What A Joke!

Andrew · February 22, 2011

How does the sunbelt go form having two teams getting 10 to 12 seeds a few years ago to being stuck in a play off game? I know the conference is bad, but we deserve a little more respect then this. Even UTEP at least has what, a 15 seed..... Can we buy some respect here

http://espn.go.com/mens-college-basketball/bracketology

TheTastyGreek · February 22, 2011

How does the sunbelt go form having two teams getting 10 to 12 seeds a few years ago to being stuck in a play off game? I know the conference is bad, but we deserve a little more respect then this. Even UTEP at least has what, a 15 seed..... Can we buy some respect here

http://espn.go.com/mens-college-basketball/bracketology

The conference is getting what it deserves this year. A lot of coaches (Scott and Brady, most egregiously) admitted before the year even started that all they cared about was being ready for conference play. Isiah Thomas is so busy trying to get back to the Knicks that he can't handle Utah Valley. Brady chokes against Savannah State. Even Bob Marlin dropped a game to an NAIA before conference play started.

Aside from us... Take a year of OOC mediocrity (and only 2 or 3 instances of that- WKU, FAU, UALR) to outright misery, throw in league parity and bad in-conference losses dragging down the teams that managed to get through OOC with not-awful RPI rankings... And what you get is a league where the champion is going to, at best, finish with an RPI in the 105-115 range. 2nd best RPI contender could maybe claw back up to about 125.

That's 16 seed range, right there.

I really thought that ASU, USA, WKU, FAU, and us would make this a banner year for Sun Belt basketball. Instead, ASU did worse than nothing, WKU and FAU went about .500, and USA joined us in a conference season meltdown.

The 150 rule came along one year too late. I'm also hopeful that, with Denver leaving, we go to non-divisional play and everyone plays 20 conference games. That leaves 8-9 OOC games instead of 13 this year, allowing conference members to schedule more selectively and spend their resources on a higher percentage of OOC home games. Basically, if we go to non-divisional play, terrible teams have 1/3rd fewer chances to go out and suck, and they have to use their OOC paycheck games more selectively. FIU can still get checks to play FSU and Louisville, but 4-5 fewer OOC games means they probably don't even want to schedule UVU.

150 rule. Non-divisional conference play. Coaches who aspire to more than a fluke 3-4 game win streak in March. There's hope.

But nobody in this league deserves anything higher than the worst 15 seed. Other than us and FAU, anyone who gets in the tournament will probably be in the play-in game. It's shameful, I think it's the first time anyone representing the SBC will have ever been a 16 seed... But it's totally deserved.

UNT90 · February 23, 2011

The conference is getting what it deserves this year. A lot of coaches (Scott and Brady, most egregiously) admitted before the year even started that all they cared about was being ready for conference play. Isiah Thomas is so busy trying to get back to the Knicks that he can't handle Utah Valley. Brady chokes against Savannah State. Even Bob Marlin dropped a game to an NAIA before conference play started.

Aside from us... Take a year of OOC mediocrity (and only 2 or 3 instances of that- WKU, FAU, UALR) to outright misery, throw in league parity and bad in-conference losses dragging down the teams that managed to get through OOC with not-awful RPI rankings... And what you get is a league where the champion is going to, at best, finish with an RPI in the 105-115 range. 2nd best RPI contender could maybe claw back up to about 125.

That's 16 seed range, right there.

I really thought that ASU, USA, WKU, FAU, and us would make this a banner year for Sun Belt basketball. Instead, ASU did worse than nothing, WKU and FAU went about .500, and USA joined us in a conference season meltdown.

The 150 rule came along one year too late. I'm also hopeful that, with Denver leaving, we go to non-divisional play and everyone plays 20 conference games. That leaves 8-9 OOC games instead of 13 this year, allowing conference members to schedule more selectively and spend their resources on a higher percentage of OOC home games. Basically, if we go to non-divisional play, terrible teams have 1/3rd fewer chances to go out and suck, and they have to use their OOC paycheck games more selectively. FIU can still get checks to play FSU and Louisville, but 4-5 fewer OOC games means they probably don't even want to schedule UVU.

150 rule. Non-divisional conference play. Coaches who aspire to more than a fluke 3-4 game win streak in March. There's hope.

But nobody in this league deserves anything higher than the worst 15 seed. Other than us and FAU, anyone who gets in the tournament will probably be in the play-in game. It's shameful, I think it's the first time anyone representing the SBC will have ever been a 16 seed... But it's totally deserved.

Agree with everything you say, except I think our chance for a 15 seed went out the door with the home loss to ULM.

That, of course, is assuming that a miracle happens in Hot Springs.

NT03 · February 23, 2011

Doesn't help when a team who goes 9 - 6 in your conference & loses to the # 345 RPI team in the country

MTSU 68

Houston Baptist 70

HBU was 3 - 22 going into the game, even had a loss earlier this season to East Texas Baptist

Edited February 23, 2011 by NT03

TheTastyGreek · February 23, 2011

Agree with everything you say, except I think our chance for a 15 seed went out the door with the home loss to ULM.

That, of course, is assuming that a miracle happens in Hot Springs.

It makes me sick to acknowledge this, but I was only saying that we wouldn't be in a play-in game. If we were to somehow win out on 7 straight games, we could get up to about 118-125 RPI and get a 16 seed outright.

A strong finishing FAU may be the conference's best and only hope for a 15 seed at this point. I don't see 6 teams with RPIs lower than 110-115 AND worse conference RPIs AND inferior tournament resumes making the field this year.

I'm still going to Hot Springs and I still think we've got enough talent to contend. But we're down to 8 scholarship players, one of those needs knee surgery, another is a walking injury report that gets braced and taped together well enough to go out and keep adding new injuries to his list, and another is occasional boot-wearer Josh White.

We have 5 guys who are "healthy", as far as we know. Can't say my expectations are very high right at the moment.

cl_1_2008 · February 23, 2011

Other than us, does anyone in our entire conference have a single quality non-conference win?

aztecskin · February 23, 2011

It makes me sick to acknowledge this, but I was only saying that we wouldn't be in a play-in game. If we were to somehow win out on 7 straight games, we could get up to about 118-125 RPI and get a 16 seed outright.

A strong finishing FAU may be the conference's best and only hope for a 15 seed at this point. I don't see 6 teams with RPIs lower than 110-115 AND worse conference RPIs AND inferior tournament resumes making the field this year.

I'm still going to Hot Springs and I still think we've got enough talent to contend. But we're down to 8 scholarship players, one of those needs knee surgery, another is a walking injury report that gets braced and taped together well enough to go out and keep adding new injuries to his list, and another is occasional boot-wearer Josh White.

We have 5 guys who are "healthy", as far as we know. Can't say my expectations are very high right at the moment.

Rooting for a beat-up team fighting through adversity is so much better than rooting for a (perceived) lazy, directionless team. Kinda explains how we have been struggling to play defense at the desired intensity level with such beat up bodies.

TheTastyGreek · February 23, 2011

Other than us, does anyone in our entire conference have a single quality non-conference win?

Depends on what you mean by "quality" win. From an RPI perspective, the Texas Tech win wasn't that much better than the one over Rice.

FAU and WKU beat Hofstra (current RPI: 89). UALR beat Tulsa (current RPI: 92).

12 teams in the Sun Belt, 12-14 OOC games apiece, and those are our only 3 wins against teams with RPIs better than 100. As a conference, we also have 3 losses to current RPI 300+ and non-D1 teams.

Not a good year.

TheTastyGreek · February 23, 2011

For perspective... In the banner 2008 year, when USA got a 10 seed and WKU got a 12... The Belt had 6 wins against teams in the top 100 RPI (pre-NCAA tournament). And that year, we played 18 conference games, so the best teams had fewer OOC chances to rack up that type of win.

WKU beat Nebraska (96), USA beat San Diego (94) and Mississippi State (40), MTSU beat Belmont (79), UALR beat Tulsa (93), and we beat Oklahoma State (78). There were also a couple of near-top 100 wins, like UNO beating a ranked N.C. State team (final pre-tournament RPI: 103) and USA beating Southern Miss (107). The Belt as a whole also only had 2 loses to RPI 300+ teams, and both of the teams that lost those games were in the West (so they only played USA and WKU once).

Also, USA and WKU lost a combined 7 OOC games: Tennessee (1), Vanderbilt (12), Gonzaga (30), Mississippi (48), Southern Illinois (62), Miami-Ohio (72), and Northern Arizona (139). 7 total OOC losses, 4 against RPI Top 50 teams, 6 against Top 75 teams, and the worst loss coming to a team in the top 140. Western is the team with the "bad" loss among the 7, and their only 2 Sun Belt losses came against... South Alabama.

2 teams went out and lost to only quality teams, then dominated the league while the worst opponents (from an RPI perspective) were buried on the other side of the league and only hurt them once that regular season. Two other SBC teams got to 20 wins that year, with another topping out at 19, helping them maintain a respectable RPI through Sun Belt play.

This year, we are in the final week of the season and all but us and UALR have only 1 or 2 games remaining. There are zero 20 win teams, and in fact only FAU and us are above .500 against D-1 competition. UALR is sitting at .500 vs. D1 teams (13-13). The other 9 teams in the league are all below .500, despite playing 16 games apiece where either they or another conference member have to come out with a win.

The hottest team in the Belt right now is ULL. If they win out and take the tournament... They'll finish with a 15-13 record vs. D1 opponents (16-14 overall). One of their two D-1 OOC wins came against Centenary, a team that hasn't given out a scholarship in 2 years and is about to finish the drop to D-3 athletics. Current record: 0-28, including 2 losses (one at home) to non-D1 opponents.

If ULL wins the tournament, they'll have to make the Elite 8 (and that's including a win in one of the play-in games and the first ever 16 over 1 upset in history) just to get to 20 wins, INCLUDING non-D1 games.

Bad. It's been a very bad year for this league.