This Year So Far

[MullinMayhem]

I don't care what seed...just to see SJ in the tourney again would be so long overdue. We have not won a tourney game in what, 17 years? At some point that has to be broken and in that 8-9 matchup those are usually toss-ups and who knows if you get lucky in the next round and sneak into the Sweet 16? If George Mason made the Final Four, anything can happen. That's what makes March so fun. Just get your ticket and you can win games you have no business winning.

[stever20]

I don't care what seed...just to see SJ in the tourney again would be so long overdue. We have not won a tourney game in what, 17 years? At some point that has to be broken and in that 8-9 matchup those are usually toss-ups and who knows if you get lucky in the next round and sneak into the Sweet 16? If George Mason made the Final Four, anything can happen. That's what makes March so fun. Just get your ticket and you can win games you have no business winning.

Despite what Palm said, St John's would need to go like 11-7 or 10-8 with Duke win to get even in the 8/9 game.

Also the 2nd round games will be close to road games for 8/9 seed....
Michigan St in Detroit
Duke in Charlotte
North Carolina in Charlotte
Texas A&M in Dallas
best case may be Arizona St in San Diego- but don't think they'd do a rematch......

part of George Mason making final 4 was two fold. First off, they were a 11 seed. So didn't get 1 or 2 seed in rd 1. Then the committee(which changed this after the fact) put GMU in Washington DC for the regionals.

[kayako]

Bracket Matrix updated last Saturday has 6 BE teams in the bracket with Butler and St. John's as 10th seeds. This is several weeks too early to be tracking this, but so is the premise of this topic!

[stever20]

Bracket Matrix updated last Saturday has 6 BE teams in the bracket with Butler and St. John's as 10th seeds. This is several weeks too early to be tracking this, but so is the premise of this topic!

The thing is, OOC play makes such a huge part of the equation for limiting what conference can do. If the final conference standings are what Ken Pom has right now projected, theres little chance that any of St John's(would be 17-13,46 RPI), Butler (18-13, 55.5 RPI), Providence(18-13, 52 RPI- and that's beating Houston), or Marquette(17-13 67.5 RPI) would make the tourney. Only one by RPI that would be fairly close would be St John's- and they're looking at best OOC win being vs UCF(and UCF has the toughest schedule in the AAC).

And before you say there's no chance that DePaul and Georgetown win 10 games, I'd counter with there's no chance that the top 3 only win 38 games. So top 3 plus bottom 2 being at 48 wins is very reasonable.... look at other years in Big East-
2014- 4 bids- 47 wins
2015- 6 bids- 48 wins
2016- 5 bids- 46 wins
2017- 7 bids- 44 wins

So last year was 44 wins which was fewest wins for 1-3 and 9-10- leaving more wins for 4-8. And thus more bids.

[whiteandblue77]

Bracket Matrix updated last Saturday has 6 BE teams in the bracket with Butler and St. John's as 10th seeds. This is several weeks too early to be tracking this, but so is the premise of this topic!

I see the Johnnies as the 5th BE team in dance at this point. The other four have been big question marks but it's indeed possible that one of those four steps up. Creighton hasn't shown any kind of lock status tho, so there's really only 3 locks at this point imho.

[gtmoBlue]

YO Seton Hall! You Ready? We Ready.

[Novachap]

Ahhh..conference play soon to begin!!!

[gtmoBlue]

Can you feel it? What a feelin'...The conference season is upon us. Yeah!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atrqRDgEhsY

[Wizard of Westroads]

Not much was expected from GT and DePaul this year, but they're both decent teams. GT is 101 and Demons 120 in KenPom right now, both have room to improve. They're going to each have an upset each against the upper half this year.

[Jet915]

Not much was expected from GT and DePaul this year, but they're both decent teams. GT is 101 and Demons 120 in KenPom right now, both have room to improve. They're going to each have an upset each against the upper half this year.

Unfortunately, I think both teams are better than what their 200+ rpis indicate. I see both winning 4-5 games atleast.