It's 1986 in Madison, though. All starters are 4th or 5th year Seniors, and the Badgers look like one of the 2 best teams in the B1G. Iowa also has a very experienced team.
How do we like our chances against Iowa?
- Thread starter NURoseBowl
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I think the Badgers should be the favorite to win the conference title. They maybe don’t have the top end potential a few teams do, but they’re so, so consistent. You basically know exactly what you’ll get from them any given night. Hard to imagine them getting upset too many times this year.
I meant more that we are playing our two very talented freshmen A LOT, transfers who haven’t played before and Kofi is still a sophomore. I don’t know why you feel the need to phrase our situation like some fluke year we have to take advantage of ... Underwood built this program back into a very promising position.
Where did I say it was a fluke year? I am merely stating what I think is obvious, this is your best chance to make a deep run in the tourney.
it’s my opinion both Ayo and Kofi are in the NBA next year. Sorry, but your talented freshman aren’t Ayo or Kofi.
#7 in kenpom, #4 in sagarin, can't wait to see how we do when we're playing well.
NU is currently an 11 point dog. The over/under is 157.5, which screams take the Over. NU hasn't scored less that 70 all season and Iowa likes to score more than defend. The line seems about right.
Have you watched Iowa play this year? They will run for sure, whether we want them to or not. As others have pointed out, their defense is their weakness. They are inconsistent at on-ball D, inconsistent at getting back in transition, and also not great at team / help defense. It's weird, because one would think they should be able to improve these things but it's been kind of a consistent weakness for multiple years at Iowa.
While true, I think the margin for error is slimmer for NU than other programs. For example, didn't we lose something like 13 of 16 games decided by 5 points or less last year? Win 5 of those last year and the season doesn't look so bad
Illinois is a very good team this year. I don’t see anyone here disagreeing with that
Geezus, are you guys a sensitive bunch. You are 15th in the poll. You have top 8 at worst talent. I say you have the best talent and you all go after my opinion that you aren’t playing all that well. After watching a few VERY mediocre performances I’ll stand by the statement.
Live by the three, die by it. Garza cannot do it by himself even if it feels like it sometimes
I am not saying we are not. Just that our margin for error is very thin. Last year we were on the wrong side of it and this your we are hopefully on the right side of it (looks good so far)
Just an odd thing to say after 2 straight wins. Like I said, hope you're right.
Haha that is my punishment for saying something nice about Wisky.This post did not age well.
Further up in this thread, I also said Minnesota sucks. Freezing cold take! (To be fair, the only game I’ve watched of Minnesota was vs Illinois and they lost by 30 and were down by almost 40 before Underwood played his walk ons for the last six minutes of the game. So I was very confused when I saw them ranked today!)
Yeah wins over SLU (who was ranked at the time), Iowa, MSU. I get it now. I was oblivious earlier haha
Hard to believe Wisconsin lost to Maryland, which had been looking like the bottom-feeder in a good league up to now. Turgeon did not bring in his usual raft of good recruits this year. But it's never been more true that you can't take a night off in this league.
The three-point shot has totally transformed the game. Almost every team in the league has at least a couple of guys who can hit and if you have an off night shooting 3s while the other guys light up it can go south very quickly.
Nailed it.
And I was wrong - still nobody but NU fans think NU is for real.
Let's see a replica of the duh-OSU game. Never let Io_a get a comfy lead and hit a few shots under pressure at the end.
GO CATS!
I'd rather see a replica of the MSU game. Lead from head to toe, and beat them soundly.
Nobody believes in the Cats? Come on, they’ve gotten a ton of good pub this week. They were voted in as the #19 team! Kenpom’s model has them in the 50s. So if anything I’d say that quite a few people have put more faith in them than the advanced metrics suggest they should.
For the record, I think Cats is a steal at +10. No way the game is a double digit loss
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Maybe but it is a long season and the BIG will eat its own on a nightly basis. This was WIS day in the barrelThis post did not age well.
I’ve been trying to figure out the Ken Pom number - I don’t know his algorithm obviously but based on what I’ve observed of it 51 makes zero sense. Pitt is the only real “bad” performance we have - the 3 patsies we played we smoked them all (whereas close wins against very bad teams hurt you in KenPom). I was thinking that maybe it is still including preseason projections as part of it.
Whatever, it doesn’t really matter, just another rankings system.
Wrassler will birth a cow if we beat Iowa! OMG! Who needs Viagra anymore when our beloved wildcats produce this much excitement?
His algorithim still heavily factors in past year's data on players until there is sufficient data for this season. So until there is like 15 games per team to evaluate, it is not quite as accurate on how good a team is this year. In a normal year, after a few big ten games, the model would be near its best.
I’m no expert, and it’s certainly a complex model. As has been mentioned elsewhere, I think some level of preseason rankings is still baked in although I’m guessing that influence is phasing out if it’s not already completely phased out. My guess is the soft SOS in the preseason isn’t helping either (it’s not hurting, of course. But it’s not boosting either). Overall, NU has a SOS in the 100s so far, so that’s probably part of why the ranking is in the 50s despite the good record to start.
Pitt is ranked 78, so losing that one probably drags a bit. MSU melting down isn’t helping either, since they’re 0-3 in conference and down to 48 in the rankings. IU is winless in conference too and sinking so that’s not helping either. Go figure, the Hoosiers and Spartans are dragging NU down; if that isn’t 2020 in a nutshell....
If either of those teams straighten things out and go on a run, that will boost NU too. The model likes big margin of victory and road wins, too. So go blow out Iowa and then win at Michigan this week!
