, which minimized the impact when they were HORRIBLE in OOC play. Then they feasted on the WCC to become supposedly one of the best teams in the country. They do this every year. Rinse repeat.
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If it were that easy the top teams in all the lower high major and better mid major leagues would do it. Considering Randy Bennett and Mark Few built those programs, I’m not sure why some feel the need to hate on it. What they’ve done is unique and should be applauded. Few’s record speaks for itself and what Bennett has done at a small private school with almost no history before he arrived is incredibly impressive
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Gonzaga is way underseeded this year… reminds me of when they first started coming to prominence.
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Metrics love them. Over last six weeks, they are top 20 in offensive and defensive efficiency. Sneaky good Sweet 16 bet.
(Fwiw, looking at recent trends in efficiency, last 4-6 weeks has proven a good way to pick sweet 16 and elite 8 underdogs. UConn last year, Oregon in 2019, etc. All stood out as trending really positively. Especially those who have balanced offense and defense, top 30-40 in each. Pitt this year could be one if they get into tourney).
I’m not saying they are bad teams or anything but I’m tired of people simply looking at their KenPom/torvik/etc ranking and being like wow SMC is a great team this year. Cool, they can beat Pacific and Pepperdine by 50 (fun fact: Pepperdine jumped FORTY spots in Torvik after beating Pacific, basically the worst team in the country, by 50 last week). Why should we care about that? They were absolute dog sh** outside of league play. I think that if you play in a league like the WCC you have to excel in OOC play to make the tournament. That’s been Gonzaga’s experience. Literally nobody was talking about SMC being a tournament team in December but now they are a lock. That doesn’t seem fair to teams like Richmond or other mid-majors having good seasons in a legitimate league.
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Those efficiency metrics aren’t the biggest factor though. To your point the teams are in the same range in resume metrics (Richmond slightly higher KPI, St. Mary’s slightly higher SOR). So if we went with a strictly WAB bracket both teams would probably have a similar seed projection. But under the way it’s currently done, Richmond’s problem is they only have 1 Q1 win. And they are 5-6 in Q1/Q2 combined. St. Mary’s has 4 Q1 wins and is 7-5 in Q1/Q2. That’s a significance difference in what is supposedly the most important part of the process
Also the A10 is for sure better than the WCC this year but overall they are pretty similar level leagues. For example, the WCC ranked higher than the A10 on KenPom the previous 3 season
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Theory: we are fairly comfortably in, but our bad predictive/efficiency numbers have us pinned at a 10 or 11. So we look like a team right on the cut line but we are most likely in, just grouped with the teams that are right at the cut line.
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agree with this. also the vibes factor HGN mentioned (losing that way to Duke at 6pm on a Saturday was not good!)
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Is this guy affiliated w UVA? he sure is lobbying hard
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