some hope for the Owls tonight in the Cash-Buy-It tourney as Asheville beats Astro-not Stephen Austin 80-68, and Cal Baptist is hanging tough with C-USA East "power" Middle(tennessee) 31-30 at end of 1H. Longtime fan favorite Drake handled Purdue(fort wayne) 87-65 in a gripping display earlier. Cash is King (no digital in this tourney, thank you.) CUSA powerhouse UTEP smashing all over national powerhouse Illinois(western) 80-54 in the even more ironic "Basketball Classic" tourney.

(03-19-2022 04:47 PM)GoodOwl Wrote:  maintaining the deficit with only about 6 min left. 56-63 and can't get over the hump.

well...shut your mouth, as soon as I posted that, VCU decided to start playing a little tougher and closed the deficit down to 60-63 at 5 min.

edit: oops! now 60-65 at under 5 min. Still don't seem like they have enough juice; Ojay?

Nope! Not today. back to 7 pt deficit at the TV timeout. 62-69. On the Rhodes ag'in.

(03-19-2022 04:47 PM)GoodOwl Wrote:  maintaining the deficit with only about 6 min left. 56-63 and can't get over the hump.

Do we care? Why?

(03-19-2022 04:57 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  

(03-19-2022 04:47 PM)GoodOwl Wrote:  maintaining the deficit with only about 6 min left. 56-63 and can't get over the hump.

Do we care? Why?

No one has to. Certainly many watch the basketball tourney(s) without having a team in the hunt. Not sure why all those folks care, but they do.

At mid-season, Owls were tied in win % with Rams, similar to last year, but same as last year the trends diverged again. Would like for Owls to pass their win percentage someday, but after watching that Richmond game, I'll be rooting for the Spiders to do some damage tonight as I knew the NCAA wouldn't let Creighton actually beat Kansas, esp. after Kentucky already became this year's "sacrifice to the masses" for ratings. Maybe someday the Owls could be that team, but until then, you have to pick what you can from what's left to root for.

edit: Deacons have it up to 8 with under 3 to play now.
now up to 10 with 2min to play to make you happy.
btw: a little closer to home, TexAgs beat Or-e-gone earlier in agame that wasn't that close 75-60 to advance. Now I can remember seeing a few post about some other Aggies winning a Tourney game somewhere, but not sure why those people would care about that one either.

(03-19-2022 04:57 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  

(03-19-2022 04:47 PM)GoodOwl Wrote:  maintaining the deficit with only about 6 min left. 56-63 and can't get over the hump.

Do we care? Why?

You know it's really important when the OP (of this thread-within-a-thread) doesn't even mention the name of the other team. :-)

Looks like Wake takes this one as time winds down. One notable was both teams shooting percentage from Free Throw Line, where defense and size/strength don't matter: VCU 23-27 for 85.2% and Wake 29-37 for 78.4%.

Wake wins 80-74 to move on in NIT. If Owls did nothing in off-season but improve their pedestrian FT average, they'd win more games right there (Owls down at 71.4% overall FT percentage for this season.)

Also we care cause our conference mates ODU are their big OOC rival.

But this is the last season to use that particular reason to root against them.

(03-19-2022 05:06 PM)GoodOwl Wrote:  Would like for Owls to pass their win percentage someday, but after watching that Richmond game, I'll be rooting for the Spiders to do some damage tonight as I knew the NCAA wouldn't let Creighton actually beat Kansas, esp. after Kentucky already became this year's "sacrifice to the masses" for ratings. Maybe someday the Owls could be that team, but until then, you have to pick what you can from what's left to root for.

Get a shovel...Providence squishing the Spiders early 18-8 and it looks like it could get bad...

(03-19-2022 05:41 PM)GoodOwl Wrote:  

(03-19-2022 05:06 PM)GoodOwl Wrote:  Would like for Owls to pass their win percentage someday, but after watching that Richmond game, I'll be rooting for the Spiders to do some damage tonight as I knew the NCAA wouldn't let Creighton actually beat Kansas, esp. after Kentucky already became this year's "sacrifice to the masses" for ratings. Maybe someday the Owls could be that team, but until then, you have to pick what you can from what's left to root for.

Get a shovel...Providence squishing the Spiders early 18-8 and it looks like it could get bad...

Spiders down 18-30, getting frightening now...


22-34 yeeps! Get a slipper!

(03-19-2022 05:35 PM)owl at the moon Wrote:  Also we care cause our conference mates ODU are their big OOC rival.

But this is the last season to use that particular reason to root against them.

Sorry, OATM, the tribe seems to has spoken...
28-50 now...Spiders hanging by a thread...



51-79...happy, Pappi?

(01-01-2017 05:43 PM)WRCisforgotten79 Wrote:  First 37 conference games:

Bailiff 16-21

Rhodes 15-22

Bailiff was not given any slack, at all, during his first 3 seasons, while our current AD overreacted in (allegedly) giving Rhodes a huge pay increase after season 1.

Just for fonzies:

Bloomgren 9-20
so far...

okay, he's got a few more to go until this season ends and he signs his new five-year extension with his bud'ro. 8-0 in-conference here we come!

(09-08-2022 03:57 PM)GoodOwl Wrote:  

(01-01-2017 05:43 PM)WRCisforgotten79 Wrote:  First 37 conference games:

Bailiff 16-21

Rhodes 15-22

Bailiff was not given any slack, at all, during his first 3 seasons, while our current AD overreacted in (allegedly) giving Rhodes a huge pay increase after season 1.

Just for fonzies:

Bloomgren 9-20
so far...

okay, he's got a few more to go until this season ends and he signs his new five-year extension with his bud'ro. 8-0 in-conference here we come!

So, 7-1 just to tie Bailiff - while the conference is worse than in Bailiff's first 4½ seasons AND when this coach has been given much more in the way of resources.

We got what we asked for. Anybody but Bailiff.

Since he left, each year I've been kinda watching the conference standings to see when we might surpass our old coach. Interestingly, our records have often paralleled VCU's in non-conference most years. Of course, the quality of competition has generally not been equal. Come conference season, we slowly fade out of the running in this hypothetical race.

I was hoping this might be the year we finally reached the bar of meeting or surpassing what Coach Rhodes is doing at VCU. I generally liked the Coach Pera hire, especially at the time. He has had past winning experiences, seems to recruit good kids, kept the continuity from Coach Rhodes, though he lost a lot of players initially, and generally seems like a decent guy from what I can tell.

After last night's disappointing second loss to MTSU, here's where we stand in the artificial race of Rice vs VCU:

Rice Owls 11-5 .688 2-3 .400 T6th CUSA
VCU Rams 12-5 .706 3-1 .750 2nd A-10

There's still a lot of season left, so we can still pull this race out. Hopefully, at some point, we can surpass the previous coach, then the next and the next, until we finally surpass the 1970 NCAA team. My nitpick is all the games against teams like Jarvis Christian that seem to pad the record in a way that belies the true situation. While it certainly can boost confidence, at some point we need to beat decent conference teams to really move the program ahead. The 15-2 MTSU run in the second was a reminder we still haven;t had a team learn that killer instinct and full-game consistent effort against good teams yet.

With all the decent players he's gotten from Georgia, I'd hoped that Coach Pera would schedule a visit to play someone in that state sometime and give those kids a homecoming game. So far it hasn't happened here though we have played a few GA teams elsewhere. (There are a lot more to choose from nowadays: besides UGA and GA Tech, there's GA State, Kennesaw State (also Owls), GA Southern, Mercer in Macon.) I like our players and our coach. Hope they can learn from this and use it as a springboard to a better conference season and tournament this year!

On Pomeroy, VCU is 100th, while Rice is 180th. Not close.

In NET rankings, CUSA is ahead of the Atlantic 10 in average ranking (160 for CUSA, 165 for A-10). And really, CUSA isn't that far behind the AAC (which has an average rating of 144 thanks mostly to Houston). Rice is all the way up to 137 in the NET rankings now, and will host two top 100 teams next week in Charlotte (94) and UAB (83).

A-10 will probably be a 1-bid conference this year. CUSA could be 2 bids - FAU certainly is in line for an at-large at this point if they don't win the conference tournament. I imagine we'll be a 1 bid league if FAU wins the conference tournament but UNT may have an outside chance at an at-large?

Not that it matters any more - or was ever a very good metric - but we were up to #98 in RPI when I looked post-UNT.

We’re also up five spots to #147 in KenPom this morning. Maybe if we just quit playing we’ll continue our climb up the metrics.

(01-22-2023 11:28 AM)Fort Bend Owl Wrote:  In NET rankings, CUSA is ahead of the Atlantic 10 in average ranking (160 for CUSA, 165 for A-10). And really, CUSA isn't that far behind the AAC (which has an average rating of 144 thanks mostly to Houston). Rice is all the way up to 137 in the NET rankings now, and will host two top 100 teams next week in Charlotte (94) and UAB (83).

A-10 will probably be a 1-bid conference this year. CUSA could be 2 bids - FAU certainly is in line for an at-large at this point if they don't win the conference tournament. I imagine we'll be a 1 bid league if FAU wins the conference tournament but UNT may have an outside chance at an at-large?

Announcer at the Rice/UNT game implied that the UNT loss that night would be disqualifying from an at-large perspective. I agree, and they were already on thin ice before they lost to Rice.

(01-22-2023 11:28 AM)Fort Bend Owl Wrote:  In NET rankings, CUSA is ahead of the Atlantic 10 in average ranking (160 for CUSA, 165 for A-10). And really, CUSA isn't that far behind the AAC (which has an average rating of 144 thanks mostly to Houston). Rice is all the way up to 137 in the NET rankings now, and will host two top 100 teams next week in Charlotte (94) and UAB (83).

A-10 will probably be a 1-bid conference this year. CUSA could be 2 bids - FAU certainly is in line for an at-large at this point if they don't win the conference tournament. I imagine we'll be a 1 bid league if FAU wins the conference tournament but UNT may have an outside chance at an at-large?

This is pretty amazing stuff when you think about it. Hope we continue the roll and don't blow what we've maybe, finally started to accomplish.

After the surprising Owl victory on the road at North Texas, here's where we stand in the artificial race of Rice vs VCU in Men's Hoops:

Rice Owls 14-5 .737 5-3 .625 4th CUSA
VCU Rams 15-5 .750 6-1 .857 1st A-10

So, Owls made up a little ground. Now, can we hold it and continue to string together wins, or does this represent the high point of the conference season? Holding leads has often been a problem, but that's what good teams do, whether in a game or in a season. Hope the Owls have gotten over the hump and provide us with a steady finish over the next few weeks!