According to Pomeroy, Rice is #313, with just 38 of 351 Division I teams below the Owls. And, 17 of those 38 are from either the SWAC or MEAC.

Unbelievable! What a mess.

Next week’s homestand opponents played each other last Saturday. ODU led Charlotte 42-16 at the half on the way to coasting to an 89-58 win.
And as much as I’d love to knock off the Monarchs Thursday, I think Saturday against Charlotte is where we have a real chance to get our swagger back at home.

Couple people kept bringing up our tendency to have bad stretches that put games out of reach, so I went to KenPom to have a look out our scoring breakdown (excluding St. Thomas + St. Edward's). On a semi-positive note, our average halftime deficit is only 5.5 points, which means, for the most part, we haven't lost most games by halftime. That # moves to 5.1 if you eliminate our +12 difference at Northwestern State and our -27 against UNLV. Taking out only UNLV moves our average halftime deficit to 3.8 points.

KenPom also breaks the game down into quarters and this is what our average game looks like:

1Q: -1.8
2Q: -3.7
3Q: -5.3
4Q: -0.9

Not really anything revolutionary, but pretty clear that we seem to run into a wall sometime during the middle part of the game. Further evident by the fact that we've had a -8 quarter in 10 of the 13 D1 games we've played in.

(01-02-2018 10:24 PM)elw4796 Wrote:  Couple people kept bringing up our tendency to have bad stretches that put games out of reach, so I went to KenPom to have a look out our scoring breakdown (excluding St. Thomas + St. Edward's). On a semi-positive note, our average halftime deficit is only 5.5 points, which means, for the most part, we haven't lost most games by halftime. That # moves to 5.1 if you eliminate our +12 difference at Northwestern State and our -27 against UNLV. Taking out only UNLV moves our average halftime deficit to 3.8 points.

KenPom also breaks the game down into quarters and this is what our average game looks like:

1Q: -1.8
2Q: -3.7
3Q: -5.3
4Q: -0.9

Not really anything revolutionary, but pretty clear that we seem to run into a wall sometime during the middle part of the game. Further evident by the fact that we've had a -8 quarter in 10 of the 13 D1 games we've played in.

Interesting numbers...
Looks like issues with depth, and fatigue, could cause that. Fatigue could also explain turnover issues and problems with FT and 3PT. We came our red hot from 3 Saturday and still finished 24%. In general the Fourth Quarter is slower with more breaks and we can regroup and catch our breath.
Having AJ back should help going forward.
Maybe we should substitute more frequently, too?

Also noticed our Non-Conference SoS (#122) is basically top third nationally. We can *play* with anybody, we just haven’t been able to *stay* with anybody. But our solid OOC is another factor that encourages me for the Postseason Quest.

Now — let’s beat O.D.U. Thursday!

ODU is decent. I think that will be a tough task. Charlotte is a possibility. They fired Mark Price a month ago or so and despite having some good guards, seem to be struggling for consistency just like us.

(01-03-2018 08:20 AM)Fort Bend Owl Wrote:  ODU is decent. I think that will be a tough task. Charlotte is a possibility. They fired Mark Price a month ago or so and despite having some good guards, seem to be struggling for consistency just like us.

Well last nights solid OT loss vs ODU actually showed that our Owls can go toe-to-toe with anyone in CUSA. Still have to make the tourney of course, but from what we saw last night we might actually be able to make a bit of a run.

On the other hand - Charlotte won at UNT last night and they’re showing signs of life too. Should be a good one tomorrow.

Sweet weekend, our opening homestand of conference play went even better than I could have hoped! Notched our first win (will need 5 or 6 minimum to advance to Frisco). We are now in a 3-way tie for 11th (by percentage) and a 5-way tie for 9th (in the win column). Yesterday is our only regular season game against Charlotte so we also now own a head-to-head tiebreaker against them.
KenPom moves us up about 10 spots to 304 (CUSA #14), but ironically, with teams like FIU winning, we’re actually further behind CUSA #13 in that ranking than when the week started!!
Main thing is we booked win #1, played toe-to-tie with one of the top teams in the league, and finally have something to build on from a team confidence standpoint going forward. Let’s keep this up!!

Interesting day in the league Thursday. Rice was idle, but FIU and FAU both won, on the road, at (respectively) UTSA and UTEP.
By percentages, Rice moves up a spot from 3-way T-11 to 3-way T-10 (technically, “in”). But in the win column it’s still a 5-way tie and it’s now for “last”, with FAU getting their first win.
Interesting year so far in that NOBODY starts 0-4 and it could be a real battle for top 12.

THIS AFTERNOON’s another good opportunity at home. UNT is dramatically improved from last year and has played well OOC and is 2-2 in CUSA. They did lose to Charlotte in Denton last week.

(01-13-2018 12:50 PM)Snozberry Wrote:  Fortunately, Conference USA is weaker than usual this season

I’ll disagree with that. I’d say 1-4 are about the same right now (and with WKU just back to full strength we are poised to repeat UAB and MTSU’s first round NCAA success) maybe 5-8 are down... but 9-14 are stronger with only one team outside KenPom top 300 and that won’t be for long. Everyone else is inside the top 75% of D1 and it’s been years since that’s been the case. KenPom also has us between 16th and 17th ranked as a conference and (without looking) I thought we were 20 or worse last year.

Good News First:
-only lost one this week
-still “in” right now with tiebreaker on 12th place tie w/Charlotte
-we were at least competitive against UNT, a team that’s now 3-0 on the road in CUSA.
-Our overall schedule is still very favorable
Bad News:
-only three teams left with 1 loss
-LATech is one of them and they’re expected to catch fire once they start playing the “mortals” portion on their schedule.

Ok then, Good outweighs Bad. Carry on. Lets keep playing hard and go win some games

(01-14-2018 07:42 AM)owl at the moon Wrote:  Good News First:
-only lost one this week
-still “in” right now with tiebreaker on 12th place tie w/Charlotte
-we were at least competitive against UNT, a team that’s now 3-0 on the road in CUSA.
-Our overall schedule is still very favorable
Bad News:
-only three teams left with 1 loss
-LATech is one of them and they’re expected to catch fire once they start playing the “mortals” portion on their schedule.

Ok then, Good outweighs Bad. Carry on. Lets keep playing hard and go win some games

I like your optimistic attitude.

So at the start of conference I didn’t see @LaTech as one of those games really in our wheelhouse. They’ve been consistently strong for years and had a solid OOC.
Yet here we are and they’re just 2-5. They’ve played a tough schedule so far, but still struggled last night at home to midpack UNT. I think this one is in play for the Rice Owls. Sure, we’ll be Underdogs, but if we pull it off we could put LATech right back behind us in the standings.

Coincidentally we missed the chance to do the same to USM last night... but... well... enough about last night.

Good News/Bad News
:) We still have the standings tiebreaker with Charlotte!!
:( It’s no longer for critical 12th, But meaningless 13th.

According to Massey, Rice isn't favored in a single game any more. Best chances are 45% hosting FIU this week and 44% hosting UTEP near the end of the season. 3 weeks ago, Rice was favored in those game - no more.

Expected wins comes in at 2.41. Considering Rice has had only 1 win since then, and the EW rating was 4.34, Rice is missing a chance to grab wins. Rice has not found bottom yet and continues to fall in the ratings (11 spots after just this last loss to Louisiana Tech).

(01-21-2018 09:52 AM)owl at the moon Wrote:  

(01-20-2018 09:19 PM)Fort Bend Owl Wrote:  This season seems to be a bit of a lost cause but I think the key will be to see how the off-season unfolds.

There is talent on this team but we're not playing with confidence. We're probably also way too tight - we need to have more fun out there.

Please don’t give up on the season yet.

If we can get that confidence going, and sustain our intensity a little longer, then we are going to win some games and be a tough out for anyone in Frisco.

We’ve played “pretty good” at home in CUSA so far and next week’s home games against International and Atlantic are a real opportunity to make a move.

I’ll repeat myself here, and point out that though we’re “out looking in” right now, this is still all well within reach.

We have big opportunity homestand this week (FIU/FAU) and season finale week (UTEP/UTSA)

Looking “up” in the standings there’s 6 teams within just two games ahead of us.
We play 4 of those 6 at home, another at UNT, and we also get another shot at FIU/FAU on the road.
We can make some serious hay here but it better start this week!!!

With Rice at #310 in Pomeroy , it means that 88% of men's basketball teams are better than Rice's. Thanks Mike Rhoades!

Only 7 out of 351 teams have fewer Division I wins than does Rice (2).

Huge win tonight. We’re still technically a 13 seed out-looking-in at T-12 w/UTEP.
But we’re back in the mix with 4 teams just a game ahead of us. A win against those other Owls Saturday could move us as high as eighth?! Got to get wins now cause the schedule is about to hit a tough stretch

This is a good topic. I need to get back into basketball. I was only at Autry twice last season. My dad was from Louisville. We went every year. Basketball could be big

I'm still not sure we'll make the conference tournament this year. But again the bigger question to me is how the postseason goes, and if we have our normal departures. We've had about a decade now where I think we continue to bring in honest to goodness D1 basketball players. One of these years, we'll hold onto all of them and be back in the NCAA tournament.

I don't think 2018-19 will be that year, but I still think it's possible in 2019-20 based on the freshmen and sophomores we currently have (plus our transfer sitting out and next year's incoming guys). But that's a long way away, and a lot can happen between now and then.