Keeping an eye on the national rankings

[Gboom23]

Maybe it's the purple glasses, but I'd say we could lose at Indiana St or at Loyola, lose Sunday in STL, and still be in honestly. As long as we don't get killed any game. We've lost 3 games by a total of 13 points. If the committee really looks at every detail they'll see we had the lead, or a shot to take the lead in the last minute of every loss. When you look into the details of the whole season and how close every loss really was, it really sucks that we're only a bubble team right now.

Agree 100%. Need to run off 6 straight until we get to the @ Loyola game, which should be doable. 4 of those are at home. 1 at Evansville, and if we lose to Evansville we don't deserve to be in the tourney. And 1 at Valpo, which could be troublesome. 15-3 should get us in. I think we would really be sweating at 14-4 and need to win in STL at that point.

[sevelev711]

If we win out, and lose a game in STL we are in. 100%, no offense to Cole Blair's tweet Wednesday night. The problem is that we aren't going to do that and have lost 2 games we shouldn't have.

We should have more margin of error than we actually do thanks to the BS NET

See that's the thing for me, we did in fact have some margin of error. It's used up. And it's used up to two teams that it absolutely should not have been used up against. Pouring over all the stuff out there, we might have one more non-Arch Madness loss left, if the bubbles burst in our favor. Three games of wiggle room in an 18 game schedule, and the problem is that we used two of those losses in the first half of the schedule, and it was arguably the easier half.

Oh well, it happened. Now we need to hope for a massive run and for some other teams to lose in the way we need to.

[BCPanther]

See that's the thing for me, we did in fact have some margin of error. It's used up. And it's used up to two teams that it absolutely should not have been used up against. Pouring over all the stuff out there, we might have one more non-Arch Madness loss left, if the bubbles burst in our favor. Three games of wiggle room in an 18 game schedule, and the problem is that we used two of those losses in the first half of the schedule, and it was arguably the easier half.

Oh well, it happened. Now we need to hope for a massive run and for some other teams to lose in the way we need to.

The back half is WAY easier. No Bradley, Loyola once, Evansville twice, the entire bottom half of the league at home.

I'm also not sure anybody is going to win in Carbondale.

[sevelev711]

The back half is WAY easier. No Bradley, Loyola once, Evansville twice, the entire bottom half of the league at home.

I'm also not sure anybody is going to win in Carbondale.

I know it's easy to say in hindsight, but @Loyola and @ISUb are harder than anything we've had so far, imo, and we did drop the fourth easiest game already. I guess as a whole the back half is easier, but there are a couple individual games that will be harder than anything in conference play.

[Leatherhelmet]

SIU will get trounced at home by Loyola and Bradley, and will probably drop another. They are not good, we for a number of reasons were bad. We should have ripped them by 20.

[unipanthers8907]

Only dropped from #29 to #32 in the AP Poll. Either the voters didn't notice we lost to SIU or that win over Loyola really helped lessen the blow.

[BCPanther]

Only dropped from #29 to #32 in the AP Poll. Either the voters didn't notice we lost to SIU or that win over Loyola really helped lessen the blow.

I think people are finally getting to the point of being rational about road league losses. Its damn tough in every league.

Plus, we're real good.

[MNpanthers]

We fell 2 NET rankings after Loyola. On the other hand Loyola went up a few spots

[CyCarp]

We fell 2 NET rankings after Loyola. On the other hand Loyola went up a few spots

I really wish they would say the NET formula. It make no sense. We win a Q3 game and drop 2 spots. They lose a Q1 game and jump 7 spots. I don't know how opponents did, but it couldn't have been anything substantial. It's just ridiculous, and shows how much everything is slanted towards P5s.

[Wxcpanther]

SIU will get trounced at home by Loyola and Bradley, and will probably drop another. They are not good, we for a number of reasons were bad. We should have ripped them by 20.

SIU is way better than you're giving them credit for. Should we have won that game? Absolutely, but SIU is a really tough team to play against. They will definitely beat one of those two in Carbondale between Bradley and Loyola, wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if they took both.

[UNIGrainer]

SIU hosts Loyola Wednesday. Very interested in that one. SIU could be 6-3 with wins over UNI and Loyola if they can pull it off.

[BCPanther]

Here are our points for the week--13 Total

19--Dave Preston (WTOP Radio, Washington DC, 17 last week)
23--Dave Borges (New Haven Register, New Haven, CT, 19 last week)
24--John Feinstein (NPR/Author, Washington DC, NR last week)
25--Dick Vitale (ESPN, NR last week)

[sevelev711]

Shoutout Dicky V.

[sevelev711]

SIU hosts Loyola Wednesday. Very interested in that one. SIU could be 6-3 with wins over UNI and Loyola if they can pull it off.

Rooting interest should probably be for Loyola, if Loyola can go relatively unscathed until our rematch against them, then that could turn into a Q1 game. Since the @Bradley game no longer looks like that'll be the case, it'd be really great to have another. 2-1 against Q1 would look a lot better than 1-1.

[sivert]

I really wish they would say the NET formula. It make no sense. We win a Q3 game and drop 2 spots. They lose a Q1 game and jump 7 spots. I don't know how opponents did, but it couldn't have been anything substantial. It's just ridiculous, and shows how much everything is slanted towards P5s.

First, I don't think that they can tell us. They don't even know. Only the AI knows.
Second, my guess is that we dropped a lot on OE, and didn't change much on DE (on average). We were very high on OE, so it's easy to drop. We were average one DE, so we're still average.

The good news is that we are clearly emphasizing defense. Yesterday, defense and rotations seemed much more a focus than running the offense. If we can get good on defense, then this team will have a very high ceiling. If we can do UNI defense, AND score at a high clip, it's gonna be tough to beat us.