Well BC just beat Duke so ....
- Thread starter TheC
- Start date
Several B1G teams are getting their heads handed to them again today. The league is basically a perfect storm of suckitude this year.
Minny ran into a rising Razorback team having their first home sellout in eons. Fought hard. PSU whipped GW. Illinois played a decent UNLV team in Vegas. The only dumpster fire was Wisky losing at home badly, once a rarity but becoming a regular feature this year. They have 2 guys hurt and it looks like the bottom of the B1G for Gard's guys. UNL at least played some defense against Creighton, something NU failed to do. IU lost a close game to Louisville, and Rutgers, MSU, UM, OSU and MD all won. Not so horrible a Saturday for the B1G.
You can spin it any way you want, but the B1G is as bad as I've seen it in many, many years. And I'm not getting real excited over Rutgers beating Fairleigh Dickinson (know fondly in Jersey as Fairly Ridiculous) and Maryland pounding down Gardner-Webb. Michigan beating UCLA is a decent win, although UCLA has well-documented problems lately.
Jerry Palm currently has us with 7 teams going dancing, same number as the ACC. Not bad for the worst BIG you've seen in many, many years.
https://www.cbssports.com/collegebasketball/bracketology/conference
To get to 68 teams, the last two seed lines or last eight teams in the tourney will have between 10-13 losses and be mainly from power conferences. So there are great opportunities out there for NU. Hopefully, NU has enough wins and enough resume building wins to be in the mix and rebound from a somewhat slow start as Falzon totally regains his confidence in his game and shot and other young players mature and their games develop.
Getting resume building wins will be tough. So far they are 0-2 OOC (Creighton and TTU) and 0-1 in the B1G. Cats don't play PU again, and play MSU just once (fortunately at Home). NU has Minny, Michigan and MD twice, so winning at least half of those are pretty much a must. A home date with OSU would also be a good win. They have a golden opportunity @Oklahoma, which will be a sterling win if they can pull off the upset. The slow start has really put NU behind the eight-ball.
We've played what, not even a 3rd of the season and a grand total of 2 BIG games, and we're behind the 8 ball already?
Yes. The way the NCAA calculus works out, you need to have at least one quality OOC win unless you have an amazing conference record. Otherwise, why would teams schedule quality opponents OOC? They'd just rack up wins against cupcakes. NU can certainly make the Tournament this season, but the hill is steeper than if they had pulled out the Creighton and GaTech games.
I have seen plenty of Power-5 conference teams make the Dance with zero quality OOC conference wins, presuming they have a solid conference record, which I strongly believe we will have... Of course our hill is steeper than if we had beaten Creighton and GaTech-- heck, if we were undefeated, it would even be less steep! But doesn't mean we are behind the 8 ball.
Moot point if we win out, though, since we will be 11-4 with a victory over #28 Oklahoma. Then all we need to do is win 12 in the BIG (including BTT) and I believe we will be in, based on the current Palm projection of 7 BIG teams making it....
is it fair to say they beat a castrated UCLA team since they no longer have any Balls?
Providence and Miami from just last year. Neither beat anyone at all in the noncon, I believe.
Thanks. The Miami example sets a nice precedent for being able to make the Tournament without a good OOC win. Providence is another pretty good example...but they did beat Rhode Island OOC. Rhode Island was an NCAA Tournament Team who advanced to the second round.
I don't want to get ahead of myself as Valpo or DePaul might provide a challenge, but a win at Oklahoma would go a long way to getting us back on track before the conference season ultimately decides our fate.
Go 'Cats!
Sorry about that, didn't remember that Providence played Rhode Island (only recalled that their OOC was chock full of terrible teams). But I could find at least one example of this most every year the tournament has been played. In fact, it is much more rare for a Power-5 team with a strong record in their conference to NOT make the dance due to a weak OOC than it is for such a team to make the Dance.
While what you say about Providence and Miami is true, teams like that usually only make the tournament out of strong conferences. Judging from what we've seen out of the Big Ten thus far, 10 conference wins won't cut it for NU without a big OOC win or two on the resume.
This seems right. I just ran some through some quick scenarios on the RPI Wizard at RPI Forecast.
A 10-8 B1G record with 1 more OOC loss to Oklahoma puts our RPI at 66
A 10-8 B1G record with 0 more OOC losses puts our RPI at 57
A 11-7 B1G record with 1 more OOC loss to Oklahoma puts our RPI at 54
A 11-7 B1G record with 0 more OOC losses puts our RPI at 45
This takes us up to the BTT, where our performance would make our break our chances... But it would seem that the first scenario (10-8 in B1G with loss to Oklahoma) would put us on the outside looking in.
Which is why I wrote that NU is behind the 8-ball with the OOC losses to CU, TTU and GaT.....even matching their best ever B1G record they will struggle to get into the NCAA.
Last time I checked a few days ago Palm predicted 7 BIG bids to the Dance, same as the ACC I believe...Hard to imagine us outside the top 7 if we keep playing the way we have of late...
Palm - who isn't very good at picking the bracket - currently has 5 B1G teams in the NCAAs and we are not one of them.
When you are 7-4 and your best win is an OT defeat of an Illinois team some consider "terrible" you aren't considered a Tournament team.