Goodness, what a start!

Rhode Island stops Trae Young and Oklahoma in overtime.
Tennessee bodies Wright State.
Pennsylvania is giving Kansas everything they have and doing SUPER well, only down 7 at the half.
And Gonzaga keeping themselves afloat again UNC Greensboro.

Great start to the tournament so far.

UPenn and Kansas both deserved better than each other.

If Kansas didn't crap the bed against Bucknell over a decade ago, they would have been a better 16-seed for this match. Penn's way better than a 16.

RAMBLERS RAMBLIN. Miami is taken down!

we have our first one shining moment I think.....

(03-15-2018 02:08 PM)The Cutter of Bish Wrote:  UPenn and Kansas both deserved better than each other.

If Kansas didn't crap the bed against Bucknell over a decade ago, they would have been a better 16-seed for this match. Penn's way better than a 16.

Why?

25th ranked conference. Penn was the 7th lowest RPI (barely). There are 6 16 seeds - Georgia State was barely below them. At best, they should have been the last 15 seed.

OSU player fouled out. Watch out for the Jackrabbits!

Ohio State recovers and shatters SDSU's dreams.

Seton Hall beats NC State.

First clash of Power teams.

Buffalo is looking to finish off the Pac-12 right now.

(03-15-2018 10:27 PM)RandomFan Wrote:  Buffalo is looking to finish off the Pac-12 right now.

Yep, 72-58 under 9 minutes left.

(03-15-2018 10:27 PM)RandomFan Wrote:  Buffalo is looking to finish off the Pac-12 right now.

You know what I say to that?
https://media.giphy.com/media/CatCCFZa6U8nK/giphy.gif

make it 77-60 with 509 to go....

Alabama/Virginia Tech in one of your classic 8/9 games.

Buffalo. 89-64. They're clearing the bench.

Great job Buffalo! Wasn't expecting that at all.

I wonder what the record is for biggest margin of victory for a 13 over a 4...

answer- Navy over LSU in 1985. 23 point win. That's right- David Robinson....

Buffalo/Arizona was just like Ohio/Georgetown. Sean Miller goes out with a bang!

Florida polishes off St. Bonaventure, conqueror of UCLA.

SEC has a 4-0 day. But their relatively low seeds will catch up with them next round. Still, for a conference that had a PAC-like three teams in the draw just a couple years ago, this is already a great year for them.

Big 12 goes 2-1, while the B1G and Big East both go 2-0.

B1G has only 4 teams but all are high seeds so likely will penetrate deep into the draw. Will be a good tournament for them.

Big East has a lot of those middling-seeds, so a bloodbath for them is likely.

The ACC goes 1-3, but their high-seed teams - UNC, Duke, UVA - give them three possible Final 4 teams, so they will turn things around quickly.

ACC just wasn't quite as deep as we thought.

(03-15-2018 10:53 PM)stever20 Wrote:  I wonder what the record is for biggest margin of victory for a 13 over a 4...

answer- Navy over LSU in 1985. 23 point win. That's right- David Robinson....

Interesting but trival. Buffalo was up by 25 before they took their foot off the gas.

(03-15-2018 04:37 PM)dbackjon Wrote:  

(03-15-2018 02:08 PM)The Cutter of Bish Wrote:  UPenn and Kansas both deserved better than each other.

If Kansas didn't crap the bed against Bucknell over a decade ago, they would have been a better 16-seed for this match. Penn's way better than a 16.

Why?

25th ranked conference. Penn was the 7th lowest RPI (barely). There are 6 16 seeds - Georgia State was barely below them. At best, they should have been the last 15 seed.

Their conference is what anchors those numbers, though. You have almost half the conference without a pulse for basketball, so much so they aren't just bad, they can be found around the bottom of all D1. Brown, Columbia, and Dartmouth are usually metric killers, and it hurts as a result, especially when you see each team twice, having a bad night or weekend when you're in the back-to-back games they do during the conference season, and typically play less games than others in D1 (their tournament brings its champion closer to what most schools play now, and some dabble with non-D1 on their schedules).

It shows up in Penn's numbers. 18 Group 4 games. Yet, Penn itself had only 1 Group 4 loss. Of the 15's, nobody has less than 2; it's in the 14-line where you find similarity against that group. Penn and Bucknell both played Monmouth, La Salle, St. Joe's in the non-conference, Penn going 2-1, Bucknell 1-2.

I just don't think the committee knew anything about this team other than its numbers. And, you're right to question them. Yeah, they play a Big 5 schedule every year...their NC-SOS was still dreadful. Overall SOS is miserable because of the Ivy schedule. However, the record against Group 4, and 11-6 in road and neutral court games...what's one to do?

I don't think anyone should be surprised Kansas had its hands full with Penn, though. 16 or any seed, Penn has it in them to line up against Kansas-types. They do it yearly against Nova and Temple. Nothing new to them. Then again, that could be biased...but, so is this logic that Bucknell shouldn't be any lower than a 14 seed anymore because of two good years in the tournament over a decade ago. These more recent Bucknell teams would get their butts handed to them by the ones from '05 and '06.

Past tournament performance has nothing to do with future tournament success. That said, I agree, the Patriot and Ivy are twins, so the Ivy champion and Patriot champion at worse should be within one seed of each other each season if the regular season champion wins the auto-bid and both are effectively at the same level.