SoMiss @ UAB

keith · February 11, 2022

Tied 37-37 at the half. Fun game so far. Let’s see if the Golden Eagles can hang in there during the second half and knock off the Blazers.

keith · February 11, 2022

I see we have some UAB lurkers. The dream might be over anyway. UAB up 12 9 minutes into the 2nd half

GreenN'walinsVet · February 11, 2022

1 minute ago, keith said:

I see we have some UAB lurkers. The dream might be over anyway. UAB up 12 9 minutes into the 2nd half

We need UAB to win every game but 2 the rest of the way.

keith · February 11, 2022

5 minutes ago, GreenN'walinsVet said:

We need UAB to win every game but 2 the rest of the way.

We need to win the west and secure the #1 seed to the tourney and win in order to get to the dance. UAB is our biggest obstacle to doing that. Anything that helps us secure that seed is a good thing and that includes UAB losing (they are not going to tonight unfortunately).

p_phelps · February 11, 2022

1 minute ago, keith said:

We need to win the west and secure the #1 seed to the tourney and win in order to get to the dance. UAB is our biggest obstacle to doing that. Anything that helps us secure that seed is a good thing and that includes UAB losing (they are not going to tonight unfortunately).

We wouldn't play them till late in the tournament. Every loss they have hurts out at large bid.

keith · February 11, 2022

1 minute ago, p_phelps said:

We wouldn't play them till late in the tournament. Every loss they have hurts out at large bid.

Winning the tourney gets us an auto-bid and no better than a 12 seed (maybe a 13 like last year). If that’s the best we are looking at with a win and auto-bid, there is no scenario were we lose in the tourney and still get an at-large bid. Our only path to the dance is to win the tournament. The #1 seed helps us do that. Winning the west (and regular season) adds another banner to the rafters.

RiseUNT · February 11, 2022

We beat both #1s last year. We need to worry about playing our best basketball from February to April. We want UAB and LA Tech to have high Net Rankings.

untjim1995 · February 11, 2022

It’s all about the CUSA Tournament for us, as far as the ncaa tournament goes, but I’d like for Our guys to win CUSA again. Just another feather in Grant’s cap.

Mean Green Matt · February 11, 2022

12 hours ago, keith said:

Winning the tourney gets us an auto-bid and no better than a 12 seed (maybe a 13 like last year). If that’s the best we are looking at with a win and auto-bid, there is no scenario were we lose in the tourney and still get an at-large bid. Our only path to the dance is to win the tournament. The #1 seed helps us do that. Winning the west (and regular season) adds another banner to the rafters.

I really can’t imagine we would get left out with 5 losses and a NET of around 50.

keith · February 11, 2022

2 hours ago, Mean Green Matt said:

I really can’t imagine we would get left out with 5 losses and a NET of around 50.

Hey Matt, let me see if I understand your path to the tournament. In order for this to happen, we would need to win the next 7 regular season games, then two tournament games and then lose in the finals. That would put us on an 18-game winning streak and 24 out of our last 25. We are playing well, but how likely is this really? This is a level of play rarely seen. Just based on law of averages, we are bound to have an off night (or 2). We've already lost to UAB and we have to play them again on the road. Assume for a minute UAB wins out and we win every game except the road game at UAB. There goes the west, the regular season championship and the #1 seed in the tourney.

I just don't think "strength of schedule" helps us in a scenario where we don't win the tournament. The guys on the broadcast last night were going through the same scenario with UAB winning out but losing in the finals. That means they beat us again and they would end up to 2 (or maybe 3) quad-1 wins and a net rating in the 30s and they still were not sure if that was going to be enough. C-USA is just unlikely to get 2 into the dance. Four teams have currently separated themselves from the pack and 3 of them are in the west. The rest of the conference is seen as weak which is hurting the chances of being a 2-bid conference.

Of course we could just win out which means a 19-game winning streak and 25 out of the last 26. It would be a UNT basketball season for the ages. I was looking for a scenario where we can drop a game (assume it's UAB) and still win the west and #1 seed hoping that that gives us the best chance to win the tournament and secure the bid since it appears that is the only guaranteed path.

GMG_Dallas · February 12, 2022

10 hours ago, Mean Green Matt said:

I really can’t imagine we would get left out with 5 losses and a NET of around 50.

Completely depends on who wins their conference tourneys. With automatic qualifiers for conference tourney champions, we can't have Cinderellas win any tournaments. It would make the at-large bid that much more difficult to get if several underdogs with NET 100+ rankings win their conference tourneys taking a bid that way.