Here it is for the league:
UConn 8
Butler 21
St John's 23
Seton Hall 50
Villanova 64
Xavier 102
Creighton 119
Georgetown 122
Providence 127
Marquette 167
DePaul 183

I fear it is going to be a long year. Butler and Hall are pleasant surprises. Nice to see.

Hard to believe any BE fan could have envisioned as dreadful a season as this one is shaping up to be. Creighton, Marquette, Providence, Xavier, Georgetown and DePaul, all seem to have played themselves out of tournament discussion, before even Thanksgiving rolled around this year. Georgetown gets a minor pass due to the injury to Iwuchukwu, but in year three Cooley isn't exactly setting the world on fire.

Perhaps the biggest disappointment is St. John's. They went from a top five ranking and Final Four potential, to looking something like a seven seed that wins one game before getting bounced and heading home before the second weekend. How Pitino believed he could win without a legitimate point guard, and snow everyone in the process (including me) I'll never understand. I've never seen such a defensively inept team, and guards as defensively challenged as Darling and Jackson in my life. Everyone blows right past them. It's like they each play defense with a piano on their back. Just terrible.

UConn is UConn (thank God), and Butler and Seton Hall have both been pleasant surprises, but not sure how much legitimate upside either of those two have. Still, they both deserve a ton of credit for giving us some hope.

The wildcard to me is Villanova. I think they can make the tournament, but there isn't much margin for error. They should beat Pitt at home, and get beat by Michigan on the road. The big game for them will be at Wisconsin. It's winnable, but won't be easy. Then they need to go a minimum of 13-7 in BE play, and hopefully they might sneak in.

Seeing the NET released today was just another slap in the face. Can't believe it's Dec 1, and I'm already counting down the days for pitchers and catchers. I sure didn't see this coming.

Interesting to see Butler as the "No. 2" Big East team at this point.

Was hoping Georgetown would be ranked a bit higher.

Question for stever20: Has there ever been, until now, an NET ranking that had six Big East schools at 100 or below?

Thanks, Stever. Tried to find it yesterday, I guess we had to wait for everyone to get back to work on Monday for this thing to come out. Haha.

UConn is where they are despite missing their top scorer and top recruit for a combined 9 games. They looked great vs Illinois and have Kansas coming up tomorrow night.

St.John’s has problems at the point and on D. They haven’t been playing like a team ranked that high. Pitino has some work to do with this team.

Butler and Seton Hall have been pleasant surprises. We’ll see if they can keep it up.

Creighton has to be better than that, right??? Georgetown has been disappointing to me.

This seems to be rivalry week, Creighton-Nebraska, Marquette-Wisconsin, Xavier-Cincinnati, Villanova-Temple, Providence-URI.

(12-01-2025 12:43 PM)Bill Marsh Wrote:  Thanks, Stever. Tried to find it yesterday, I guess we had to wait for everyone to get back to work on Monday for this thing to come out. Haha.
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UConn is where they are despite missing their top scorer and top recruit for a combined 9 games. They looked great vs Illinois and have Kansas coming up tomorrow night.

St.John’s has problems at the point and on D. They haven’t been playing like a team ranked that high. Pitino has some work to do with this team.

Butler and Seton Hall have been pleasant surprises. We’ll see if they can keep it up.

Creighton has to be better than that, right??? Georgetown has been disappointing to me.

This seems to be rivalry week, Creighton-Nebraska, Marquette-Wisconsin, Xavier-Cincinnati, Villanova-Temple, Providence-URI.

Just came out this morning. makes sense after Feast week. For Nova not only tonight with Temple, but Saturday is Big 5 final game vs either Penn(win tonight) or St Joe's(lose tonight.

(12-01-2025 12:14 PM)Traderwill Wrote:  Hard to believe any BE fan could have envisioned as dreadful a season as this one is shaping up to be. Creighton, Marquette, Providence, Xavier, Georgetown and DePaul, all seem to have played themselves out of tournament discussion, before even Thanksgiving rolled around this year. Georgetown gets a minor pass due to the injury to Iwuchukwu, but in year three Cooley isn't exactly setting the world on fire.

Perhaps the biggest disappointment is St. John's. They went from a top five ranking and Final Four potential, to looking something like a seven seed that wins one game before getting bounced and heading home before the second weekend. How Pitino believed he could win without a legitimate point guard, and snow everyone in the process (including me) I'll never understand. I've never seen such a defensively inept team, and guards as defensively challenged as Darling and Jackson in my life. Everyone blows right past them. It's like they each play defense with a piano on their back. Just terrible.

UConn is UConn (thank God), and Butler and Seton Hall have both been pleasant surprises, but not sure how much legitimate upside either of those two have. Still, they both deserve a ton of credit for giving us some hope.

The wildcard to me is Villanova. I think they can make the tournament, but there isn't much margin for error. They should beat Pitt at home, and get beat by Michigan on the road. The big game for them will be at Wisconsin. It's winnable, but won't be easy. Then they need to go a minimum of 13-7 in BE play, and hopefully they might sneak in.

Seeing the NET released today was just another slap in the face. Can't believe it's Dec 1, and I'm already counting down the days for pitchers and catchers. I sure didn't see this coming.

I actually find it funny Pitino and SJU are so bad defensively this year, it was their calling card last year. I know it's a totally different roster and he has players with defensive limitations but damn. Crazy they went from elite to terrible in one off-season. I don't think Pitino expected to have his roster be this bad at the guard spot either. I think he really expected to get Demary the way both Richmond and Luis played last year. They're both big guards and I think he expected to point to them as examples of how he would be used, throw a big bag at him and he would lock him up. It's worked for him with most players. When Hurley swooped in and stole him away, he didn't have a good backup plan. Had to settle for Jackson and Darling as a result.

I don't think Georgetown has played their way out. They didn't lose to Dayton by much, and they should have 2 Q2 wins in @Maryland and vs Clemson. The Miami loss looks bad and they'll need to avoid landmines in conference play, but I think they'll be firmly on the bubble for most of the season.

Is the Miami loss going to be a bad one? In KP they're projected to finish 20-11. I mean if that's accurate, that would be IMO no less than top 100 so Q2. To me, that's not a bad loss.

Awesome seeing Butler in the top 30 and Seton Hall in the top 50. Both are well deserved thus far. Also nice to see Seton Hall RV in the AP! Maybe they sneak into the rankings at some point if they keep playing this well.

I'm surprised Marquette is as low as they are and X is as high as they are. To me, it feels like one could swap their rankings and it would be more accurate. I don't think either has a great win, and Marquette did get blown out by Indiana.. However I think outside of that game they have looked substantially better than X has. They've also played a better overall schedule and have only 1 more loss. I'm willing to bet X finishes closer to 150 and Marquette closer to 100 by the end of the season.

Overall, this is shaping up to be a really bad year for the league. I'm not sure I've seen this many teams below the top 100, so to answer bills question I do think this is a first (though not positive.) When UConn was in the AAC, it was an 11 team league. The metric used was RPI and not NET, but it's shocking to me how when I look at the NET rankings posted above, I get AAC deja vu. 3 teams expected to make the tourney, a couple fringe tourney contenders, and then a lot of fodder/fringe Q2 road opportunities. Even the amount of teams in the 100-125ish range is about the same.

We just lost a ton of coaches last off-season so it makes sense. Just sucks that a few teams that have struggled are finally performing, but there's a few teams that are usually strong performing substantially worse as well.

(12-01-2025 06:54 PM)stever20 Wrote:  Is the Miami loss going to be a bad one? In KP they're projected to finish 20-11. I mean if that's accurate, that would be IMO no less than top 100 so Q2. To me, that's not a bad loss.

Sorry I should have been more clear. The loss looks bad to me just because it was by more than 10. I agree, it doesn't even look that bad. But there has to be a reason why Georgetown's NET is so low and I think that game is the most likely reason. It's not like the Dayton loss is killing them and they've beaten every non power opponent they've played by at least 13.

The more I think about this the more I wonder how the hell Georgetown isn't even top 100, nevermind outside the top 120. They should be above X at least

Given various factors, I think we can all agree that the realistic hoped-for scenario is for the Big East to land three at-large berths for the tourney (for four teams total). I'm cautiously optimistic that will happen.

Georgetown's losing Vincent Iwuchukwu could not have come at a worse time for the Hoyas or the Big East. Reportedly, he'll miss at least four more weeks. In four games of action, Iwuchukwu averaged 12.0 points, 4.0 rebounds and 2.0 blocks per game.

To date, Creighton has perhaps been the Big East's main disappointment (though an argument can be made, of course, for Saint John's). The Jays are turning over the ball too often (12.3 per game), unable to block/alter shots effectively and not shooting threes very well (.301) by CU standards.

If Butler ends up being the league's second-best team, that would be both interesting/exciting (for something fresh and different) and, potentially and concerningly, "bad optics" for the BE.

(12-01-2025 07:34 PM)bill dazzle Wrote:  Given various factors, I think we can all agree that the realistic hoped-for scenario is for the Big East to land three at-large berths for the tourney (for four teams total). I'm cautiously optimistic that will happen.

Georgetown's losing Vincent Iwuchukwu could not have come at a worse time for the Hoyas or the Big East. Reportedly, he'll miss at least four more weeks. In four games of action, Iwuchukwu averaged 12.0 points, 4.0 rebounds and 2.0 blocks per game.

To date, Creighton has perhaps been the Big East's main disappointment (though an argument can be made, of course, for Saint John's). The Jays are turning over the ball too often (12.3 per game), unable to block/altar shots effectively and not shooting threes very well (.301) by CU standards.

If Butler ends up being the league's second-best team, that would be both interesting/exciting (for something fresh and different) and, potentially and concerningly, "bad optics" for the BE.

I agree it would be cool to see Butler finish 2nd but also be terrible optics. These NET rankings aren't great optically either, though. We may start hearing more of the "mid major" talk from some of the talking heads if this keeps up.

Idk why but my gut tells me Creighton is still going to finish 3rd or 4th and will get their NET ranking up to the point they are at least Q1 road and hopefully to the point they are Q1 neutral. Just have this gut feeling they will go like 13-7 in conference at worst and end up with a tournament caliber resume when all is said and done. They just picked up the W over Oregon, if they can take down Nebraska and give them their first loss I will feel a lot better about that prediction. They have a chance to go on a nice run and pick up some really nice wins.

They're only 4-3 right now but in their next 9 games, the only one they aren't favored in is that game @Nebraska (according to ESPN, believe they're using BPI to determine.) Granted, some of those games are basically tossups (they're given like a 51% chance to beat Seton Hall, for instance) but I think it is conceivable they could win all of them. Considering they just beat Oregon, that would put them on a 10 game winning streak with wins such as:

@Nebraska, Kansas State, @Xavier, Butler, @Seton Hall, and @Nova. If current NET rankings were to hold, thats 6 Q1/2 wins, 4 Q1 and 2 Q2. They would also be sitting at 13-3. That would undoubtedly be a tournament caliber resume at the midway point of the season.

Now, I know this is easier written/said than done. I'm not saying it's guaranteed or even likely to happen. Nebraska is undefeated and plays really well at home, that's a rivalry game. It will not be easy to win. But if they can pull of that W? I'll give them a chance to go on a run.

What I'm really trying to show here is despite the early season struggles, there is still a path to the tournament for a lot of teams in the league. Teams just need to buckle down and execute, avoid bad losses in league play. I think at least one team will surprise us.

I think it’s way too early to draw anything conclusive from these ratings. In this world of new infusions of players through the portal, players are still learning each other’s names, much less their tendencies, their strengths, and their weaknesses. Who can they trust to go to in a big spot? How are switches working? Who can they expect a pass back from on a cut?

The point is that teams are still coming together. These are early days in the season. Coaching, player development and team building is still critical and is ongoing.

(12-02-2025 02:07 PM)Bill Marsh Wrote:  I think it’s way too early to draw anything conclusive from these ratings. In this world of new infusions of players through the portal, players are still learning each other’s names, much less their tendencies, their strengths, and their weaknesses. Who can they trust to go to in a big spot? How are switches working? Who can they expect a pass back from on a cut?

The point is that teams are still coming together. These are early days in the season. Coaching, player development and team building is still critical and is ongoing.

the problem is once you get to conference play, you're sloshing around the same mediocre ratings. gets really tough to make up ground. Similarly when things are going great for the other confences- gets tough to lose much ground. Really definies the quad wins later in the year.

I looked and last year the day before conference play started, league was at 69.82. Today it's at 88.73.

The next 2 weeks are huge to make up some ground. This is what the league has left OOC-
UConn 2 Q1 1 Q2
Butler 1 Q1
St Johm's 1 Q1
SH 1 Q2
Nova 1 Q1 1 Q2
Creighton 1 Q1
Georgetown 1 Q1
Providence 1 Q2
Marquette 2 Q1
DePaul 1 Q2

9 Q1 and 5 Q2 games adding quickly. Need to really improve on what has been a 5-16 start in Q1 games so far.

Here are the current Q1 and Q2 records for the league
SH 1-1 Q1 0-0 Q2
UConn 2-1 Q1 1-0 Q2
Butler 1-1 Q1 1-0 Q2
Nova 0-1 Q1 0-0 Q2
Geo 1-1 Q1 0-1 Q2
X 0-2 Q1 0-1 Q2
DeP 0-1 Q1 0-1 Q2
SJ 0-3 Q1 2-0 Q2
Cre 0-2 Q1 0-1 Q2
PC 0-2 Q1 1-2 Q2
Marq 0-1 Q1 0-1 Q2
total 5-16 Q1 5-7 Q2

(12-02-2025 03:53 PM)stever20 Wrote:  Here are the current Q1 and Q2 records for the league
SH 1-1 Q1 0-0 Q2
UConn 2-1 Q1 1-0 Q2
Butler 1-1 Q1 1-0 Q2
Nova 0-1 Q1 0-0 Q2
Geo 1-1 Q1 0-1 Q2
X 0-2 Q1 0-1 Q2
DeP 0-1 Q1 0-1 Q2
SJ 0-3 Q1 2-0 Q2
Cre 0-2 Q1 0-1 Q2
PC 0-2 Q1 1-2 Q2
Marq 0-1 Q1 0-1 Q2
total 5-16 Q1 5-7 Q2

The big problem that I see is that St. John’s & Creighton are a combined 0-5 vs Q1. These were expected to be 2 of the top 3 teams in the league, were expected to be nationally competitive. Turn those 5 losses around and the BE is 10-11 vs Q1, which would be fine.

To make matters worse, Creighton wasn’t even competitive in their losses to Gonzaga (-27) and Iowa State (-18). They are stacking up as a major disappointment.

(12-02-2025 08:47 PM)Bill Marsh Wrote:  

(12-02-2025 03:53 PM)stever20 Wrote:  Here are the current Q1 and Q2 records for the league
SH 1-1 Q1 0-0 Q2
UConn 2-1 Q1 1-0 Q2
Butler 1-1 Q1 1-0 Q2
Nova 0-1 Q1 0-0 Q2
Geo 1-1 Q1 0-1 Q2
X 0-2 Q1 0-1 Q2
DeP 0-1 Q1 0-1 Q2
SJ 0-3 Q1 2-0 Q2
Cre 0-2 Q1 0-1 Q2
PC 0-2 Q1 1-2 Q2
Marq 0-1 Q1 0-1 Q2
total 5-16 Q1 5-7 Q2

The big problem that I see is that St. John’s & Creighton are a combined 0-5 vs Q1. These were expected to be 2 of the top 3 teams in the league, were expected to be nationally competitive. Turn those 5 losses around and the BE is 10-11 vs Q1, which would be fine.

and the problem is in 4 of those 5 losses they were 7 points or more. with 3 double digit losses. So hurting the NET ratings.

UConn got the job done!

Beat #21 Kansas. Their first ever win against Kansas anywhere. This one at Kansas. Tarris Reed out with a sprained ankle. Freshman Eric Reibe got the job done. His line was 31 min, 12 pts (6-8), 8 rebs, 2 blocks. UConn came rom behind in the second half and showed a lot of character hanging tough down the stretch in a close game. They went to different guys for big buckets when they needed them. Real team effort.

(12-02-2025 03:08 PM)stever20 Wrote:  

(12-02-2025 02:07 PM)Bill Marsh Wrote:  I think it’s way too early to draw anything conclusive from these ratings. In this world of new infusions of players through the portal, players are still learning each other’s names, much less their tendencies, their strengths, and their weaknesses. Who can they trust to go to in a big spot? How are switches working? Who can they expect a pass back from on a cut?

The point is that teams are still coming together. These are early days in the season. Coaching, player development and team building is still critical and is ongoing.

the problem is once you get to conference play, you're sloshing around the same mediocre ratings. gets really tough to make up ground. Similarly when things are going great for the other confences- gets tough to lose much ground. Really definies the quad wins later in the year.

Except that ratings continue to change. Early season ratings are not set in stone. Wins & losses in conference affect the ratings as well after the fact, so they are fluid.