Matty Light

When your Power 5 alma mater offers you the job you take it. We didn't really have a chance to keep Romar.

It would be an interesting marketing experiment to have a mid major play in tournament. You have the 4 best mid majors on the outside of the field play a 4 team tourney for a 12 seed in the bracket. This would expand the field to 71 teams and guarantee a Last 4 in spot for the 1st round. It also would be the hottest mid major team. It would make the 5 and 4 seed vulnerable to make the Sweet 16. It would essentially shift a bid from Power 6 to a Mid major but would add 3 interesting games. In order to work the Mid Major conferences would have to move up their tournaments to coincide with Arch Madness. It seems there could be TV money to be made this way, though.

Baldwin down with a bad injury. That may be tough to come back from.

He was also my favorite to hate along with Denny Crum.

Blue Streak! https://tenor.com/search/blue-streak-gifs

Are these guys that should be getting significant NIL money or no? It would make sense that the portal has two tiers: one consisting of NIL worthy players and everyone else in the other. I would expect Tier 1 guys to take longer to sign as they field competing offers. The Tier 2 guys make sense to sign quickly and get that scholly. College is expensive!

You're right. If the A10 getting only one bid is not a single anomaly, but rather a harbinger of things to come moving to the MVC would finally be a prudent move (for all those MBMs yearning for a return to the MVC). It is better to be a big fish in a small pound than a medium fish in a larger pond filled with medium and small fish. I still believe this is a 1 year anomoly but time will tell.

Yeah, I think if you are going to take buy games on the road you would rather the play the teams from conferences with the highest SOS--mainly the Big 12 and Big 10. We should be asking Porter Moser for slot at Norman. Call Fred Hoiberg at Nebraska. I think we took a buy game at Minnesota a few years ago. We didn't win but it didn't hurt us and if you win some of those games you get a Quad 1 or 2 win which seems super important in this system. Plus the additional revenue has to be nice.

It's intetesting that of the underclassman on the 2021 Billikens, only 2 guys transferred (Russell and Bell) and are both playing in the Big Dance. Everyone who stayed are still on the outside looking in. Two other guys stayed one more year. Lorentsson is at Toledo averaging 2.5 pts a game on around 8 minutes a game. Markhi Strickland is playing at a rinky dink juco in Texas where he stinks at free throws and threes. Remember how much many members of the board wanted him to play? That happened!

It really was as good a schedule. It makes you wonder where we would've ended up if we had beaten Auburn, Boise St, and Edwardsville. The opportunity seemed there.

In the end we were arguably the 2nd best team in the conference. A couple teams were as good but only VCU was better. A lot better. Historically 2nd best in conference got you a at large bid. This year the conference was too weak to warrant multiple bids. The reason was SLU and Dayton underperformed in the nonconference season along with virtually the entire conference. SLU and Dayton were actually the big reasons for their own demise. Not the conference. I think we will see a resumption of 2 or 3 bids in this conference. The problem is competing with the Mountain West now. The A10s loss has been their gain.

Is anybody feeling just a bit of joy for Jimmy Bell Jr making the Tournament or does Bob Huggins' stink make that difficult?

Was it because she pronounces AC/DC as Ackadacka?

I'm afraid I agree completely with you.

We also beat Providence and Drake. Are you hoping they can be Cinderellas?

Now that the Big Dance field has been revealed, who are you pulling for? Among the teams with a shot at winning, I am pulling for UCLA, due to a personal connection to Tyga Campbell's father. The team I am most invested with SLU out of the picture are the Iowa Hawkeyes, mostly because of a personal connection with Kris Murray. I hope VCU does well to at least represent the A10 as our best. Who does Billiken Nation have the feels for? Your grad school, local state U? Let's hear who's got you excited for this week.

Also, the two bad Rams losses to Temple and Jacksonville were Ace's 2nd and 3rd games back, just two weeks after having a screw put in his broken wrist. The losses to Memphis and Arizona State happened while Ace was out.

I don't know. If VCU loses by a point in a good looking game, they could possibly be considered. The Selection Committee has always said the metrics are just one tool at their disposal. They also claim they select the best teams to play and not the most deserving teams. They also always claim how you are playing at the end of the season matters. VCU has won 16 of their last 18 and looked impressive doing it. Plus ratings = dollars. Wouldn't you rather see Ace Baldwin than some jabroni from Liberty?

This game is so uninteresting my eyes have wandered to the TV in the pub showing Mexico-Colombia WBC game.

I wish we could get an international big man who can start right away. We are going to struggle to get any offensive production from the 4 and 5 spot next year otherwise.

Is Parker-Hughes-Hargrove expexted to be our core next season?

This team is as outmached by VCU as the 98 Billikens were by Kentucky.

Big hole now. Got to get it back down to 5 by the 10 minute mark.

For as great as Baldwin has been, he only has 3 more points than Pickett. Who would have expected that?

That day off isn't looking too hot for our effort today.