Old guy

The oil rig?

In truth he played better against St. Francis than I expected.

OK, it appears to work fine.

Oh no, I fully agree that we need to be at our best, or close to it, in every single game.

You did not say it in words but you implied it in posts that appears to concede the win to N. Florida. Just to set the record straight, the following is the current stat comparison between NFLA and SLU from team rankings. We are currently ranked by them at 129, NFLA at 115 and as we have discussed in this board before, the higher the numerical ranking the greater the margin of error in the rankings. I think we are pretty even, at least as far as the stats and rankings go. Offensive Stat Comparison Stat NFLA / STL Points/Game 86.7 / 77.0 Avg Score Margin +2.0 / +14.3 Assists/Game 17.3 / 15.0 Total Rebounds/Gm 31.0 / 36.0 Effective FG % 60.3% / 52.6% Off Rebound % 17.0% / 19.5% FTA/FGA 0.216 / 0.660 Turnover % 11.3% / 14.4% Defensive Stat Comparison Stat NFLA / STL Opp Points/Game 84.7 / 62.7 Opp Effective FG % 51.7% / 43.8% Off Rebounds/Gm 5.7 / 5.7 Def Rebounds/Gm 24.0 / 27.0 Blocks/Game 5.3 / 4.3 Steals/Game 4.0 / 5.3 Personal Fouls/Gm 18.3 / 22.0

Sulfan 13 why do you think N Florida is so superior to SLU?

All we have to do is to wait until Tuesday night and we will see what actually happens.

If you were the coach at St. Francis how would you have handled this game with SLU last night Wiz? The way they did it was by double teaming our top scorers (Crawford and Yacoubou), playing a very physical game, and emphasizing 3 pt. shooting. I would say that we were not really ready for this early on in the game, worse for us my feeling is that the SLU players entered the game in a very overconfident state and were surprised by St. Francis. Be what it may we managed which is what a good team is supposed to do, and they fell apart in the last few minutes of the game (most of our point margin of winning was made at the end), which is what bad teams do (and we did just that last year). As an example of what I am talking about North Florida played a great first half in their recent game against Louisville, only to be butchered by Louisville in the second half. I am glad we are moving forward, and assume our B- standing has become firmer after last night's game. By the way Teamranking for the first time is giving SLU a minor advantage over North Florida for Tuesday's game. I think this is positive.

Teamrankings got us up to 128 after last night and for the first time has given up a projected possible win against North Florida.

Wow!

OK my turn. I was there, attendance was poor but not terrible. What can I say/, those guys were playing a physical game and, at least initially, we were not. Got swamped over by them, also they had some almost magical 3 point shooters that we could not counter in the first half. In the second half things were different we neutralized some of their guys that were causing harm, but they got others from the bench that could also shoot 3s. On our side, Milik and Miles were the best on our side, both in FGs and FTs. Ash was OK but could not sink a FT to save his life. Jolly did surprisingly well, and Gillman did not do so bad either, Neufeld was a let down, they could block him easily. I enjoyed seeing Bishop play and make a 3 pointer at the end of the first half. A lot of the game was furballs of people fighting for the ball and the referees calls were erratic at times. Despite all, we managed to keep calm and composed and plinked away to establish a lead in the second half which was maintained. I have no access to the stats at this moment but we played better than they did in the second half and they got o lot more fouls than we did. In the last 5 or 6 minutes they started getting desperate and out lead grew. We ended the game with Eagelton and Hines playing, nice to see that. And, as the Wiz predicted they almost won by 17 (we did win by 16 actually). I have heard it said that a team tends to play to match the opposing team. If this is true we played at their level a good portion of the game and they played at ours. The balance was restored at the end of the game and we won. I enjoyed it. .

In other words 3 star, you think SLU is going to have a real uphill battle against Louisville, to say the least.

Wiz, this is exactly the point. You could make a hypothetical ranking accuracy curve with the accuracy decreasing linearly or exponentially as the ranking number increases. Therefore, the first 10 are OK, then it gets iffy. By the time you are around 100 accuracy is not good, at the mid 200s accuracy goes out the window. What I am trying to say is that an official ranking at 130 has a broad margin of error, and the margin increases as the ranking increases.

Wiz, your questions directly address the subjectivity (lack of objectivity) in the official ranking procedures.

Dwayne's_World, you are always the optimist

As for my prior post, I totally agreed with the Wiz that both the rankings and the letter scales used are loose in the beginning of the season but after the results of actual play roll in they become increasingly accurate. No need to get upset about this, we are doing OK so far. Neither St. Francis nor us will have the same ranking or letter grade throughout all the season.

PNLU DII school, PacWest conference, verbal commits states players star rating average is 2.052. How this can be applied to an evaluation and comparo with a DI school I do not know.

Team Rankings has SLU at 133 currently, SIUE at 305, St. Francis at 272, and Hartford at 285. Using your scale above SLU is a B-, SIUE F+, St. Francis D-, and Hartford F+. Rankings do not mean anything real, they are just a way to sort results of statistical calculations and weightings. Everyone has a different system. it is interesting that according to your scale and using Team Rankings numerical rankings we come at B-, just like the Wiz said.

Thinking about Reynolds and Bartley with Bartley becoming more active as the season progresses, I would like to point out that we have Bishop who should optimally be getting his feet wet this season. I think this kid has a lot of potential and would like to see him getting some playing experience this year.

The problem is that his foot was not broken he had and inflammatory disease which was not made clear in detail. Inflammatory conditions can and do recur when the affected site is placed under stress (as in a foot while playing basketball). If this is the case there may be problems with Bartley. Broken bones heal, inflammatory diseases are not the same. We will see

OK Wiz, I think the SIUE team played a good game and they had good players. I think their coach is capable. I know there is the small matter of the stats, but why a D+ for them? We won by 10, road trip, not bad. Our bigs were not up to par. What do you see going forward?

My turn. We won, we won by 10. Not pretty but we won. The game was completely different than what we have played before, faster much more penetration. FTs were pretty bad, the bigs were not great (to be kind). A number of players deserve praise: Yacoubou, Crawford, Yarborough, Reynolds, and I think Reggie. We played much better with Reggie in than with the other bigs. Reynolds, Crawford, Yarbororough, and Yacoubou were much better than I imagined they would be. SIUE a D+ team? perhaps statistically they are, but man alive they could play and push and that 30 year old African grad student was like an Abrams tank, just massive and capable. Carr was great and so was Elik. They play much better than D+ I think. However we played better than they did, in the first half we did better in rebounds and turnovers (have not seen stats yet), the second half was tighter. We won and I am happy. We will see what the future brings

As you pointed out Bonwich, the rebranding process was started by Biondi, the shame for choosing talent out of town is his.

I agree, Tatum was given the support a godfather should give, he made his own choice. Larry is a fine guy.

Amen