Hoot Hoot, FAU stuns the Buckeyes!
- Thread starter CSCatFan1
- Start date
Was nearly a dark end of the day for the Big Ten - Michigan struggled mightily with Texas, while Illinois & Minnesota were both down late. All three ended up winners though.
I really think it might be. Wisconsin, Purdue and Indiana are a bit out of our league...but that doesn't mean we can't pull an upset over one of them. The rest of the B1G does not scare me at all. We can compete. A strong finish to the non-conference schedule, a top 6 finish in the B1G, a win in the BTT and an NCAA Tournament bid are realistic expectations.
I don't know about that, but the Cats certainly ought to be able to compete and get some wins this year. The B1G seems to be as weak at the top as it's been in a long time. A storied basketball conference that is the most-attended in the country, high coaching salaries and low performance this year.
I agree with the optimism IF Pardon comes back for the BIG season. If not, it's wait until next year, again!
My first reaction was, damn that's too bad, it will hurt our RPI and the rep of the B1G. But, then it dawned on me that this is Ohio State we're talking about. I hate Ohio State.
A hoot indeed.
I agree with what all you guys are saying about the B1G being down this year... I'm just not sure that it translates to a better chance for us to make it into the tournament. Give the way that we have seemed to play lots of tight games against good competition, I think I'd prefer our chances to get to 9-9 in a very strong B1G over our chances of getting to 11-7 in a very weak one.
Entering the year I was thinking we needed to go 11-2 OOC and 9-9 in conf (or prob 10-3 and 10-8) in order to make the tournament. Now with the weakness of the conference and the win over Texas looking weaker, I think we need to add another win onto that. Even if we beat Dayton and finish 11-2 OOC, I still think we need 10-8 in conf + 1 in the BTT to feel good about our chances. If we lose to Dayton, I think 11-7 may be necessary.
But...... it's also way to early to play that game. Just keep playing good basketball and fighting through the schedule game by game. Develop the players, get Dererk healthy, and let's see what happens. Lots of winnable games out there.... all I'm saying is that in the OOC I've been cheering for Big Ten teams to win rather than the other way around, and I think each bad loss makes our path a bit tougher at the margin. In other words, would rather have teams on our schedule overperform their actual ability rather than underperform because that makes our resume look better!
(Edit- I should amend this slightly as I didn't mean to reply to bdp's message specifically- I agree that a top 6 finish in conference, which is likely 10-11 wins, would put us in a solid position, and that's what I'm hoping for now rather than just a top-7 / upper half finish)
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I see 12 B1G wins for the Cats. Win one in the B!G tourney and we are dancing.
12-6 in the Big Ten gets you in. Take a loss to Dayton and win all other non-cons, and we're at 22-9 (12-6) with some good Ws (since the putative bottom 5 of Nebraska, Rutgers, Penn State, Iowa and Minnesota are only 7 games this year). Add in mid-tier teams like OSU and Illinois and that gets you up to 10, which means two more wins have to come against the likes of MSU, Wisconsin, Indiana, Maryland, Michigan and Purdue.
I like this scenario, except I think we'll beat Dayton. 12 wins in the Big 10 is certainly within reach.