šŸ™„ No Holds Barred Thread - A Haney/DavetheWave Production

Gonzaga is getting tagged a bit as the ā€œhaven’t won itā€ guys but no one in their right mind could argue someone choosing them any given year

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I think there would be a point where that becomes more impressive. Like the Bills in the 90’s. But not just 2. They don’t even have more runner ups than other teams have final four appearances. Does losing in the title game really make a season that much better than losing in the semis?

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Zags suck

Funny part about this is there is 99.99% chance I end up defending Gonzaga multiple times in threads this year lol but I think y’all are very casually dismissing the weight of a championship

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So UConn > Zags?

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Na read my posts again. Very clearly said that Uconn was a fluke. The other title winning programs all have sustained success + a championship. Have been very clear about that.

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Not to ruin your fun, but Torvik has some of that info lookup-able and you can set a specific time period: Tourney Stats, PASE (Performance Against Seed Expectations) and PAKE

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Ah missed that. So I guess would be like Louisville > Zags.Which in my mind, I would disagree with it.

We’ve seen ourselves how fickle the tourney is - Zags do as well as anyone to put them in the picture and dominated regular season (+OOC).

Can’t argue though if your mindset is championship or bust. Which is definitely one take on things.

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Ughhh I would be careful with calling *any team a fluke… We won 3 VERY unique games in a row, in which any of them we could have lost. Uconn has 5 championships so they have/had the players and talent to win.

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My opinion is that championships matter a great deal, but being a consistent threat to win one matters a lotttt. If a team won the ACC every year and got bounced in the first weekend I wouldn’t view them as successful, but if they make the second weekend every time and mixed in a few championship appearances, that’s way more impressive than 1 natty and appearances as a 5-9 seed every year in my mind

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Thanks! This will now let me eat lunch and go run an errand, and maybe (maybe…) get some work done this afternoon. :joy:

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Didn’t say that lol I’m saying it carries a lot more weight than the consensus opinion starting to form here before I chimed in. I agree with you on the Zags being ahead of Louisville. Probably Baylor too (now that I think about it more) given they were down at the beginning of this timeframe. But when you start talking Nova, UNC, Duke, Kansas, UVA, and Kentucky you are talking the other winningest programs (in whichever exact order) of that decade timeframe. That’s where the title needs to be heavily factored in. It doesn’t let a second tier program jump a top tier program but it absolutely should be heavily weighted along the top tier teams.

Maybe fluke is the wrong word but their two title teams were their only two good teams of the last however many years and were arguably the two worst champions of the same time period. They clearly haven’t been at the level of the other title winning programs. Or programs like Gonzaga and Michigan that have come close without winning one.

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But that’s not what we are comparing the zags to lol we are comparing them to other programs that are also consistently getting top 3-4 seeds and are threats to win it most years.

Looking at this page: Tourney Stats, PASE (Performance Against Seed Expectations) and PAKE (h/t to @AdventiveQuasar), the metrics that are most favorable to us are basically regular season (incl. conference tourneys) and we are one of 8 team with a natty. We are like a top 3 or so regular season team, plus we won a natty. But we are not so great in any of the other tourney metrics. I hate to do this, but after some digging, I think we drop to 6 or 7 or so, objectively, in the top 10 over the Boxley period (2013-2022).

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I know, I’ve got them behind Nova UNC Duke maybe Kansas maybe UK

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UNC is the team I have the toughest time with. Obviously 3 title game appearances, with one win, are huge but they’ve had multiple mediocre to straight up bad teams over the timeframe.

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Behind UK really? Interesting. I guess they did get that ship with AD.

When I think flash in the pan I think TT. 1 FF and championship game appearance but that’s it and Baylor sucks up more of the air in their own conference. right?

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How many tourney misses did they have in that time? 1 or 2? Two may be enough to drop them down my list

UNC missed zero tournaments that actually happened, but they were already cooked in 2020.

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