NCAA Talk Superthread

akriesman · March 18, 2022

One thing that I am noticing today. Nearly all the good teams in the tourney nail their free throws. This is definitely something our guys need to work on in the offseason. It's probably their main weakness and should be one of the easiest things to fix. Heck, you can teach any average joe with even a bit of athletic ability to shoot free throws.

CMJ · March 18, 2022

NMSU with the nice upset over UCONN.

CMJ · March 18, 2022

Go Peacocks!

akriesman · March 18, 2022

Two 12 seeds and a 15 seed out. Wow. Seems to happen every year recently.

Matt from A700 · March 18, 2022

Hoping Vermont takes out Arky too.

GMG_Dallas · March 18, 2022

2 hours ago, CMJ said:

I really don't think you can go just by record either. If that's the case everyone would load up on cupcakes in the OOC.

Define cupcake... because I just watched a team many would call a cupcake defeat number 2 Kentucky. Happens almost every year now. And everybody loads up on "cupcakes," i think you would find that scheduling conflicts would complicated things because there's not enough true D1 "cupcakes." Besides, the cupcakes need cupcakes too.

1 hour ago, greenminer said:

You can't handle this like the pros. There are, what? 300 teams in D1?

Why not? I'm attaching screenshots of the teams with the most wins this year. Take the 31 automatic bids (just like the pros for winning their division) and then fill in to 68 by D1 wins, does it look much different than what you have? If it does, do you feel its unfair?

Edited March 18, 2022 by GMG_Dallas

CMJ · March 18, 2022

36 minutes ago, GMG_Dallas said:

Define cupcake... because I just watched a team many would call a cupcake defeat number 2 Kentucky. Happens almost every year now. And everybody loads up on "cupcakes," i think you would find that scheduling conflicts would complicated things because there's not enough true D1 "cupcakes." Besides, the cupcakes need cupcakes too.

Why not? I'm attaching screenshots of the teams with the most wins this year. Take the 31 automatic bids (just like the pros for winning their division) and then fill in to 68 by D1 wins, does it look much different than what you have? If it does, do you feel its unfair?

Define cupcakes? Okay, the bottom of the barrel squads in the bottom leagues. Not St. Peters, but your Canisius's. And you wouldn't get Duke playing Gonzaga out of conference because neither team would want the loss. It would be how college football used to be.

That used to be the kind of stuff Syracuse used to do, but then they missed the NCAA tournament several times because their OOC SOS was so lousy.

GMG_Dallas · March 18, 2022

56 minutes ago, CMJ said:

Define cupcakes? Okay, the bottom of the barrel squads in the bottom leagues. Not St. Peters, but your Canisius's. And you wouldn't get Duke playing Gonzaga out of conference because neither team would want the loss. It would be how college football used to be.

Why is St Peter's not a cupcake? Because they beat Kentucky for their first ever NCAA tournament win? I'd argue that prior to last year, UNT was viewed as a cupcake in the power conference world. St Peter's was second in their conference. The number 1 team, 25-win Iona, lost to Florida yesterday. Florida was ranked to start the season. They were 6-1 to start the day on December 6th when they hosted 0-7 Texas Southern. At the end of the day, they were 6-2 and 1-7.

College basketball moreso than college football (and most pro sports) is a beautiful inexact science. To treat it as though it can be figured out through metrics and expert evaluation is wrong. March madness is what it is because of its unpredictability. Let teams schedule nothing but cupcakes. If they get in through win/loss record and lose by 30, is it any different than the committee deciding Indiana is more worthy than others only to watch them lose by 29 in the round of 64?

Frankly, what it would come down to is teams would actually have to do well in conference. Even with a cupcake schedule you couldn't get in with an 8-10 conference record.

Edited March 18, 2022 by GMG_Dallas

CMJ · March 18, 2022

Nah, I don't consider anyone in the top tier of their leagues, even bottom rated leagues, cupcakes. Well, maybe the SWAC and MEAC champs some of the time because those programs are really underfunded even in comparison to other small leagues.

But the top teams would always play those games at home. Sure your Texas Southern can win every blue moon on Florida's home floor, but that is the exception rather than the rule. The reason upsets happen so often in the NCAA's is these are all neutral venues. Winning on the road at a ACC school is exponentially harder than winning in a neutral gym. You play all these money games on the Power league gyms...even more so than now because now wins are all that counts rather than SOS...and we won't like the result

UNTLifer · March 18, 2022

Akron leading UCLA.

GMG_Dallas · March 18, 2022

It's the exception rather than the rule because you have twice as many power conference teams than *the others.* We were 8 points away from Vermont and Akron also pulling off upsets. Give these conferences more opportunities and they may pull more upsets.

CMJ · March 18, 2022

Give them opportunities on neutral floors, and yes more upsets. But these games would nearly always be on the road. Akron is a really solid squad and on a neutral floor would probably beat UCLA 3 times out of 10, maybe 4. But if they played in Pauley, UCLA wins 9 out of 10.

And what I'm saying is, if all that matters was wins...the big boys would buy the hell out of wins.

Edited March 18, 2022 by CMJ

GMG_Dallas · March 18, 2022

And what I'm saying is, there's not enough calender availability for the lower tier power teams to schedule enough cupcakes to make up for their below .500 conference records and sneak into the conference... unless you allow them to get in because you believe they're more worthy based on conference affiliation/name. If you go by wins, by the end of the year, it works itself out.

CMJ · March 18, 2022

Well, you don't need every Power League to buy them like hot cakes...you just need down to mid tier level. And it wouldn't just work itself out. Look at the SWAC schools for example. They all whore themselves out with road games, Hell, that's what we did when Trilli was here. You do that, you're asking for failure. And the big boys would do that to all the little guys.

They wouldn't need to make it like the SWAC either. Just cutting out a couple of wins off of schools like us or Dayton would make the difference between being considered and not at all if you're just going by wins.

Edited March 18, 2022 by CMJ

UNTLifer · March 18, 2022

Watched a lot of games yesterday that I thought we could have won.

GMG_Dallas · March 18, 2022

29 minutes ago, UNTLifer said:

Watched a lot of games yesterday that I thought we could have won.

And you'll watch some more today.

greenminer · March 18, 2022

17 hours ago, GMG_Dallas said:

Why not? I'm attaching screenshots of the teams with the most wins this year. Take the 31 automatic bids (just like the pros for winning their division) and then fill in to 68 by D1 wins, does it look much different than what you have? If it does, do you feel its unfair?

I'm going to give my initial thoughts on why I make that claim, but will be open to looking at your numbers when I have more time. FYI, that's a ton of scrolling for me to do lol

Part of the reason it works in the pros is because you have such a stronger presence of parity across the league. Yeah, there are favorites between the West and East, but it is much more believable to state that any team can beat any team.

The college game is much much more complex, and the spectrum of quality team play is VAST. Lots of garbage teams. Lots of elite teams. And a big mess in between. There are 353 teams in D1 ball (!!!) spread out across 30+ conferences. Two things at play here:

1) Much less parity across the entirety of the 350+ teams. You can't convince me that Team 345 has a similar shot vs. Team 5, in the same way NBA team 32 has a shot vs. NBA 2. The odds of pulling that off in the college matchup are astronomically thin.

2) So what happens across a CBB season as these W-L records unfold? We spread this disparity across 32 conferences, and you get tons of teams with similar records but their quality can be anywhere from garbage to elite. This includes some conference champions.

So, no, I don't think you can just rule out conference affiliation for AL bids, make a blind ranking by record, and then pick them in order, top-to-bottom.

CMJ · March 18, 2022

The first wave of games today was pretty disappointing. Only the Ohio State/Loyola Chicago game was even haflway competitive. Hopefully some good ones crop up as the day prgresses.

Andrew · March 18, 2022

4 minutes ago, CMJ said:

The first wave of games today was pretty disappointing. Only the Ohio State/Loyola Chicago game was even haflway competitive. Hopefully some good ones crop up as the day prgresses.

Agreed. Extremely Boeing basketball games…. Akron and Vermont should have won to make up for this.

CMJ · March 18, 2022

Eh, it wouldn't have. You don't want all the good games on one day.

GMG_Dallas · March 18, 2022

22 minutes ago, greenminer said:

I'm going to give my initial thoughts on why I make that claim, but will be open to looking at your numbers when I have more time. FYI, that's a ton of scrolling for me to do lol

The screenshots are a bad representation. The ranking on the NCAA site is originally based on win percentage. When I filtered for wins, it only filtered for the teams on that page and not all teams. I didn't realize that at first. If I have time, I'll get on the computer and take all 3 pages and try creating a ranking based on wins.

As for parity, the number 32 team in the pros may be more likely to beat number 2 but is that because they play eachother 2+ times per year during an 82 game season where players are usually rested during those games or is it because they're closer in level than their records suggest? I think it has more to do with rest/fatigue and how hard it is to beat a team 3-4 times in a season including playing both at home and away, extended road trips, back-to-backs, etc... way more in involved.

What it comes down to for me is they have all these statistics available and yet only use them if they support their opinion. They created NET to help with selection Sunday but then ignore it if they don't like what the NET says. Just end all the metrics based rankings, admit it's a popularity contest, and move on. I'd be ok with that.

eeeeagle · March 18, 2022

I was really impressed with that Vermont team. I thought they played some beautiful basketball. Its a shame they lost in the first round against Arkansas. I thought Vermont out-played them, just couldn't make the shots they needed to in the final minutes. The only knock against them is needing to make their FTs

Great game all around though. My favorite of the tournament so far.

Edited March 18, 2022 by eeeeagle

CMJ · March 18, 2022

I think the Murray State/San Francisco game was my favorite so far (I mean I loved seeing Kentucky lose too). They were throwing haymakers at each other all night. Fun game.

greenminer · March 18, 2022

22 minutes ago, GMG_Dallas said:

As for parity, the number 32 team in the pros may be more likely to beat number 2 but is that because they play eachother 2+ times per year during an 82 game season where players are usually rested during those games or is it because they're closer in level than their records suggest? I think it has more to do with rest/fatigue and how hard it is to beat a team 3-4 times in a season including playing both at home and away, extended road trips, back-to-backs, etc... way more in involved.

It's because the talent/ability across the league is PRO level. That's not the case across EVERY roster in D1

22 minutes ago, GMG_Dallas said:

What it comes down to for me is they have all these statistics available and yet only use them if they support their opinion. They created NET to help with selection Sunday but then ignore it if they don't like what the NET says. Just end all the metrics based rankings, admit it's a popularity contest, and move on. I'd be ok with that.

you're literally displacing one metric with another. IMO, you're replacing one metric that tries to use deep level evaluation and context with your own metric that abandons evaluation and context.