The Wiz

I think this is a great team to start with. At C+ they are slightly above average...just good enough to be a significant challenge. I think below 100 is a bit optimistic for Upstate. I would put them more around the 140 area. The 12 point spread is more volatile as a 1st game. Think of it as more of an average at this point. ie if we play them 10 times we would win by an average of 12. If we play them like we did Rockhurst in the 1st half...the game will go down to the buzzer. If we play them like we did Rockhurst ib the 2nd half we win by 20+. And if we play the game like the entire Rockhurst game(one good half, one bad half) we win by 12. I think it is promising that the 2nd half was the good one in that it shows we learned/adjusted. That bodes well for the Upstate game.

I have us at 34 which is considerably better than last year when we started around 60. If we have a succesful KC trip we could climb very quickly.

Sorry, I left St. Joe out. They will be right there with VCU if we stumble.

And so it begins.... At this point there are no teams connected so I will be using a Bayesian probability formula to start with (as many prognosticators do at this time of the year) and gradually phase it out over the next few weeks. By Thanksgiving there should be enough connected dots to make reasonable forecasts. I have the Bills starting out as an A- team....USC shows to be a C+ team. This is a game we should win but Upstate is no cupcake. This season promises to be one of great promise and excitement or one of great disappointment and letdown. Does Crews with his decades of experience as a seasoned coach take a tested and skilled team to the A-10 championship and then onto the Dance. Or does the team miss the "Majerus magic"....the combination of superb X's and O's mixed with team synergy....the abiity to make the end result greater than the sum of its parts....to make ordinary players extraordinary. If they do miss the "magic" and they don't click with Crews it could be a long season. Of course as always injuries will play a factor. We will miss KM in KC . I think the team to beat in the A-10 wil be VCU. Not too far behind will be Butler, UMass and Dayton. Even with the loss of Temple, I think the A-10 has improved its standing this year. Should be an interesting and fun year. I am in the camp that Crews will meet the challenge and that we will have a good year....The computer has the Bills at A- and that says we are good. I will bill-ieve it until I am shown otherwise. GO BILLS

+1...I do use current data...And I do seed data at least until there are a few data points. It is always kind of hit and miss till we get to Thanksgiving. As for MB73....He doesn't even wait for an exhibition game before he pops off. I guess it will be another season of shoot first and ask questions later for him. It is good to be back on the board again. I look forward to the season with cautious optimism. I think Crews will do a good job. He has better players than he did at Evansville or Army and has the tools to meld a team. We should have a good OOC record....we will miss KM in KC. And barring injury we will do well in the A-10 and should garner another NCAA bid. In about a week, I will put up the first prediction for the USCU game....Then MB will have something to chew on. Should be a fun year. And for those that would like to chat I will be over in Sec 103 Row K Go Bills

BAN THE BILLIKEN Billiken goes to Japan This section does not cite any references or sources. (December 2008) Throughout Japan representations of the Billiken were enshrined. Pre-World War II statues of the Billiken can be found in Kobe city's Chinju Inari and Matsuo Inari shrines. Both of these statues were removed from display for many years at the onset of the war when foreign deities fell out of favor. The most famous representation of the Billiken was in an amusement park, Luna Park, in the Shinsekai district of Osaka, Japan. In 1912, he was enshrined in the park as a symbol of Americana and there was revered as "The God of Things As They Ought to Be". Popular Billiken souvenirs in the park included dolls and manju (sweet buns filled with red paste). When the park closed in 1923, the wooden statue of the Billiken went missing. A replica of the statue was placed in the second-generation Tsutenkaku Tower in 1980. Presently he resides on the fifth floor observation deck and has become closely associated with the tower. Each year thousands of visitors place a coin in his donation box and rub the soles of his well-worn feet to make their wishes come true. In October 2008, the Billiken of Tsutenkaku took a journey all the way from Japan to its founding city of St. Louis where it was visited by students of St. Louis University High School, whose mascot is also the billiken. The statue was a permanent fixture in the tower until September 2005 when it made its first departure and was taken, as an ambassador of sorts, to Shibuya's Tokyu department store in Tokyo as a part of a fair to promote Naniwa (traditional Osaka) culture. As a part of the cultural exchange, a replica of the statue of Shibuya's most famous dog, Hachikō, was sent to Osaka. The Billiken was a star in Sakamoto Junji's 1996 comedy Billiken in which the statue is restored to the Tsutenkaku in an effort to revive the popularity of the tower and save Shinsekai.[8] The Billiken also became the namesake of the Japanese toy & model manufacturing company of the same name.

http://www.athlonsports.com/college-basketball/ranking-nations-top-college-basketball-coaches Agree or disagree? I think they downgraded him a little because he missed a few years.

You are correct....you shouldn't pick. May used the word "broken" ...he said "they were looking at 2 kids in Vegas and 1 in Orlando" and I did not use the words ALL practices. Before you reply, I DID have fish for lunch. I can have Chris May verify that.

A few more items from the luncheon...... Recruiting....We are looking at 2 prospects from Vegas and one from Orlando in addition to a couple of kids from St. Louis. Justin Tatum's son is also on the radar but not being recruited as he is only a 9th grader. May said that the prospects available in the class of 14 are even better than the ones for next year. Scheduling....18 games are what season tickets are based on....we are trying to schedule 19-21.games. Also A-10 scheduling is difficult because of the increase to 16 teams. We are trying to bunch road games geographically to ease travel. We will get some of what we want but not all. Injury.....KM suffered a broken bone in his foot during the Bonner league. The good news is the boot comes off today and he will start running shortly. TV....The goal is to get every TV game televised which could happen as early as next year.. The importance of TV is exposure....selling tickets, recruiting besides the extra revenue. Post season....16 teams--only 12 will make it to the A-10 tourney. New venue in Brooklyn is a significant upgrade from AC. ....Expect to make Big Dance this year and next. Thinks our team this year is better than last years and that we will go farther in the tourney. The importance of making the tourney in successive years is cumulative. The money and exposure compounds....1+1=3. And finally practice starts mid Oct....they again will be open to fans.

That assumes you have a 50% chance of winning the game. Ky was favored to win every game...e.g. they had a 70% chance of beating Lville.....which is why it more than twice as hard getting to the title game and why the odds are skewed.

The only thing out now are the odds to win the NC....no Final 4 , Sweet 16, etc...so it was just an estimate and judging by your own logic it looks like you agree at the end.(50 to 1) Odds don't always follow an exaxt pattern because it gets much tougher to to move up each rung of the ladder which brings me to slu72. Could we have made the Final 4 last year? There was a chance. Could we make it this year? There is a chance. But I think you do need to drink some blue Kool Aid at this point to be a Final 4 believer. Last year, I had the Bills at 15th which means we had a pretty good chance to make the Sweet 16....and we almost did. A shot or 2 here or there and we beat MSU. But in order for us to get to the Final 4 we would have needed to beat one of the Final 4 to replace that team (in this case Louisville) Our chances of beating one of the Final 4 teams so we could have made the Final 4 were as follows....Ky..8%...OSU....12%....Kan...14%....Lville...16%. So yes we could have made the Final 4 last year but it would have taken a miracle. This year's estimates are just that at this point. Nothing is meaningful till after Thanksgiving. 80 to 1 at this point just means we have a pretty good shot to make the Big Dance.

The last team projected to make the final 4 (Mich, Mich St or Kan) has 12-1 odds to win the entire tournament. Their chances of making the Final 4 would be about 7-1. Based on that, I would estimate the Bills chances at 50-1 to make the Final 4. This is a far cry from last May when we were not on the radar at all.

I think you are correct. I asked them about this at the Sports Book and they said they were still showing VCU joinining in 2013.. VCU has just recently moved their A-10 join date to this year and the Sports Book hadn't updated their records. The reason for this is the only bets they are taking is for the Nat Chmpshp.....no conference champships at this time. So updating things... Vegas agreed ...VCU wins ...we finish 2nd....The Bills and VCU both Dancing.

Spending some time in Vegas this weekend and thought I would give an update of what the oddsmakers at the Sports Book are thinking. At this point in time there is not much money flowing into bet on CBB. So it is "the experts" trying to handicap the teams. While things will change between now and November it is interesting to see what the thinking is at this point. In the A-10 ...Top 3 ...The Bills, StJ and X The Bills will be Dancing again with an even chance to win the first game. (so a possible 8 or 9 seed again) Other interesting tidbits.... The Final Four will be Ind...Lville ....Ky....and one of these 3 teams.....Mich St...Mich...Kan Upcoming A-10 members....VCU is ranked higher than us ...Butler even with us Other familar faces....Memphis...rated ahead of us....New Mexico behind us...Wash .behind us ...Temple and Dayton ...well behind us And finally for those looking for a little betting action....Bills 80-1 to win National Championship. Go Bills

www.cbssports.com/collegebasketball/.../eye-on-college-basketball Early odds 100-1. A long shot but still a listing at this point is a good thing.

Well if Setty is to be believed, he says he has 2 A's, a B and a C or D in his current courses. That would give him at least a 3.0 and school is over in 2 weeks. Not sure what all his hand wringing is about at this time.

Latest report...W Ky in lead for Swop.

Wow...you are pretty aggressive with making up stuff about my predictions. Perhaps you are trying to predict what I will predict. I find it interesting you have us up to as high as 20th now. You are only 5 away from my season ending rankings. Big difference from when you were 40+ away from me. Welcome to the party ....you are only 3 months late.

So are you saying this guy cries "volf "?

1 Ky 2 OSU 3 Kan 4 MSU 5 Syr 6 NC 7 Wisc 8 Fla 9 Mizzou 10 Ind 11 Lville 12 Marq 13 Gtwn 14 Wich St 15 THE BILLS 16 Memphis 17 Baylor 18 New Mex 19 Vandy 20 Duke 21 Zags 22 Fla St 23 K St 24 Purdue 25 Ala. A few observations...... Nothing that happened from Jan on changed my mind that we were and are an elite team. The confirmation for the doubters should have come during the tourney. The beating of Mem and the close call with MSU should have opened some eyes. In a series with Mem over time we would split with them and in a series with MSU we would compete in all the games and win about 3/8 of them. And yes, in a series with Mizzou we would split...each team winning their home games. Also we were the class of the A-10 even though X was rated in the polls and we were not. Not to mention Temple was slightly better than X too. The fact that X is 24th is another confirmation that we should be at 15th. And Ohio U??? ranked at all???, much less ahead of us...I don't know what they are thinking. Why not rank Norfolk and Leigh? Bottomline is we had a great season and as the next year rankings from assorted pundits start to come in, it is clear that we are no longer the only ones who think we are elite. The rest of the world is starting to catch on too.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/04/sports/ncaabasketball/kentucky-built-a-title-team-on-underclassmen-expected-to-leave-early-for-the-nba.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2&ref=sports

Our banner was up at the Superdome between Purdue and St.Mary's...So we must have been in the tourney.

@SSG.... as for the picks... the computer had Ky by 6 1/2 over Lville but I went against it trying to outsmarted the pool...fail...on the Oh St/Kan I had osu by 2...that didn't work....I was showing OSU & KY even...would have been a good game...So instead.....Ky by2 over Kan.

@brm.... Because their freshman take enough hours before they get drafted...it is a sham..

The thing that has the locals buzzing in New Orleans is the use of hand signs by the Ky team. These are not vague signs that can be misinterpreted as fun gestures but the sign of the Bloods gang. Their fan base not only uses them but wear t shirts with the symbols. New Orleans police shudder when they see thousands of visiting fans using the signs of crime, violence and drugs in their city...not to mention the glorification of these hoodlums. Is this what an institution of higher learning should represent? ...with no graduates in their program in sight it is truly winning at all costs.