but wait. i just read so much about how bad our loss was to them?
the fact is this is the strongest the league has been top to bottom in a while. in a normal year we are probably a top 8 team.
You might argue that losing to us is a bad loss.Agreed. Penn St could easily have more wins as well. They were a bad call by the refs away from beating Purdue. Unless you get blown out there really are no "bad" losses in the conference this year.
the fact is this is the strongest the league has been top to bottom in a while. in a normal year we are probably a top 8 team.
Per KenPom, only 2011 and 2013 compare to this year for overall conference strength, when the league got 7 bids each time. In 2011 every team finished inside the top 90 but there were only 3 teams with top 4 seeds and all crashed out by the sweet 16. In 2013, there were 5 top-15 teams but also 3 teams (including us) that finished 130+. I'm not sure our current performance would make us a top-half team in most other years though, but we'd be closer to the middle than the bottom at least.I've been on this board for (gulp) a decade, and I think someone has said this every year but 2017.