NIT 32 A10 0

[Bay Area Billiken]

7 minutes ago, David King said:

Of course, Mizzou beat ranked Illinois, Kentucky, Arkansas, Iowa State, and Tennessee (twice), while also beating cupcake SIU-E by 25. Not sure how much their easy non-conference schedule had to do with their 7 seed in the NCAA tournament.

The Billikens can't afford to play too many cupcakes in the no-conference schedule, and when they do, they better kick a$$!

Kentucky, Arkansas, and Tennessee (x2) were SEC conference games.

Iowa State was part of the SEC-Big XII Challenge, so probably out of Mizzou Athletic Dept. control.

That leaves Illinois and a whole bake tray of cupcakes.  Mizzou got blown out at home by Kansas.

[brianstl]

2 hours ago, Bay Area Billiken said:

How many Mountain West games were against WCC teams, including Gonzaga and St. Mary’s? They play each other. 
 

The A10 has 15 teams. The Mountain West has only 11 teams. That fact affects the calculation and the narrative. 
 

 

Gonzaga played zero MWC teams.  St. Mary's played four.  The MWC played 21 games total. against the WCC. 

The A-10 played 17 against the AAC. The A10 also picked up 7 games against the Big East and the MWC had zero. 

Getting teams from other competitive conferences on the schedule isn't the A10's problem.  Not winning those games is the problem.  The A10 went 6-11 against the AAC.  With much smaller sample sizes the A-10 had losing records against the MWC 1-3.  You got to beat the conferences you are competing against for at large bids.

The NET is not a conspiracy against the A10 to help the MWC and WCC to steal bids that should go to the A10.

 

[JMM28]

12 minutes ago, Bay Area Billiken said:

I think both VCU and Dayton were NCAA Tourney caliber teams, and that both were undervalued by the NET.  Even with all the issues SLU had, I think SLU was an NIT caliber team, and also undervalued by the NET.

What I observed is virtually no traction in the NET could be made during conference season.  VCU finished with a NET of 53, made some strides in the NET, but not enough to have been picked as an NCAA At Large had it not snared the A10's automatic bid.  Dayton finished with NET of 78, which would have made the NIT cut.  SLU finished with NET of 99.

Contrast that SLU NET with SLU's RPI of 53.  Uh huh.

Dayton was a 70-90th ranked team in virtually every ranking system out there. The only top 100 wins they had were @VCU and v SLU. They set up a decent non-con schedule but lost every game that matters. 

The NET isn't a boogeyman when it comes to the A10 this year. The conference was bad as a whole. The pre-season top 2 teams, Dayton/SLU, flopped big time. 

[Lord Elrond]

14 minutes ago, Bay Area Billiken said:

The A10 really needs a NET consultant or consultants to figure out what it has done and is doing wrong.  Then the A10 needs to give guidance re scheduling to its schools, that need to follow the guidance. The MVC reportedly hired RPI consultants back in the day.  The Power 5 didn't like that the MVC "cracked the code."

I agree, that needs to happen immediately. Stu Durango got quotes from both Travis Ford and Mike Rhodes saying that neither of them could figure out what was going on with the NET. This needs to happen right now, before the non-conference schedules are finalized. 

[brianstl]

18 minutes ago, Bay Area Billiken said:

I think both VCU and Dayton were NCAA Tourney caliber teams, and that both were undervalued by the NET.  Even with all the issues SLU had, I think SLU was an NIT caliber team, and also undervalued by the NET.

What I observed is virtually no traction in the NET could be made during conference season.  VCU finished with a NET of 53, made some strides in the NET, but not enough to have been picked as an NCAA At Large had it not snared the A10's automatic bid.  Dayton finished with NET of 78, which would have made the NIT cut.  SLU finished with NET of 99.

Contrast that SLU NET with SLU's RPI of 53.  Uh huh.

Dayton had one win to hang their hat on this year @VCU outside of that no wins to impress the NCAA committee. They weren't good.  SLU had more impressive wins than Dayton.  SLU's problem is they had far more ugly losses.  Neither was anywhere close to an NCAA team this season.

[Soderball]

31 minutes ago, Bay Area Billiken said:

I think both VCU and Dayton were NCAA Tourney caliber teams, and that both were undervalued by the NET.  Even with all the issues SLU had, I think SLU was an NIT caliber team, and also undervalued by the NET.

What I observed is virtually no traction in the NET could be made during conference season.  VCU finished with a NET of 53, made some strides in the NET, but not enough to have been picked as an NCAA At Large had it not snared the A10's automatic bid.  Dayton finished with NET of 78, which would have made the NIT cut.  SLU finished with NET of 99.

Contrast that SLU NET with SLU's RPI of 53.  Uh huh.

VCU Sagarin rating was 45. Enough to be a bubble team. SLU 88 Sagarin, NIT bubble.

Under the net neither was a bubble for anything. RPI might be over-generous, but NET is straight up robbery of the conference.

[brianstl]

13 minutes ago, Lord Elrond said:

I agree, that needs to happen immediately. Stu Durango got quotes from both Travis Ford and Mike Rhodes saying that neither of them could figure out what was going on with the NET. This needs to happen right now, before the non-conference schedules are finalized. 

The schedule wasn't the problem with the net.  Not winning enough, not winning  big enough and getting hammered by bad and average teams was the problem.  Their isn't much for Travis to figure out.  It is simple.  Have a better basketball team.

If the powers that be at SLU are really buying this "we are getting screwed by the NET" BS and think we actually have been better than what everyone thinks, we have big problems.  The NET isn't the problem.  Not being a good enough basketball team on a consistent basis is the problem.  Worrying about the NET isn't going to fix anything.  It will only allow the real problems to get worse.

[Lord Elrond]

3 minutes ago, brianstl said:

The schedule wasn't the problem with the net.  Not winning enough, not winning  big enough and getting hammered by bad and average teams was the problem.  Their isn't much for Travis to figure out.  It is simple.  Have a better basketball team.

If the powers that be at SLU are really buying this "we are getting screwed by the NET" BS and think we actually have been better than what everyone thinks, we have big problems.  The NET isn't the problem.  Not being a good enough basketball team on a consistent basis is the problem.  Worrying about the NET isn't going to fix anything.  It will only allow the real problems to get worse.

While I agree we didn’t win the games we should have won, even with those losses we still ended up ranked 53 with RPI, 99 with NET.  The RPI was still probably not enough to get us in with all the automatic qualifiers, but it brought us closer than the NET.  We designed our schedule to maximize RPI, we need to understand exactly how to schedule based upon the NET.  Any advantage to get us in the NCAA tournament should be used, I see nothing wrong with looking at scheduling as one component of that.

[Slu let the dogs out?]

1 hour ago, David King said:

Of course, Mizzou beat ranked Illinois, Kentucky, Arkansas, Iowa State, and Tennessee (twice), while also beating cupcake SIU-E by 25. Not sure how much their easy non-conference schedule had to do with their 7 seed in the NCAA tournament.

The Billikens can't afford to play too many cupcakes in the no-conference schedule, and when they do, they better kick a$$!

Call me paranoid but even if we were to take the same approach Mizzou did and fill our non-conference schedule with teams in the 200-350 range, the committee would probably use it against us. 

The downside to filling your non-conference schedule with 12 IUPUIs is you actually have to beat all 12 and beat them by a wide margin. There is no margin for error against the SIUEs.  By filling your non-con with 12 St. Francis Brooklyn's you sacrifice Q1/Q2 non-conference opportunities and with the way things have been going in the A10, they aren't going to present you with many Q1/Q2 games during conference play. You must also take care of business in those games and that is something this program has been incapable of doing for years (see: our record vs Dayton, VCU, Davidson, etc. the past 5+ year). Our non-conference record is irrelevant if we continually finish 4th-6th in a 1-2 bid league. 

Bottom line is that this team needs to start producing. Whether it's a Q1 game against Saint Mary's or a Q4 game against Saint Francis, this program needs to start producing. 

[DeSmetBilliken]

6 minutes ago, brianstl said:

The schedule wasn't the problem with the net.  Not winning enough, not winning  big enough and getting hammered by bad and average teams was the problem.  Their isn't much for Travis to figure out.  It is simple.  Have a better basketball team.

If the powers that be at SLU are really buying this "we are getting screwed by the NET" BS and think we actually have been better than what everyone thinks, we have big problems.  The NET isn't the problem.  Not being a good enough basketball team on a consistent basis is the problem.  Worrying about the NET isn't going to fix anything.  It will only allow the real problems to get worse.

Exactly. Our non-conference schedule wasn’t bad. The problem was that we didn’t win enough meaningful games to have a good NET. Sure, we beat Memphis and Providence, but we lost to Iona (badly), Maryland (badly), Boise State, and Auburn. The reality was that to be an at-large team in down year for the A10 like this year was, you probably had to win 3 or 4 of those, and avoid the SIUE loss. Instead, we lost all 4 of those and SIUE. It’s just what happens when your conference schedule gives you 5 games out of 20 against teams in the top 100. Also, out of those 5, we got 1 win.

It’s not a NET issue. It’s a not winning important games issue.

[JMM28]

2 minutes ago, Lord Elrond said:

We designed our schedule to maximize RPI,

RPI hasn't been used in 5 years. NET has been around 5 years. The ol "We don't know what matters in the NET!" is insulting to the fanbase. Hire people who do. 

[Lord Elrond]

1 minute ago, JMM28 said:

RPI hasn't been used in 5 years. NET has been around 5 years. The ol "We don't know what matters in the NET!" is insulting to the fanbase. Hire people who do. 

By that measure, VCU needs to fire their Head Coach, he was quoted right after this years A10 tournament as saying he couldn’t figure the NET out.

[Bay Area Billiken]

42 minutes ago, JMM28 said:

Dayton was a 70-90th ranked team in virtually every ranking system out there. The only top 100 wins they had were @VCU and v SLU. They set up a decent non-con schedule but lost every game that matters. 

The NET isn't a boogeyman when it comes to the A10 this year. The conference was bad as a whole. The pre-season top 2 teams, Dayton/SLU, flopped big time. 

SLU:  RPI (the former metric used) 53;  NET 99.

The boogeyman was in the building.

[slufan13]

Conspiracy season is my favorite part of the off-season 

[Bay Area Billiken]

5 minutes ago, JMM28 said:

RPI hasn't been used in 5 years. NET has been around 5 years. The ol "We don't know what matters in the NET!" is insulting to the fanbase. Hire people who do. 

The NET keeps being tweaked by the NCAA for its Power 5 overlords. No one in this fanbase should be insulted if the NET remains a mystery.  Some parts of the schedules are made years ahead, such as contracted return visits on home and homes.

My request is for The Wiz to weigh in on this if he's reading.  My understanding is the old 10 point cap on wins under the NET was abolished, with no margin of victory cap baked into the "efficiency" component.  I'm not even certain the exact NET formula has even made public.  It someone is aware, provide a link.  

[Bay Area Billiken]

3 minutes ago, slufan13 said:

Conspiracy season is my favorite part of the off-season 

As has been said before, facts are not conspiracies.

But those spewing a narrative are quick to dismiss facts as conspiracies.

[TheA_Bomb]

4 minutes ago, Bay Area Billiken said:

SLU:  RPI (the former metric used) 53;  NET 99.

The boogeyman was in the building.

Refs were probably point shaving in that SIUE, Boise St, Richmond,  VCU game too.

[slufan13]

1 minute ago, Bay Area Billiken said:

As has been said before, facts are not conspiracies.

But those spewing a narrative are quick to dismiss facts as conspiracies.

What fact? Looking at the RPI and saying the NET is screwing SLU is like looking at 3 point % and saying Arenado isn't a good hitter

[Bay Area Billiken]

9 minutes ago, Lord Elrond said:

By that measure, VCU needs to fire their Head Coach, he was quoted right after this years A10 tournament as saying he couldn’t figure the NET out.

Two coaches, from VCU and SLU, basically said that.

I doubt VCU fans are "insulted" that their coach said that.

[slufan13]

4 years ago we were on this board talking about SLU running up the score in a game against Duquesne because the margin of victory would help our efficiency ratings and then last week our head coach is befuddled about efficiency being a part of the NET. The man has an excuse for all his failures 

[Bay Area Billiken]

3 minutes ago, slufan13 said:

What fact? Looking at the RPI and saying the NET is screwing SLU is like looking at 3 point % and saying Arenado isn't a good hitter

Where was the word "screwing" used?  

Your analogy is incoherent.  

 

[Lord Elrond]

5 minutes ago, Bay Area Billiken said:

The NET keeps being tweaked by the NCAA for its Power 5 overlords. No one in this fanbase should be insulted if the NET remains a mystery.  Some parts of the schedules are made years ahead, such as contracted return visits on home and homes.

My request is for The Wiz to weigh in on this if he's reading.  My understanding is the old 10 point cap on wins under the NET was abolished, with no margin of victory cap baked into the "efficiency" component.  I'm not even certain the exact NET formula has even made public.  It someone is aware, provide a link.  

The NET, as far as I know, remains proprietary with the NCAA. While they have released parts of it, I haven’t seen where they have released it all. While that may be fine to not know how a rating service (like Sagarin) figures things, the NET is stated by the NCAA as something they use. We need to understand it as well as we can to gain every advantage we can. I don’t see anything wrong with looking at everything possible to advance your program as much as possible.

[Slu let the dogs out?]

1 hour ago, Bay Area Billiken said:

Kentucky, Arkansas, and Tennessee (x2) were SEC conference games.

Iowa State was part of the SEC-Big XII Challenge, so probably out of Mizzou Athletic Dept. control.

That leaves Illinois and a whole bake tray of cupcakes.  Mizzou got blown out at home by Kansas.

Do those wins not count as Q1 wins? Surely we wouldn't dismiss Q1 wins over VCU (if we could actually beat them) in making a case for an at-large bid. Mizzou took care of business during their cupcake tour but they also won enough games that mattered in conference play. Wish I could say the same for Ford. and Co.

[Bay Area Billiken]

Just now, slufan13 said:

4 years ago we were on this board talking about SLU running up the score in a game against Duquesne because the margin of victory would help our efficiency ratings and then last week our head coach is befuddled about efficiency being a part of the NET. The man has an excuse for all his failures 

Is VCU going to fire Paul Rhodes for this apparent befuddlement?  Are VCU fans calling for his ouster?

[JMM28]

3 minutes ago, Bay Area Billiken said:

Two coaches, from VCU and SLU, basically said that.

I doubt VCU fans are "insulted" that their coach said that.

No one said fire the coaches. But you have to have people on staff that understand this and other advanced metrics.

NET isn't the end all be all of this either. The committee uses net as a tool. Quad 1-2 wins are important. Bad losses are important. SLU had 3 good wins and 3 bad losses. Definition of an average team. Going to play @Auburn and losing close is better in the committee eyes than winning at home over a team like Loyola. Margin of victory and the advanced metrics come into play. Each team within ear shot of an at large (SLU wasn't this year) has a dossier of their season distributed in the various meetings. 

Saying "But the RPI!" is about as useful as saying "But this pitcher led MLB in wins! Why isn't he the cy young winner!"