(01-10-2022 03:18 PM)demiveeman Wrote: (01-10-2022 03:11 PM)DuelingDragon Wrote: (01-10-2022 01:38 PM)Auburn_Blazer Wrote: (01-10-2022 12:21 PM)DuelingDragon Wrote: (01-10-2022 12:09 PM)hooverblazer Wrote: Joe Lunardi has UAB as the first team out AFTER the Rice loss.
To those saying we aren't in the conversation, this contradicts that. I have my doubts we can get an at large after taking a loss like Rice, but our metrics still have us in shouting distance with a NET of 42. Lunardi's first four out:
UAB
Louisville
St. Bonaventure
Clemson
Last 4 in:
Minnesota
Wake Forest
Virginia Tech
Memphis
The key here is “today.” They are not projecting those brackets for March. They do them “if season ended today.”
UAB’s numbers were never going to hold, no matter how much they won, and being in that range as a C-USA team isn’t the same to the committee as a P5 or Big East or American.
There was zero clucking chance ever for an at large bid.
Moot point but you're wrong. NET is much better aligned with modern metrics than RPI, and as such allows teams from lesser conferences the ability to actually build at-large resumes. 2021 Drake and 2019 Belmont wouldn't have gotten in under RPI, but they made it under NET.
Team looked like ass and the loss was frustrating. AK needs to give Johnson more minutes, we can't win games in 2022 with 1.25 shooters on the floor.
I am not wrong. The committee decided a decade ago that cusa will be a one bid league and it is virtually impossible to change that. If we played 4-5 other top 50 teams we could perhaps get that at large at a ranking we currently enjoy but we zero will never get one playing the kind of schedule we play, and they will screw any team from cusa or comparable league with similar numbers. But especially cusa, for the same reasons Espn does.
You are just full of bad takes all over this board. Your logic makes even less sense considering we've already announced our departure from C-USA.
Nope, I am dead on. The raids of C-USA were an opportunity to create a narrative of C-USA going from multi bid to single bid, a situation in which every other member of Division I stood to gain against a league that was always resented by the others. That’s a fact. Those are some deep grudges and motives that existed from before this league was even formed. Some very hard feelings involved. This narrative was both a whisper campaign from rival schools and a directed campaign by ESPN which was embroiled in the lawsuit with C-USA, influencing bids in basketball and other sports. Clear as day that all those other interests benefitted by the downgrading of a conference that once got as many as 6 bids. Lumping the C-USA schools in with the other one-bid leagues paid off in extra NCAA units for others, scheduling leverage for others, recruiting advantages or at least recruiting leveling, and media rights leverage.
Winning a few ballgames doesn’t change this narrative. C-USA is a one-bid league and doesn’t have the scheduling clout to change that, unless things fall just the right way (a weak bubble).
UAB leaving is the first step toward fixing this. Scheduling leverage and media rights improve immediately, even if they are not at peak AAC-level.
This year, winning out but not winning the tournament would have resulted in a near miss. We would have seen “conversation” by some of AK’s media friends, which is better than not being talked about, but wouldn’t have gotten an at-large. By March, the numbers would have dropped and the pundits would have started the one-bid narratives. Because entrenched interests stand to gain keeping C-USA to one bid, no different than those same pundits trashing every G5 football contender until they literally had no choice because of everybody else lost. This has been proven over and over and over again.
Hey, maybe you guys are right and there would have been such an atrociously weak bubble that UAB in the 40s got in by default. But no C-USA 3.0 is ever getting the benefit of the doubt. It’ll have to be by default that all the other alternatives are easily eliminated.
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Rice
