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One nice thing about "just" winning a regular season conference title would be that it guarantees an NIT bid. In no way am I say the NIT should be a goal, but it's better than nothing. Below is Pomeroy's model for the rest of the year. He still predicts us to be 13-5 in the A-10. Gotta find a way to turn 2 to 3 of those games into wins. I personally believe we need to be 8-0 in January to have a realistic chance given all the tough road games in February.

I can't speak to it's accuracy, but in the article that Cincibill posted they said this: Efficiency - Net Efficiency. It’s (your points divided by your possessions) minus (your opponents’ points divided by your opponents’ possessions). “Possessions” are estimated by field goal attempts minus offensive rebounds plus turnovers plus 0.475 times free throw attempts. Unlike KenPom rankings, this is not adjusted by quality of opponent. Every point against Mount Saint Mary’s counts! https://www.backingthepack.com/nc-state-basketball/2018/12/12/18137613/ncaa-net-rankings-college-basketball-tournament-nc-state-acc At the bottom of the article he talks about how important it is to run up the score, even beyond 10 points. I also saw this article a week ago where Will Wade was complaining about the formula and how it encourages running up the score. https://www.nola.com/lsu/2019/01/lsus-will-wade-on-the-net-rankings-their-formula-is-wrong.html

It is frustrating to look back on the close losses and play the what-if game. Obviously wins over Houston and Pitt and we'd be arguing about what seed Lunardi has us right now. But we should be somewhat honest with ourselves and realize we've had a ton of close games and have won more than our fair share. At the end of the day, we just need to play better. And something inside me feels like we really do have it in us to go on a run. Hope I'm right.

Doesn't need to happen in one single game and I'm not aware of any sites that show day over day NET rankings of teams, but let's look at just yesterday: Providence jumped from 98 to 85 based on a single HOME COURT victory over #47 Seton Hall. Are you saying a road win at #55 VCU couldn't improve our NET by 8-10 spots. Seems quite reasonable to me.

Probably not. If we play like we have the first 17 games we aren't good enough for the NCAA tournament and quite frankly don't deserve a bid. Hence our NET, Pomeroy and every other metric that says we aren't good enough. If we play like we have so far this year, we aren't going 12-2 down the stretch, we are going 9-5 (which is what Pomeroy predicts) or something like that. But that is different than the argument some are making that we CAN'T make the NCAA as an at-large because the math won't allow it. The math definitely allows it, we just need to play better.

This simply isn't true. Our NET will sky-rocket if we go on the road and beat quality teams like Dayton and VCU.

It is true that you can't play really crappy teams and beat them by 3 points and expect your rankings to improve. To expect otherwise is insane. To further that point, while we are 4-0 in A-10 play, we haven't had an easy win yet and our rankings have dropped accordingly. The NET ABSOLUTELY cares about margin of victory (although they cap it at 10 points) but the NET also includes an efficiency statistic which is of course better if you win a game by 25 points instead of by 3 points. The Bills need to not only win games down the stretch but it would be really helpful if they played better and won the games convincingly. An at large bid is still very much in play so long as we go 15-3 or better in conference. It is even more in play if we don't win all 15 of those games by really close margins. Let's start blowing some teams out.

The video was awesome and I shared it with lots of people. I'm just not sharing a still photo from the floor and saying his head is close the rim (Skip) or his elbow is even with the rim. Didn't mean to be a debbie downer just a bit of a realist. To 3-star, French may have something to say about your leaping ability comment. If nothing else, it's pretty comparable.

I'm not saying Hargrove doesn't have hops, but be very careful of looking at a picture taken on ground level and trying to decipher if his head was above the rim or his elbow is even with the rim. Angles can be very deceptive.

Exactly. And who among SLU fans cares if he starts playing at Depaul in very late November or mid-December. I know I sure don't.

I am not aware of a single player, in the history of college basketball, that has been allowed to leave a d1 school midseason and play at another d1 school later that same season.

Davidson loses and SLU and Dayton now sit alone atop the conference.

The reason we dropped two spots is that Pitt was ranked 65 and jumped to 52. Clemson was ranked 63 and "jumped" to 59, likely related to the Syracuse/Duke result. Either way, Pitt's jump makes perfect sense and Clemson was more rounding error than anything material.

Just need to go 15-3 in conference or better and our NET will be fine. It's gone up a tad since conference play started but it's not going to move materially when you beat bad teams. It'll move for real when we beat teams like Davidson, Dayton etc. and go at least 6-3 on the road which is what a 15-3 conference record requires.

Go to “incognito” mode if you are using chrome. It gets around that.