Which basketball scenario would you prefer?

[Hanmudog]

A.) We win the West, go about 24-6, win one game in the NCAA tournament as a 5 seed.
B.) Finish at 16-14 and 4th in the West but get hot at the end and win the auto bid to the NCAAs as a 14 seed but win 2 games in the NCAA tournement

I will take A. just about every time.

 

[Hanmudog]

A.) We win the West, go about 24-6, win one game in the NCAA tournament as a 5 seed.
B.) Finish at 16-14 and 4th in the West but get hot at the end and win the auto bid to the NCAAs as a 14 seed but win 2 games in the NCAA tournement

I will take A. just about every time.

 

[jackobee]

nm

 

[therightway]

Since Stans does not know how to win the second game in the tournament other than by forfiet, only the first one is possibile.

 

[patdog]

But there are many on this board who will disagree.

 

[jfs131]

I would rather be happy the whole season than just for about 5 games and knowing we weren't that good. 16-14 he should be gone. That's really bad.

 

[DerHntr]

[No message]

 

[OMlawdog]

Would you rather have a Sweet Sixteen, and a 4th place overall SEC finish or a SEC championship and no sweet sixteen.

I go with the SEC championship.

 

[Optimus Prime 4]

but I'd prefer option C) go 21-9, second in the west and Sweet 16. Your option B has a pretty ****** conference season, so splitting the difference is preferable.

 

[Bulldog from Birth]

Consulting BFB's value chart, we find:
Final Four >> SEC Regular Season Title > Elite 8 > Sweet 16 > SEC Tournament Title > Any NCAA Tournament Bid > SEC West Title

Option A gets us an SEC West Title. Option B gets us an SEC Tournament Championship and a Sweet 16 banner. Option B wins in a landslide.

BFB

 

[Bulldog from Birth]

Consulting BFB's value chart, we find:
Final Four >> SEC Regular Season Title > Elite 8 > Sweet 16 > SEC Tournament Title > Any NCAA Tournament Bid > SEC West Title

So it depends on what kind of SEC championship you are talking about. I'd rather have an SEC Regular Season Title than a Sweet 16 birth. But i'd rather have a Sweet 16 birth than an SEC Tournament Title.

 

[Coach34]

SEC Tourney Title + Sweet 16 5x> SEC West title

All an SEC West title gets you is Thursday off at the SEC Tourney

 

[Thick]

and be a 5 seed, surely with all of the talent that RS has on this team he can win 2 games in the tourney (no sarcasm). I know I piss some people off (Love it) on this board about RS's "coaching skills", but he has a pretty good aresnal of weapons that can create match up problems for opponents if he will utilize them properly. We have to improve at both ends of the court every game to get a 5 seed.

 

[Maroon Eagle]

[No message]

 

[Coach34]

so you cant choose A- its either a Sweet 16 with Tourney title and an ugly record, or a great regular season with an underachieving finish.

Which one would you pick?

 

[Thick]

nm

 

[Bdog9090]

24-6 is a pretty impressive record. Ranked in the Top 25 with national exposure (esp. since all our games will be televised). Would make for a really nice season. It would suck balls to go down in the 1st or 2nd round of the tourney. But over all, I think I would still think of this as a nice season.

 

[Hanmudog]

so you cant choose A- its either a Sweet 16 with Tourney title and an ugly record, or a great regular season with an underachieving finish.

Which one would you pick?

Forget the words "Sweet 16" and call it what is is......2 NCAA tournament wins. I would not trade 5 months of good basketball and excitement (for most normal State fans) for ONE more win in the NCAA tournament. Spin it however you want but that is all it is.....one more win.

 

[Coach34]

Scenario A leaves you with about 26 wins at seasons end and a West title Scenario B leaves you with 22 wins, a Tourney title, AND a Sweet 16 Are 4 more wins worth the disappointment of underachieving?

 

[Hanmudog]

Like I said, I would take 4 months of kicking *** over one week of getting hot/lucky and winning a whopping one more game. I could not tell you more than 4 teams from last years Sweet 16 but I could tell you who were among the top 20 teams in the nation. You obviously are different..........much.......much different.

To frame this argument in more realistic terms: I would take our SEC championship season complete with the loss to Butler over the Sweet 16 season we had where UCLA tore us a new one in the tournament. That is just me. I take the hardware over a catchy title.</p>

 

[wpnetdawg]

All an SEC West title gets you is Thursday off at the SEC Tourney

What exactly does a Sweet 16 get you again? You are still playing a split-national televised game which no one except for fans of the respective schools will remember 24 hours later.

 

[ckDOG]

People talk about and remember the "Cinderella" team long after the season ends. Nobody cares about the 5 seed that got knocked out in the 2nd round after winning their conference division.

 

[dosequisdawg]

Can you imagine the bitching and moaning on this board if we went 16-14 then got hot? Do you actually think folks would give Stansbury credit for the Sweet 16? It would be a bigger stroke of luck than "LR falling in his lap", "the SEC was down when we won it", on and on and on. It damn sure wouldn't satisfy any of the naysayers.

As for the original question, I choose A. I enjoy successful regular seasons. I would love to advance far in March but I appreciate consistent success and hold out hope that if/when he gets that monkey off his back the program can really take it to the next level.

</p>

 

[Maroon Eagle]

...the media love Cinderellas.

 

[wpnetdawg]

though we were Tiger Woods.

 

[MadDawg.sixpack]

If scenario B played out, we'd have to hear calls for Stansbury's head EVERY SINGLE DAY until he won the 2nd tourney game. EVERY SINGLE DAY.

 

[dawgstudent]

**

 

[JacksonDevilDog]

but I think we went 26-4 in 2004. We finished the regular season 25-2 with losses at home to UK and Bama. We had the first game off in the SEC tourney and lost to Vandy second round. We beat Manhattan or someone like that and lost to Xavier. I would still pick making it to the sweet sixteen anyday than that, but that year was unreal until the end.

 

[JxnDawg39211]

we will go 21-9 and get in again as a dreaded 8 or 9 seed. We will have to face another #1 seed in the second round and lose (ala Duke and Memphis )

 

[RonnyAtmosphere]

...In college basketball, the only reason you bother playing regular season games is so you can prepare yourself for post season play.

A 16-14 team making the Sweet Sixteen would not only indicate good (month of) March coaching by Stansbury, it would also indicate how much heart the team had for refusing to quit. Last but not least, you are going to be ranked in the top 25 in the final poll.

Winning 20-something games, being awarded a 5 seed, & then getting bounced in the first game of the tournament is a wasted season on every level.

 

[FQDawg]

I'd be interested in seeing the numbers and not just the reasoning behind everyone's answer.

As for me, to echo others, I'd take A every day of the week and twice on Sunday. Five months of success trumps essentially what would be one game of success any day.

 

[Fdawg.sixpack]

that as a 14 seed making it to the sweet 16 that you would have to beat both a 3 and 6 seed...i dont think you A people are considering how insane and fun that would be throw in the 4 days of chaos in the SEC tourney and its a no brainer

 

[Hanmudog]

...In college basketball, the only reason you bother playing regular season games is so you can prepare yourself for post season play.

A 16-14 team making the Sweet Sixteen would not only indicate good (month of) March coaching by Stansbury, it would also indicate how much heart the team had for refusing to quit. Last but not least, you are going to be ranked in the top 25 in the final poll.

Winning 20-something games, being awarded a 5 seed, & then getting bounced in the first game of the tournament is a wasted season on every level.

Winning 2 games in March is not going to make a 16 win team into a top 25 team in the final poll. The pollsters are smart enough to know that upsets happen and the regular season does have meaning. Furthermore, getting hot and winning into the Sweet 16 at the end would indicate to me that we underachieved all year and that Stansbury did a poor job of coaching.

 

[MedDawg]

The scenarios being argued over are nearly the same scenario that actually occurred in 2004:

State finished 26-4 (25-2 in the regular season) and won the outright Overall SEC Championship with a record of 14-2, but lost in our first game in the SEC tourney and then got knocked out in the 2nd round of the NCAA tourney by a hot Xavier team that went on to beat #3 seed Texas and lose to #1 seed Duke by 3 points. State clinched the overall SEC title on Bama's floor in front of 4-5,000 MSU fans.

Bama went 20-13 and 8-8 in the SEC, but made it to the Elite Eight (with the help of Stanford being a way overrated #1 seed).

 

[dawgstudent]

**

 

[Coach34]

Losing like we did that year was an awful way to finish

 

[VegasDawg13]

But we've done that already. At this point, I'd rather have the Sweet 16. Once we've accomplished it, I'd go back to preferring A.

 

[Hanmudog]

Losing like we did that year was an awful way to finish

BUT, we won the outright overall SEC title for the first time in 40 years. No way I give that up. Alabama had an unreal easy path to that Elite 8 also so it is not like there were any huge upsets mixed in their run. No one really remembers any of the teams in the Elite 8 except for the ones that make the Final Four but people do look back and remember how good MSU was that year and how we walked in to every single SEC gym and came out a winner. Hell UK has over 40 SEC titles. Any time someone crashes their party it is a big deal.

 

[dosequisdawg]

in 2004 for Bama's season. Conference championships are very important, and hard to come by. I'm surprised at the number of people treating the Sweet 16 like it's the holy grail. I just don't think that getting there in fluke-type scenario would suddenly mean everyone is off Stansbury's back. I dont think it will convince everyone that suddenly Stans can coach in March, instead what everyone will be saying is that Stans can't coach in the regular season and only advanced because he got lucky, therefore we don't have the best of either world. Expectations for him are going to be a moving target. The people that hate him will continue to hate him if he makes the Sweet 16. The next step, hate him cause he can't make the Elite 8.

Don't get me wrong, I wanna advance in the dance badly, but I respect him for what he's been able to do here.

 

[mstateglfr]

A.) We win the West, go about 24-6, win one game in the NCAA tournament as a 5 seed.
B.) Finish at 16-14 and 4th in the West but get hot at the end and win the auto bid to the NCAAs as a 14 seed but win 2 games in the NCAA tournement

I will take A. just about every time.

Well A will get us a Divisional Title which is nice but not exactly prestigious, and itll end us with a 25 - 7 record. Id assume we win a game and lose a game in the SEC T, so thats 26 - 8.

B will put us at 23 - 15 with an SEC Tournament Championship and a Sweet 16 appearance.

26 - 8 with a friggin West Division Title and an early exit from the Dance.
23 - 15 with an SEC Tournament Title and a Sweet 16 appearance.

Taking A every time really shouldnt be such an easy decision. I would take it most years, but i would also trade one of our recent successful years for option B, since it would still net a Tournament Title and a Sweet 16.