The plan is to post a Robert Morris preview tomorrow night. For now, here’s what other people are talking about as we head into the first week of the Big Dance–plus a question for us to talk about.
- College Basketball BlogPoll breakdown, Week “6″
MSU is #7. I live a numb existence. - Previewing the Pods: Midwest Edition
Geeks review our potential opponents this weekend. - Thinking of Going To Minneapolis?
Bleeding Green with the all the details for a road trip to the Twin Cities. Anybody going? - Here’s who will be calling your game
We get Gus. We’ll be hoping for a limited number of “PURE!”s when Robert Morris has the ball. - Giant Killers: Predicting NCAA upsets
ESPN Insider content. Apparently, a regression formula says we’re ripe for the picking. - It’s the Efficiency: Memphis is My Favorite
Mr. Gasaway* with a contrarian pick. - Brackets, Parentheses, Braces: Why You Should Be Wary of Pitt
Scatterplot! - Committee Sends the Message Again
Crispin and Cream on how Penn State’s nonconference scheduling came back to haunt them.
*Having announced I’m abandoning this blog, I feel compelled to retire the TAFKATBTW moniker, in hopes no one will now tag me with a cheeky nickname.
Coffee Talk: The players say they’re “humble and hungry.” How hungry are you? How many wins do you need to see in the next three weeks to consider this team’s season a success?
elite 8. for sure.
I’m hoping for Elite 8, but I think Sweet 16 is more realistic. Kansas really scares me.
I would say our main negative is our poor outside shooting and our main positive is teams being unfamiliar with us. We also can’t keep having these lackluster 1st halves. Our depth is a big asset, but we need to bring it from the get go.
I think Morgan will be our key individual and if he is above average then we can overcome some lack of production from Summers/Allen.
What role Lucious is going to play? Does anyone think he should start? It would make us short, but quick….nice to have a discussion on a civilized board.
You know we were all going to replace BTW with SWB when referring to your previous identity. Actually we would have been much more creative than that, at least I hope so. Actually my choice would have been Spartacus, because at the end of the movie several people step forward to take his place, which is exactly what is happening with the blog.
As I said yesterday I see this team as an Elite 8 caliber team. Anything beyond that is icing on the cake, although I would love to see them prove me wrong and make a final four and title game run. I hope the Big 10 does well enough to silence the critics. To do that I think MSU and Purdue have to make it to the Elite 8, and another team or two from the conference has to make it to the second weekend. If we make up a quarter of the teams in the sweet 16 and Elite 8 I don’t think we can be criticized for underperforming given that we’ll probably have outperformed a couple of other power conferences in doing so.
I think the ACC is the best conference in the nation this year, with the Big East being better than the Big 10 but not by much and more overrated than anyone else. People look at their top teams, which are very impressive, but the conference has a very weak bottom with four teams that are in the nearly if not outright terrible range. That weakness at the bottom pads the stats of the teams at the top and makes them look better than they really are. I see the PAC 10 as a wild card – nobody knows how good they’ll really be. The Big 10 has had several games against the Big 12 and won nearly all of them so I think they are getting less grief than they should be.
I’d be a little careful picking Memphis as the champion. They lost a lot of talent, and although their efficiency margin is almost as good as last year, they don’t have the big non-conference wins they did last year to hang their hat on. Last year they beat UConn, Georgetown (a very impressive win) Oklahoma, Arizona, USC, and Gonzaga. All those teams were major conference tournament teams (well I guess Gonzaga isn’t a major conference team but they are that caliber).
This year they lost to Georgetown, Xavier, and Syracuse. Their two impressive wins are against Gonzaga and Tennessee, and beating Tennessee isn’t really all that much to brag about. I’m not saying they won’t do well in the tournament, but the signs pointing toward tournament success were much stronger last year.
Hopefully DeChellis learns his lesson and schedules a couple more strong opponents in the pre Big 10 season next year, or wins a few more Big 10 games. They obviously need to do one or the other.
I can’t comment on the regression model that shows us ripe for an upset since I am not an ESPN subscriber. I don’t expect us to make it to the Final Four but would be surprised if we don’t make it out of the first weekend.
I looked at the ESPN stuff and only their list of giant killers and giants ripe to be killed are protected content. The metrics they say are most important for giant killers are low turnover percentage, high adjusted offensive and defensive efficiencies, and high offensive rebounding percentages. We have two of those 3 attributes ourselves. Robert Morris has none of them – they’re more sloppy with the ball than we are, they don’t rebound particularly well, and their O and D efficiencies are not that impressive.
The analysts definition of a giant killer is a team that beats a team seeded at least 5 spots above them. By that measure BC (barely) or USC would qualify as a giant killer if they beat us but I doubt the country would see it that way – it’s hard to be thought of as a giant killer if you come out of a major conference.
The main attributes of giants ripe for the fall are sloppiness (high turnover percentage) and being inefficient relative to seed. Looking at the other 1 and 2 seeds, I don’t really see our efficiencies on O or D being that out of wack, so it must be the turnovers that are making us look ripe for the upset. If we can hang onto the ball well we should be OK. USC actually is rated higher by Kenpom than BC so by that metric their seeds should be reversed.
Good interview with Steve Grinczel about MSU Hoops:
http://blog.mlive.com/spartans_impact/2009/03/x090316-wghn-steve-grinczel.mp3
Pat Forde article on MSU
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/columns/story?columnist=forde_pat&id=3989001&sportCat=ncb
This is an Elite 8 team with Final Four potential. Anything less than E8 is a disappointment. There’s no Memphis lurking in the 3rd round.
SI’s Seth Davis was on NPR’s Morning Edition this morning talking about his book and the 1979 NCAA matchup between Bird and Magic. Here’s the link:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=101967585
I always think that closing the season on a six game winning streak is a good thing. It would give us a little momentum going into next year, too. So, why not us? as they say.
I’ll be disappointed with anything less than an elite eight appearance. We should be able to beat RM, BC/USC and KU/WVU. I really think we can win it all, but at least E8.
BP odds:
91% chance we win first round game
63% chance of making sweet sixteen
30% chance of making elite eight
14% chance of making final four
5% chance of making championship game
2% chance of winning NC
http://www.basketballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=601