showthebill

Although I don't necessarily believe Northwestern with an 18-12 (8-10) record should be in the tournament it is definitely not ridiculous to think they deserve consideration. You can complain all you want about a below 500 team getting in.... but this is a team who had 8 of those conference losses against top 50 rpi teams and the the other 4 coming against teams with RPI's of 9, 24, 79, and 88. Ya, they have a lot of losses, but there's a lot of mid major teams who don't play more than 1 or 2 top 50 rpi teams and have really bad losses that you're trying to argue should get a bid. One could say the mid major can play only the teams on their schedule, but NU also didn't lose to any crappy teams who the mid majors on the bubble do have losses to. So your argument may be well we don't know how that mid major would play against a top 50 team, but then I ask you this... why did they lose to a team with a below 100 RPI whereas NU didn't?

I know this is really early to talk about, but since I have nothing better to do until Friday.... What are the thoughts on having a midnight madness next year to get the students pumped up for the season???? Rick generally is never a big proponent of it, but I think it would be a great way to keep momentum rolling

Harvard just locked up a bid with Penn's loss. That takes care of the possibility of Penn stealing a bid

We will need our fans making some noise in Atlantic City for the guys this year. SLU generally has a pretty weak showing so we will need the extra support this time around to make it to Sunday

Last, I would really like to know what 40 other teams deserve bids because right now to your logic it sounds like most BCS conferencs arr giving one team a bid that probably doesn't deserve it. Therefore you are talking about 30 or so more mid majors getting bids. Seems like quite a stretch to me

Butler, VCU and George mason were deserving and at the end of the day they didn't win the national championship. A power conference school won it... They happened to be 3 teams out of how many power conferences that came close but still couldn't do it. Also, more to your point, if you increase the teams then most likely mid majors will have worse seeds and have to play more games to get to the title which would actually hurt chances of making runs to the final four. So once again I do not think they should add more teams

I disagree. DO NOT allow more teams into the tournament. I understand some of the last few teams might not get a bid who deserved one, but the entire reason for this tournament is to find the best team in the country and not who's ranked #60 in the country. The tournament might be favored toward BCS teams, but it is my personal belief that you have the chance to prove you are the best team in the country all season. If you can't even make a field of 68 then you don't deserve the chance to prove you are the number 1 team. Northwestern, Xavier, etc. Sorry you're not number one in the country so the NCAA shouldn't expand the field just so you guys can get a bid and hopefully get lucky and knock off a more deserving team.

The non-BCS teams don't get the TV ratings that BCS teams get. And that's a fact.

Sorry, but you're wrong. I don't think you're watching close enough because SLU sees zone quite a bit... it sometimes takes people a few possessions to realize the other team is running a zone and often times the team will have switched out by the time. I've been watching basketball a long time and I still sometimes don't catch the defense is in a zone, but rather I notice the play we are running and therefore know the other team is in some form of a zone. It was just very obvious against Rhode Island because of the way we were playing offense against it.

True, but LMU really exerted themselves at the end whereas we kind of just handed RI several opportunities to take the W from us. Taking that into consideration I think it was a very similar game. I'm a little baffled as to why our players were so sluggish... X game? NCAA tourney hopes? week of no games? Not really sure what to pin it onto

A few things. SLU has a very good game plan against the zone. Many times throughout the season teams have tried playing one against us only for us to kill it. While watching the game though the biggest thing I took away from the game was a lack of offensive intensity. That does not fall on the shoulders of Rick. People keep saying why weren't plays run against the zone, but the key to breaking a zone is more of progression and placement on the floor rather than a specific play. SLU has always had good ball movement and continued to against Rhode Island, but some days you can tell the guys have that intensity factor and sometimes they don't. It was clear the effort wasn't there against LMU and it was very similar in this game too. Overall, the loss falls on the shoulders of the captains because they should've kept pushing the tempo a little bit and attack the zone more. I know for a fact Majerus did not just say pass the ball around the arc until the shot clock expires. However, after 30-35 minutes of yelling at the guys there's not a whole lot more you can say in the last 5 minutes. The players needed to step up and they didn't. In the future I would love for teams to zone us because I think it plays to our greatest strength which is having bigs who can shoot. As is often said teams live and die by the three, but if we get to the tourney and end up playing a high seed in the second round we better all hope they try and zone us. Those teams will definitely outplay us in a man-to-man but if they flash zone then I like our chances in hitting threes for one game.

Yes, the flight twas bumpy

For what it's worth RealtimeRPI has us winning against RI and X by 15 and Duquesne only by 1

I think everyone believes we have much more bargaining power than we actually do. I agree our basketball team is finally becoming relevant in the A-10, but when the big boys start calling every one of our second tier sports have been pretty brutal. Those sports are not the money makers but I also know one good year and basketball mixed in with many bad years in everything else will not put us in a position of much power.

Good write-up on the bills http://insider.espn.go.com/mens-college-basketball/story/_/id/7606709/an-early-look-ncaa-tournament-sleeper-teams-ncb

However all of those teams that are our "quality wins" right now are on the outside looking in. Maybe Xavier or Washington makes the tourney, otherwise we haven't beaten a tournament team yet.

I believe those rankings are heavily favored in terms of defensive efficiency and therefore SLU gets a big push. I agree with whoever said we aren't representive of #10 People can tell me all of the algorithms they want, but the reruiting and athleticism a conference like the B10, ACC, etc brings to the top 60% of their conference is way better than the A10. That difference is HUGE. SLU got up and beat the likes of Washington, OK, and 'Nova in one stretch of the year but in a BCS conference the caliber of teams and atmospheres you are playing in is way different (sorry, a big road win won't be in front of 4,000 people in the big ten). The A-10 is looking more and more like a two team conference. The only other team to make it played us once in our arena and won. (Garbage to whoever said that is an isolated event because it's only 5 points. This whole what-if they missed one, we make one, is ridiculous because that changes the entire ending of the game and the same argument could go the other way for them to beat us by 10.) My point is we are playing well and absolutely our stats have been showing that, but to say we are 10th in the country is ridiculous. If we were doing this in a power conference then yes we would be a top-10 team ranked everywhere, but there's no way in my mind we could do this week in and week out in a BCS conference.

That may be true, but coming from someone who not long ago went through the job process SLU doesn't have any recognition in the major markets (Chicago, New York, LA) for business majors. Just getting a job or coming back to SLU for grad school doesn't help our ranking

A huge metric is what jobs and grad schools the graduates get coming out of college. SLU could do much better in that regard

For what it's worth.... George Mason and VCU were both 11 seeds when they made their final four runs.

As I mentioned before, 11 seed gets SLU out of the top portion of the bracket. If things line up the 11 seed's road to the final four goes against a 6, 3, 2, 1 in that order. Therefore you don't see the 2 or 1 seed until sweet 16 or elite eight assuming they don't get upset. I would much rather play a 6 and 3 seed early rather than get the dreaded 8 or 9 spot and have to play a 1 seed in the second round.

For suree.....

The best possible position for SLU is to get an 11 seed. If I could choose no matter if we win out or not I would take an 11 seed in any region.

There is no way the band should move. Our student section is brutal. They occasionally make noise when there's a big play and have a bunch of signs during free throws, but I can't think of a single original cheer that the "Slunatics" have come up with in the last four years. We are Saint Louis I heard for the first time at ND, G-O Saint Louis GO is said by male cheerleaders around the planet.... The cheer after a foul, after someone fouls out, and the gator chomp are all thanks to the band. Am I missing anything?

I agree. I don't see us going the rest of the way with one loss considering we still have Saturday, Xavier, and La Salle and not to mention a very possible let-down game somewhere down the road. I wouldn't hate it, but I also know our tendency to lose after a big win.