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The Bills Road to The Dance


The Wiz

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Not sure what all the chicken talk is about  but looking at the standings we are in a virtual tie with 3 other teams for 1st place all with 1 loss. Mason leads by a 1/2 game because they have played 1 more game then everyone else. We have just finished a 5-1 stretch in conference......there are 12 games left...If we have 2 more 5-1 stretches then we finish at 15-3....and according to the original post puts us in a good position to Dance.

In the original post , there was the disclaimer . that there still are a lot of games to go and that many of them will be close and that if something goes wrong you can lose. Tonight was a good example ....23 TOs and 10% from the 3P line...it doesn't go much more wrong than that ...yet we lost by only 4 with a number of chances to catch Duq.  at the end.  So when you have one of your worst nights and lose by 4 , there is hope.

Also a key to the rest of the season is parity....the chance to win every game remaining...I am not saying we are going to win every game...just that we have the chance to win every game...we should be favored in most of the remaining games and the ones we are not  favored will be close. There are no automatic losses.

The rest of the season  will be a long and winding road with little room for error..... but it is far from over.

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8 hours ago, The Wiz said:

Not sure what all the chicken talk is about  but looking at the standings we are in a virtual tie with 3 other teams for 1st place all with 1 loss. Mason leads by a 1/2 game because they have played 1 more game then everyone else. We have just finished a 5-1 stretch in conference......there are 12 games left...If we have 2 more 5-1 stretches then we finish at 15-3....and according to the original post puts us in a good position to Dance.

In the original post , there was the disclaimer . that there still are a lot of games to go and that many of them will be close and that if something goes wrong you can lose. Tonight was a good example ....23 TOs and 10% from the 3P line...it doesn't go much more wrong than that ...yet we lost by only 4 with a number of chances to catch Duq.  at the end.  So when you have one of your worst nights and lose by 4 , there is hope. 

Also a key to the rest of the season is parity....the chance to win every game remaining...I am not saying we are going to win every game...just that we have the chance to win every game...we should be favored in most of the remaining games and the ones we are not  favored will be close. There are no automatic losses.

The rest of the season  will be a long and winding road with little room for error..... but it is far from over.

Exactly ! It's amazing how quickly everyone is to call it. Bills lost one conference game, on the road.(albeit in hard-to-swallow fashion) There is plenty of play to go, and we have our biggest conference games ahead of us. I could see The Billikens winning every remaining home game, and dropping 1-2 more road games. We'd be in okay shape if we make a decent run in the tourney on top of that.

 

Too bad we don't host The Dukes in Chaifetz later in the season, THAT would be a fun game.

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9 hours ago, The Wiz said:

Not sure what all the chicken talk is about  but looking at the standings we are in a virtual tie with 3 other teams for 1st place all with 1 loss. Mason leads by a 1/2 game because they have played 1 more game then everyone else. We have just finished a 5-1 stretch in conference......there are 12 games left...If we have 2 more 5-1 stretches then we finish at 15-3....and according to the original post puts us in a good position to Dance.

In the original post , there was the disclaimer . that there still are a lot of games to go and that many of them will be close and that if something goes wrong you can lose. Tonight was a good example ....23 TOs and 10% from the 3P line...it doesn't go much more wrong than that ...yet we lost by only 4 with a number of chances to catch Duq.  at the end.  So when you have one of your worst nights and lose by 4 , there is hope.

Also a key to the rest of the season is parity....the chance to win every game remaining...I am not saying we are going to win every game...just that we have the chance to win every game...we should be favored in most of the remaining games and the ones we are not  favored will be close. There are no automatic losses.

The rest of the season  will be a long and winding road with little room for error..... but it is far from over.

To me the goal, even after last night, remains to finish in the top 4 of the conference, getting the bye in the tourney.  It is apparent that their is a lot of parity in the A10.  To me, we need to realize that the odds of a one bid league are real and growing every week.  Today there are 7 one or two loss teams.  St.Bonnie is lurking with three.  Saving that one game could be huge.

billiken_roy, Zink and slufan13 like this
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20 minutes ago, RIP HUMPS said:

We do. March 6th

Thanks for pointing that out, I guess I was only seeing games through February. I'll chalk that up as a botched first post on my part. 

Thinking the Billikens will be out for blood in that one, especially after the "overrated" chants during last nights game. Hopefully we're heathier by then. 

RIP HUMPS indeed.

 

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2 minutes ago, slu72 said:

Did anyone really think we weren't going to stumble somewhere down the line to a lesser team? It happens to just about every team unless they're named Duke. 

sure, doesnt mean im happy about it. 

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1 hour ago, HoosierPal said:

To me the goal, even after last night, remains to finish in the top 4 of the conference, getting the bye in the tourney.  It is apparent that their is a lot of parity in the A10.  To me, we need to realize that the odds of a one bid league are real and growing every week.  Today there are 7 one or two loss teams.  St.Bonnie is lurking with three.  Saving that one game could be huge.

Good post, but I think the Bills' goal is still to win the conference regular season, and it's still doable.

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1 hour ago, The Wiz said:

Last night's game was an outlier.  We will be favored in that next Duq game by 6-9 pts.....if we come in with a chip on our shoulder ....we could win by double digits.

The problem is SLU has no margin for outliers, not with this new NET system and being in the 2019 A10.

SLU should have won that Duquesne game, probably wins it 7 or 8 times out of 10. 

We are going to the Portland at USF (CA) WCC game tonight in SF.  I like USF, which has a real basketball team this season, but SLU and USF, two fellow Jesuit universities, may unwittingly be competing for the same precious NCAA At Large bid.  So it's a double edged sword for me.  When push comes to shove, of course, I'm for the Alma Mater.

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The problem with banking on the conference tournament, is we don't really have the kind of roster needed to win 3 games in three days. We have four guys that average more than 29 mpg and we don't score enough points to generate big enough leads to give those guys more rest than they are getting.

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28 minutes ago, brianstl said:

The problem with banking on the conference tournament, is we don't really have the kind of roster needed to win 3 games in three days. We have four guys that average more than 29 mpg and we don't score enough points to generate big enough leads to give those guys more rest than they are getting.

We have at least as good a chance of that as we do winning all of our remaining games (or whatever magical number we need for an at large bid.)

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44 minutes ago, Billiken Rich said:

We have at least as good a chance of that as we do winning all of our remaining games (or whatever magical number we need for an at large bid.)

That is almost certainly the case as a top 4 seed implies at least a 12.5% (1 in 8 ) chance of winning the tournament. Our chances of only losing 1 or 2 of the remaining 12 conference games has to be less than 12.5% at this point.

Nevertheless, why talk about winning the conference tournament as the only route to the dance at this point? Why not focus on what it takes to get an at-large and only when that is out of the picture, start worrying about winning the conference tourney.

 

I'm optimistic by nature so today I'm going to choose the optimistic path and point out that while February is going to be really tough, George Mason recently won at both Rhode Island and Dayton, so it can be done. 

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