Welcome to The Holy Land of Hoops

Hey guys.

Hoy cow...this is turning into a horse race.

The favs-both in the Top 10 nationally (Villanova and Xavier) are leading at the first turn...with good ole Georgetown holding position. The 2 other ranked frontrunner picks (Providence and Butler) have fallen off the pace a bit and back into the pack. Seton Hall and Marquette are still in the mix. Both Depaul and St Johns are bringing up the rear with the possibility of being spoilers on a given day. Down the back stretch I expect the big 4, G'twn, SH, and the Warriors to beat each other up and make a mess of the standings...typical BE brawl in the backstretch. A long way to go, but a very promising race indeed.

oh, I almost forgot little Creighton. Jays are sitting pretty in 3rd place/4-2 in the conference, exceeding most expectations.

Looks like Coach Mac will scurry down to Coney Island or other suitable place and shoot ducks over the next few weeks: Butler, G'twn, and Seton Hall. He visits Philly give a shooting clinic on the 3rd of Feb, then back to the duck shoots - DePaul, Xavier, and Marquette. Should prove to be a great backstretch for the Bluejays.





Looking forward to an (continued) exciting conference race.

Luv ya,
gtmoBlue

It's Nova, Xavier, and everyone else. I expect those two to have at most 2 losses heading into the BET and everyone else will beat each other up. I also don't think the league sends more than 4 teams to the dance.

chopper wrote:It's Nova, Xavier, and everyone else. I expect those two to have at most 2 losses heading into the BET and everyone else will beat each other up. I also don't think the league sends more than 4 teams to the dance.

You are who you are by comparison. Fact is that many leagues are full of mediocre flotsam and jetsam. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAC has only one team lower than 60 in RPI. Big 10 is full of pedestrian teams. A10 is terrible. SEC is weak. ACC has a bunch of garbage past the first 4-5 teams. The Committee needs to somehow come up with 36 at large teams and the Big East has 5 in the top 45 RPI. it's hard to see a 6th team making it right now unless a Marquette, Georgetown or Creighton win the Big East Tourney, but since there is very little else to choose from, the league should be safe with at least 5.

Masterofreality wrote:

chopper wrote:It's Nova, Xavier, and everyone else. I expect those two to have at most 2 losses heading into the BET and everyone else will beat each other up. I also don't think the league sends more than 4 teams to the dance.

You are who you are by comparison. Fact is that many leagues are full of mediocre flotsam and jetsam. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAC has only one team lower than 60 in RPI. Big 10 is full of pedestrian teams. A10 is terrible. SEC is weak. ACC has a bunch of garbage past the first 4-5 teams. The Committee needs to somehow come up with 36 at large teams and the Big East has 5 in the top 45 RPI. it's hard to see a 6th team making it right now unless a Marquette, Georgetown or Creighton win the Big East Tourney, but since there is very little else to choose from, the league should be safe with at least 5.

All it would take is a Seton Hall loss or two- and they're out.

Right now here are the RPI
Nova 2
Xavier 3
PC 30
Seton Hall 41
Butler 46
Marquette 96
Creighton 100
Georgetown 103
DePaul 162
St John's 198

Seton Hall, Butler, and PC all have work to do. It's possible all 3 get in, but it's just as possible that only 2 of the 3 get in.

My predictions earlier in early number were that 6-7 teams from the B.E were making the tourney. But I had no idea that Xavier and Villanova would be so dominant early on. I thought there was going to be more parity between the top five teams.

Right now I see 4-5 bids coming out of the Big East... If we can somehow squeeze Seton Hall into the tourney it would be a fantastic year. Obviously I think Nova, X, Prov, and Butler are safely in. The question is whether Seton Hall will pull off a few more upsets to get that bid.

Would not call PC a front runner pick. They were picked quite low in many preseason polls, both formal and informal. Most considered them a bubble team at best which could turn out to be the case.

Unless you meant front runners right when BE play started, in which case I'd agree.

The Friars are still a young team, with only 2 upperclassmen with Dunn and Lomomba. The rest of the team is made of sophomores and freshmen, so there will be games that they can't shoot, or screw up on defense, and just have off-games. This is no different than what we discussed about PC back in October.

So, ok, they had a 1 point loss to a talented (but also young) Marquette team, and a single digit loss to a team that was fighting tooth and nail after locker room issues in Seton Hall. The Pirates have a lot of talent, also young like Marquette and PC, and also capable of Jekyll and Hyde games.

The key to PC winning games is that Dunn and Bentil will be the primary contributors, and then 1 or 2 of the other 6 main guys have to have good games... that includes Bullock, Lindsey, Edwards, Lomomba, Fazekas, or Cartwright. Most of the time, 2 of those 6 will play well and we'll be fine. Hey, sometimes Dunn and Bentil alone can carry us.

Bottom line is that we have luckily built a nice cushion with great to good wins on neutral courts and in true road games. We have to snap out of our funk, but if things just play out in a normal way we'll be fine. Just got to ignore the need for a 24 hour news cycle and storylines, and just play our game.

And worse case scenario for PC means we feed the rest of the Big East some great resume building wins!

stever20 wrote:

Masterofreality wrote:

chopper wrote:It's Nova, Xavier, and everyone else. I expect those two to have at most 2 losses heading into the BET and everyone else will beat each other up. I also don't think the league sends more than 4 teams to the dance.

You are who you are by comparison. Fact is that many leagues are full of mediocre flotsam and jetsam. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAC has only one team lower than 60 in RPI. Big 10 is full of pedestrian teams. A10 is terrible. SEC is weak. ACC has a bunch of garbage past the first 4-5 teams. The Committee needs to somehow come up with 36 at large teams and the Big East has 5 in the top 45 RPI. it's hard to see a 6th team making it right now unless a Marquette, Georgetown or Creighton win the Big East Tourney, but since there is very little else to choose from, the league should be safe with at least 5.

All it would take is a Seton Hall loss or two- and they're out.

Right now here are the RPI
Nova 2
Xavier 3
PC 30
Seton Hall 41
Butler 46
Marquette 96
Creighton 100
Georgetown 103
DePaul 162
St John's 198

Seton Hall, Butler, and PC all have work to do. It's possible all 3 get in, but it's just as possible that only 2 of the 3 get in.

Sure, they're a loss or 2 from being out, but they're also a win or 2 from being very safely in. Their next 2 games Villanova and @Xavier. Their RPI of 41 is going to increase just by playing those games vs #2 and #3. If they happen to win one of them, it's going to skyrocket. Win both of them and suddenly we're talking about them playing for seeding.

My point is statement like that "a loss or two and they're out" is just pointless to make right now. Everything is so volatile and there's plenty of opportunities for big wins/bad losses and a lot of stuff to just cancel out. We can worry about that stuff towards at the very end of a season, but for now it's just play the games on the schedule and if they deserve to be there in March, they will be.

Their RPI won't increase, but it'll remain stable even if they lose both of these. Seton Hall needs to go 7-6 to end the year to make the tourney- they get 20 wins, they're pretty safe. This week is big. Just don't know how they play last 11 games if they know they need 7 wins in those 11 games. Really 4 in 8 taking out DePaul/St John's.

stever20 wrote:Their RPI won't increase, but it'll remain stable even if they lose both of these. Seton Hall needs to go 7-6 to end the year to make the tourney- they get 20 wins, they're pretty safe. This week is big. Just don't know how they play last 11 games if they know they need 7 wins in those 11 games. Really 4 in 8 taking out DePaul/St John's.

7-6? Were you not the guy who was preaching that if they beat Wichita State (they did), they'd be able to get in at 9-9? Now, 2 quality road wins later, you're upping their requirement to 10-8? I realize it doesn't matter at all, provided I'm correct in assuming you're not on the selection committee, but some consistency in your arguments would be nice.