Polls - 1/11/2016

[stever20]

Michigan State getting pounded by #16 Iowa 67-48 in the 2nd half. If MSU loses we are talking about Xavier and Villanova moving to the #4 & #5 spots in the Polls. The Big East keeps climbing.

1 thing could hurt that. West Virginia plays Oklahoma on Saturday. Even though they were #11/10 last week, if they beat Kansas and Oklahoma same week, with only 1 loss for the season(to Virginia so not a bad loss)- they could easily shoot up all the way to #1. #8 and #9 Duke/Miami lost this week. Maryland and Michigan St both lost as well. They would have handed Kansas and Oklahoma losses themselves this week. If WVU wins- I could see the ratings 1 WVU 2 UNC 3 Kansas 4 Oklahoma 5 Nova 6 Xavier. Even if WVU doesn't get #1, I could easily see WVU, UNC, Kansas, and Oklahoma all ahead of Nova/Xavier.

PC may benefit from this week though.

[DanofXav76]

Wow. Thanks for the knowledge Billy. I see that you have been around for a while. Impressive. Its awesome to see how loyal you have been to your program for so many years.

It's also exciting to share the board with people who know so much about the Big East.

Have you been to a game at the Dunk? He's a whippersnapper. Even myself in my advanced age am not an old PC fan. Our two message boards are run by guys who saw Jimmy Walker and Lenny Wilkens play. Old is almost a requirement to be able to tell the youngens we were once good. Hopefully this year we can retire the storytellers.

Two things:
1) An X win tomorrow is far from a given. Marquette seemingly improving by leaps and bounds every game now,it will be a battle with the Warriors home crowd revved up. So happy that Sumner has recovered and is a "go" for this game
2) After reading the above post I couldn't help but think back to my all time favorite Friar (and Buffalo Braves) player Ernie DeGregorio, otherwise known as Ernie D! I remember him making ridiculously long (at least 1/2 court) behind the back passes. Oh My!

[XUFan09]

Michigan State getting pounded by #16 Iowa 67-48 in the 2nd half. If MSU loses we are talking about Xavier and Villanova moving to the #4 & #5 spots in the Polls. The Big East keeps climbing.

1 thing could hurt that. West Virginia plays Oklahoma on Saturday. Even though they were #11/10 last week, if they beat Kansas and Oklahoma same week, with only 1 loss for the season(to Virginia so not a bad loss)- they could easily shoot up all the way to #1. #8 and #9 Duke/Miami lost this week. Maryland and Michigan St both lost as well. They would have handed Kansas and Oklahoma losses themselves this week. If WVU wins- I could see the ratings 1 WVU 2 UNC 3 Kansas 4 Oklahoma 5 Nova 6 Xavier. Even if WVU doesn't get #1, I could easily see WVU, UNC, Kansas, and Oklahoma all ahead of Nova/Xavier.

PC may benefit from this week though.

WVU could leap to top 5, but there's no way they would jump to #1. The polls just don't work like that.

[stever20]

Michigan State getting pounded by #16 Iowa 67-48 in the 2nd half. If MSU loses we are talking about Xavier and Villanova moving to the #4 & #5 spots in the Polls. The Big East keeps climbing.

1 thing could hurt that. West Virginia plays Oklahoma on Saturday. Even though they were #11/10 last week, if they beat Kansas and Oklahoma same week, with only 1 loss for the season(to Virginia so not a bad loss)- they could easily shoot up all the way to #1. #8 and #9 Duke/Miami lost this week. Maryland and Michigan St both lost as well. They would have handed Kansas and Oklahoma losses themselves this week. If WVU wins- I could see the ratings 1 WVU 2 UNC 3 Kansas 4 Oklahoma 5 Nova 6 Xavier. Even if WVU doesn't get #1, I could easily see WVU, UNC, Kansas, and Oklahoma all ahead of Nova/Xavier.

PC may benefit from this week though.

WVU could leap to top 5, but there's no way they would jump to #1. The polls just don't work like that.

I don't know if there's ever been a week where a team in the top 11 beat #1 and #2 in the same week though. The only one that I could see being possibly ahead of them is UNC. They would be ahead of Kansas and Oklahoma. And really don't see Nova/Xavier ahead of them.

[CoachK]

That was mentioned earlier in this thread as the greatest highlight in Pitt hoops history. That's the sad thing about Pitt... the best highlight isn't a National Championship, Final Four, National POY, or anything significant.

The dunk was by PF Jerome Lane. It was a February 1988 home game vs Providence. Pitt won easily by probably 25 points. This was our disaster year. Pitino left late Spring of 87, so in a rush we hired his assistant Gordie Chiesa, former Manhattan coach.

Chiesa was a brutal coach. It was a young team, which lost to graduation Billy Donovan, Pop Lewis and David Kipfer. Chiesa in 88 was awful to the players, terrible in coaching, just a disaster season following our 87 Final Four. Mid-season, our talented sophomore and future Celtic Marty Conlon quit the team. The locker room was in shambles. Incidentally, PC had two other draft picks on this team... Abdul Shamsid-Deen and future Jazz star Eric Murdoch. Anyway, at season's end, Chiesa was canned and Rick Barnes was hired to turn the program back around.

So, under that backdrop the Pitt Panthers hosted Providence in a Saturday afternoon game. Pitt bullied PC. The Friars had no chance. Maybe late first half Lane shattered the backboard. Raftery had the famous line "Send it in Jerome". Pitt won the game, and i had no problem with it because it was another step in dumping Chiesa, not to mention the game provided me with a 2 hour break from studying as i was a college sophomore that year.

Now, when you think about the great histories of so many teams in college basketball, usually successful teams are shown lifting trophies or cutting nets or the have a significant win, or player, or coach. Pitt, for all their success, has as their greatest highlight a busted backboard in a meaningless February game against a team that finished 8th in the conference.

P.S. As it usually happens with Pitt, they once again choked in the tourney in 1988. Pitt had earned a #2 seed, but lost in round 2 to Vanderbilt in overtime. In the 88 tourney, the BE standard bearers were the Villanova Wildcats, who lost in the Elite-8 to eventual runner up Oklahoma, in a game that VU led at the half and played great. On their run, they won gutsy games vs Illinois (VU was down I think 10 with 8 minutes left) in Round 2, then vs Kentucky under Eddie Sutton to make the Final-8. The seniors on the 88 Cats were freshmen in the 85 National Champion team, including Mark Plansky.

Anyway, that's my version of events from back 28 long years ago...!

Great rundown of that year and the "Send it in Jerome" game. My only dispute would be I could have sworn it was a Monday night ESPN "Big Monday" game. I was in M.S. at the time and pretty sure I was worried if I would be able to stay up to watch the whole game once they got the backboard fixed.

As a side note, I was at the Rick Pitino Basketball Camp the week he left for the Knicks. Got to know Chiesa a little bit, he used to ask trivia questions at lunch and I was pretty good at the time. At the end of the week, he asked me who the next coach of the Friars would be, and I said him. And the rest is history....
I think he was a good guy, and a very good basketball mind, but just wasn't ready to be a head coach, especially succeeding Rick Pitino in the Big East following a Final Four season. He had a good career as an assistant after that, spent a long time with the Utah Jazz, and then bounced around 2-3 other NBA teams as well.

[billyjack]

That was mentioned earlier in this thread as the greatest highlight in Pitt hoops history. That's the sad thing about Pitt... the best highlight isn't a National Championship, Final Four, National POY, or anything significant.

The dunk was by PF Jerome Lane. It was a February 1988 home game vs Providence. Pitt won easily by probably 25 points. This was our disaster year. Pitino left late Spring of 87, so in a rush we hired his assistant Gordie Chiesa, former Manhattan coach.

Chiesa was a brutal coach. It was a young team, which lost to graduation Billy Donovan, Pop Lewis and David Kipfer. Chiesa in 88 was awful to the players, terrible in coaching, just a disaster season following our 87 Final Four. Mid-season, our talented sophomore and future Celtic Marty Conlon quit the team. The locker room was in shambles. Incidentally, PC had two other draft picks on this team... Abdul Shamsid-Deen and future Jazz star Eric Murdoch. Anyway, at season's end, Chiesa was canned and Rick Barnes was hired to turn the program back around.

So, under that backdrop the Pitt Panthers hosted Providence in a Saturday afternoon game. Pitt bullied PC. The Friars had no chance. Maybe late first half Lane shattered the backboard. Raftery had the famous line "Send it in Jerome". Pitt won the game, and i had no problem with it because it was another step in dumping Chiesa, not to mention the game provided me with a 2 hour break from studying as i was a college sophomore that year.

Now, when you think about the great histories of so many teams in college basketball, usually successful teams are shown lifting trophies or cutting nets or the have a significant win, or player, or coach. Pitt, for all their success, has as their greatest highlight a busted backboard in a meaningless February game against a team that finished 8th in the conference.

P.S. As it usually happens with Pitt, they once again choked in the tourney in 1988. Pitt had earned a #2 seed, but lost in round 2 to Vanderbilt in overtime. In the 88 tourney, the BE standard bearers were the Villanova Wildcats, who lost in the Elite-8 to eventual runner up Oklahoma, in a game that VU led at the half and played great. On their run, they won gutsy games vs Illinois (VU was down I think 10 with 8 minutes left) in Round 2, then vs Kentucky under Eddie Sutton to make the Final-8. The seniors on the 88 Cats were freshmen in the 85 National Champion team, including Mark Plansky.

Anyway, that's my version of events from back 28 long years ago...!

Great rundown of that year and the "Send it in Jerome" game. My only dispute would be I could have sworn it was a Monday night ESPN "Big Monday" game. I was in M.S. at the time and pretty sure I was worried if I would be able to stay up to watch the whole game once they got the backboard fixed.

As a side note, I was at the Rick Pitino Basketball Camp the week he left for the Knicks. Got to know Chiesa a little bit, he used to ask trivia questions at lunch and I was pretty good at the time. At the end of the week, he asked me who the next coach of the Friars would be, and I said him. And the rest is history....
I think he was a good guy, and a very good basketball mind, but just wasn't ready to be a head coach, especially succeeding Rick Pitino in the Big East following a Final Four season. He had a good career as an assistant after that, spent a long time with the Utah Jazz, and then bounced around 2-3 other NBA teams as well.

Hey Coach, you're right, i just looked it up...!
Monday night game, January 25th 1988, Pitt won 90-56.
I'm losing my mind, and like another Friar fan said on the previous page, I'm still one of the younger precocious whippersnapper Friar fans. Yikes.

I'm just happy my Pitt-Vandy ot game story was correct.
Also, Villanova was up 7 at the half on Oklahoma, lost by 19.
Villanova was up 11 on Kentucky at the half, won by 6.
Illinois was beating Villanova by 10 at the half, lost by 3.

[scoscox]

Personally, I think the best three teams in the country right now might be WVU, OU, and Xavier. UNC won't live up to the hype and will fall off at some point. Villanova is tough to figure out mainly because of the 30 point drubbing against Xavier, but I think they're fairly vulnerable.

[stever20]

WVU will be interesting to see how high they jump this week after beating Kansas and losing to Oklahoma close. They may be top 5 with how things are going....

Saw WVU 1st team since I believe it was 1988 to play #1 and #2 in the same week like this.