bsheldon

I agree. Hopefully he does take them to court. However, that may cost more than the one year of grad school tuition. But not getting into grad school could keep his lifeteime earning potential down and I am sure some lawyer will spin that for some real damages to go after. One thing the NCAA is not short on and that is money. If this does go to court they will drag this out for years. It is total crap, but that is the reality of our legal system--those with money are in control. One thing for sure, the NCAA is a bunch of hypocritical scumbags. Now, we have really only gotten his side of the story and haven't heard anything from NCAA nor NIU and SK could have really done something very wrong, but that still doesn't change my statement on the NCAA above.

That sucks. But now we know and we can move on.

Pretty decent analysis. Gotta love Earl. The more I look at the schedule the more impressive and worrisome it appears. The obvious OOC tough games: Duke, Georgia and at MSU. Games the I feel could sneak up and bite us: @ Portland: They finished 3rd behind St mary's (which they beat in one of their meetings)and Gonzaga last season and everyone predicts they will be at least that good again. Their only conference losses were to Gonzaga twice, once by only 3 points, once to St Mary's and an overtime road loss at Loyola-Marymount which finished 4th. Jacksonville: They finished tied for first in a very, very competitive and evenly balanced Atlantic Sun last season and finished tied for the most overall wins in the league. They beat AZ in the NIT. IN Cancun: Northeastern: They finished 3 spots and 3 games ahead of VCU last year including beating VCU both times head to head. Rick better have the boys ready. Either Southern Miss or East Tenn State---both are very tough. S Miss won 20 games last year and they are primed to contend for the C-USA title and NCAA's are the realistic expectation this season. E TNST is the only other 20 game winning Atlantic Sun team team besides Jacksonville and they finished only one game out of First place in the conference. They made the dance last year. Plus the grudge match with BG.

I still can't find the exact article I read yesterday, but this is the best one I have found since. http://www.prideofdetroit.com/2010/9/13/1685668/why-the-nfls-rule-referees

Uh, Where? What time?

Yeah, that doesn't make it any better. Plus, it completely contradicts about 4 other rules that outline possesion. I read an article this morning that somehow I can not find now. The sportswriter lists I think 4 rules in the rule book and explains how each and everyone of these conditions were met on the play. I wish I could find it, but I guess it doesn't matter. I'll keep looking.

Ok I didn't see the game yesterday, but I saw the highlights (lowlights) today at lunch. Holy crap what an awful call. The official 5 feet from it called it a touchdown as the play happened and then later it changed. Terrible job. What if he had just spiked the ball after his knee hit the ground in the end-zone--would that be an incomplete? He completely had control of the ball--both feet landed--and then he went to the ground. His knee, as well as his hip hit the ground and he still had totla control of the ball. The play is dead there--he can punt the ball into the stands afterward. The play was exactly as if he caught the ball and then started to run with it--which he essentially what he did by having both feet down and then he was tackled 10 yards down the field--the play is over once his knee hits. Since it was the end zone it should have been over the instant his second foot hit while he had control. Again, if he were right on the sideline, caught the ball, and tippy-toed inside the line and then hopped out of bounds--which we have seen hundreds of times--it is a touchdown. Catch the ball cleanly and get both feet in--touchdown. Period. Ridiculous, awful call. I feel bad for Detroit as no one outside of perhaps the Rams needs a victory more. They kept saying the process--he wasnt making another move--the defender bumped into him and caused him to fall after the play was over. Even then he held on to the ball well after he had made contact with the ground.

I think that was the point--some top players don't go to the traditional powerhouse programs. Every top prospect is going to get recruited by many schools.

Our awful and lowly opponent is getting some press. Here is a nice article on the new coach. Again, I still don't like the fact that we are playing them, but I like having a game in Chicago and if they were truly all that was available, OK. Plus, as awful as they look right now, they won't be quite as bad the next couple of years. Heck, as of right now on Yahoo, they are getting more press then 300+ other teams. So, it is not all doom and gloom. http://collegebasketball.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=1125473

I just noticed another oddity CH ST. They only played 12 of their 32 games on their home floor. Again they were awful on the road--as bad as you can be, but at home they were 7-5. If they schedule this season (it isn't released yet) with 14 or 15 home games they might squeak out a couple more victories. Heck, they might get all way up to 300--25 points higher than Miss Valley state from last year. Also, they only average about 1300 people a game for their home games, so if we could travel well (if the Amtrak dream or any other mass road trip comes to fruition) we could essentially have a home crowd in Chicago. I for one will go the game one way or another. My cousin lives in Chi-town so I will have a place to crash.

No problem.

Well put. Welcome.

Just a side bar on Chicago State, they say they play in the Great West conference, but I can't find an independent sports page that lists them that way--they are lumped in with the rest of the Great West as independents. Does anyone know anything about why this is? Is the Great West not "official" with the NCAA or something?

I did some research on the Chicago St. Their RPI will be much better this year. I am not saying that it will be a good game for our RPI, but they won't be in the bottom 5 this year. Maybe only the bottom 50 or maybe only 100. They were almost as young as we were last year. Similar to us, they are returning almost everyone. They have their top 4 scorers back as well as their 6th. Plus they just brought in a Freshman who averaged 18pts and 12 boards a game in HS. Plus, they are playing in the South Padre Invitational--a tournament we would be lucky to play in and has much better teams in it than the Cancun Governer's Cup. It has BYU, Texas Tech, St. Mary's and Southern Florida--not bad. Some real NCAA expereince in that group. Point is, even if they lose every game in the Tourney it will probably still help their RPI by playing teams that have RPI's well under 100 and probably under 50, depending on how the brackets play out. Hopefully they can win just a road game or 2 or 3 next year to really help their RPI. They were 0-17 on the opponets' floor. That is why their RPI was so low. They did win 9 games, but 7 came at home and 3 were against non-D1 opponents. Several of their losses were pretty close, so with some improvement--who knows maybe they win 12 or 13 games this year. They also have a new coach so the Administration obviously wasn't happy with the results from last year and are making an effort to improve. Bottom line, as bad as the Home-Home with them the next 2 years looks on paper now, it may turn out not to be that awful after all.

I'll say it too. Even with the crazy, crazy, lucky-azz circus shots that they got to fall again and again, we still had a shot to win that game. What a great atomsphere that was. Hopefully, we have more than just a couple of those type of crowds this year.

Yeah, they did. They are still going to be very, very good. Probably back to the sweet 16 yet again. I hope they have a perfect ooc this year--as I do for for every A-10 team. They are still probably the best shot for the conference to go deep come the NCAA's, excluding a young and energized SLU team of course. Speaking of X, has anyone taken a look at their OOC schedule? holy crap. They are really pushing the envelope to get a good seed some tourney time. I guess if you are a top 15 team in the country every year that is what you do to stay there, but man it is like they are purposely saying to the rest of the country, watch out, we will play anyone anytime, bring it on. I wish more top teams scheduled like this. They start with Iowa--not a powerhouse program, but no cupcake at all. Then they play in a tourney with ALA, Seton Hall, Old Dominion, and Clemson--some very quality teams. Then they finally get a couple of lay-ups, but follow that with an unbelievable three game stretch--Butler, Wake Forest, and Gonzaga, in a row. That is crazy. After they survive that, they have one more lay-up and then Florida and Cincinnati back to back to finish their OOC. They will play at least 4 or 5 teams that will be/are ranked in the top 25 in their OOC. They are probably looking at conference play as their easier stretch of games. (Although, they start on the road at RI, not an easy game at all.) That is pretty impressive and what winning year after year will do for you as far as scheduling goes.

Thanks for the compilation. As I stated earlier, I think 25-5 is a very optimistic, yet real goal for this team. I just don't see anyting above that--if that means I don't have balls, so be it, I've been told worse. There is just no way we roll through conference without at least a few losses--the conference is just too good. Plus the odds of us winning every single "should" win game are very low. Things happen, players have off nights, foul trouble, injuries, opposing team is draining threes from half court left and right, etc. Dayton, Temple, RI, Richmond and of course X will all be in the post season. Charlotte was on the cusp most of last season unitl they fell flat in the last couple of weeks. the Dukies and La Salle are both on the border of being post-season teams. We always have problems with the Bonnies for some reason and UMASS is rebuilding and getting better. A split with both Dayton and X would be good and 4 out of 6 against the Dukies twice, RI, Charlotte, and @ Temple and Richmond would be real nice. Again assuming we win all of the other "should" win conference games that leaves us with only 4 conference losses and more than likely sitting in the top four with a buy in the first round of the tourney. For the OOC games that leaves just one loss--which again is not crazy to think about. The obvious loss is in Durham, but let's not just chalk that game up quite yet. The Bills will already be a atested squad by the time we head down south. As previously mentioned the Georgia game is going to be a monster and great barometer on how far Rick has brought this program as well as how the season should take shape. @ Portland is no picnic either. Hopefully we can continue the trend of winning on the road that was started last year. It seemed like before that every road game was an automatic loss. That is the true test of a good team--beating good teams in their house. After Duke, Jacksonville comes to us for good test and then the MSU game at their place, both of which we should win, but neither real easy--especially the latter. Cancun is a tourney we should win. Anything less than the finals will be a major disapointment. There are 5 legit possibilities for losses before conference starts. Hopefully we can keep that number to 2 or even less. I can't wait to see how it plays out.

Hilarious.

Sign me up. That would be a blast.

Excellent point--we are playing the Defending National Champs who just so happen to be one of, if not the best team over the last 20 years. We are playing Duke this year, not playing the kitties from columbia is of little consequence. Now I will disagree that we don't have a chance against Duke. Sure they have won something like 80 occ home games in a row, but every streak gets broken. For the record though, I would love to see us play them every year.

Excellent, excellent post. We were definitely good enough and more than should have been an NIT team last year. If we didn't have just one of our bad games early on especially the BG game, or had we actually beat IAST or ND or KM didn't get hurt, there would have been no way for them to keep us out. The point is, we have essentially the same cast as last year. Assuming KM, WR, CE, KC, CS, BC, and CR do not improve one bit from last year to this we should be at that same NIT level. Of course, that is not realistic as these guys were all still young last year and all made great strides with their games as the season progressed. Now throw 4 highly talented recruits, perhaps may be the best recruiting class in recent memory, into the mix and I think it is fair to say we will be better this year than last. Remember too, that last year three of these returning players that contributed a ton were freshman. Obviously, there are a zillion variables and things that could happen, but I for one am going to be very optimistic until the play on the court leads me think otherwise. I can't wait.

With that in mind then, we have to be spectacular to make the dance. 24-6 regular season and win at least one if not 2 games in the A-10 tourney. This would not allow any slip-ups in the games we "should" win. They are no longer "shoulds" but "musts." Only 6 losses would truly be an amazing season. Fingers crossed.

Since the schedule is released and predictions are being made... How many wins do we have to get to make the dance? If we go 20-10 in regular season and 1-1 in A-10 do we make it? Are 22 Regular season wins a lock?

5 total losses for the season, sweet sixteen, final four, undefeated national champions...I'm loving this stuff. The optimism is great. Now making it a reality...That will be fun. I'll stick with my 22-8 regular season (although I will truly be hoping for 25-5) 1-1 in A-10 1-1 in NCAA's total: 24-10

Good article. Very disapointing learning about the Seton Hall series. They should have taken that over any other game on our schedule. There isn't game better for the program than a home-home with a team like that. Let's hope and assume the offer came in late and committments were already made elsewhere. Seems a shame that we could have had SH but instead were stuck with CHST, TNST, and Rockhurst. No use whining about it now. The only thing that matters now is winning the games that we do have scheduled. As has been stated before this year's schedule is muchbatter than last year's with almost a 50 RPI point better average. Again, just win and everything else is moot.