Joined: Jan 2003 Gender: Male Posts: 1,583 Location: Detroit, MI
Re: Ryan: Expand tournament « Result #1 Today at 7:27am »
If you want to get on your soapbox and preach to us "mid-major" fans, you may want to get your facts straight. I'm pretty sure Milwaukee made it back to the tournament the next year after our sweet 16 run.
But like every argument from X, it always comes back to Milwaukee drawing more fans if they want to be taken serious.
"Goodbye Phoenix, hello San Francisco! One of my 3 favorite American cities along with Boston and Milwaukee. Finishing last: Jacksonville." ~ Bill Simmons
ghostofdylan Chad Angeli Fan Club member is offline
Joined: Jul 2008 Gender: Male Posts: 1,382
Re: Ryan: Expand tournament « Result #2 Today at 7:13am »
I'm not going to sift through xtown's ramblings beyond the first two parargraphs. Don't expand the tournament. College basketball has the absolute best sporting event in America, especially the first two days. Let's hope its decision-makers don't spoil it. I know many more people, Badger and Marquette fans included, that are against the proposal than are for it.
Re: Ryan: Expand tournament « Result #3 Today at 4:08am »
You guys are seriously delusional. I mean, the NCAA is not going to expand the tournament in such a way as to benefit more schools from the Horizon League. If the tournament is expanded, the schools that are going to benefit the most are the major conference schools. Here's news: They should. If the tournament is going to be expanded and teams are chosen purely on merit, more often than not, the tenth place team in the ACC or Big East is going to be more deserving than the third place team in the Horizon, or often the second place team in the Horizon.
Let's first acknowledge that the suggestions some of you have put forth are about as likely to winning the lottery. No way the NCAA puts forth a rule requiring major conference teams to win at least two non-conference games on the road, or limits the number of games they can play against teams with a certain RPI, or has to finish in the top half or the top 65% of its conference or whatever. It is not going to happen. And you are not going to win the lottery.
Now let's address why it shouldn't. You cannot restrict the number of teams on the schedule below a certain RPI, since nobody knows what that RPI is going to be until the season is completed. And frankly, a rule like that would work to your disadvantage. The year after your Sweet Sixteen appearance, your team truly sucked. It would have been an RPI drag on anybody's schedule. That is going to be true of at least a couple HL teams every year. So if there is a limit to the number of teams a major can play below a certain RPI, (the number suggested above would be roughly the bottom half) then there is a strong incentive not to schedule HL teams at all unless they are named Butler. There is a good chance every year that any HL team other than Butler will wind up in the bottom half of the RPI list Right now, your team is within a couple of losses of winding up in exactly that category. Why sign a multi-year deal with somebody like you? So what majors will do is schedule each other, and a few mid-majors, and from a conference like the HL, schedule Butler and perhaps one or two others who look to be good that year. But that means no multi-year deals, as ADs will have to see how good their opposition is likely to be that year before scheduling them, since they can't risk scheduling a team that will wind up with a poor RPI. And that means one year deals. And that means no possibility of a home game. No way a major - any major, even the weakest ones - is going to agree to a one year deal with you and have it be at your place. Of course, it also means that teams like yours would have no chance at all of an at-large bid, because there would be no way to avoid playing many non-conference games against teams with low RPI's. Who else are you going to play
Only take in the top half of their conference, or require a winning record, or some other such thing? Not going to happen, and it shouldn't. Take this year for example. Take a look at whoever is in second place in the HL. It keeps changing. Now look where that team would be if they had to play a major conference schedule. Probably no better than seventh. Oh, all right, perhaps about sixth in the Pac-10, because the Pac-10 really sucks this year.
But let's take Cleveland State, since they are currently in second place, and see where they would probably fit in if they played in any other BCS conference.
In the ACC, they would probably finish 13th. Carolina is in a real slump, so perhaps they could eke out 12th. Probably not. In the Big Ten, they might finish as high as eighth, but that's generous. No way they are better than Northwestern. Unlikely they are better than Michigan, who has a losing record. In the Big East, I would put them about 14th. Maybe as high as 12th, but they have fewer impressive victories than Seton Hall or Providence. In the Big 12, perhaps ninth, but 10th is a better guess. Texas Tech has some talent. They might outright win the Pac-10, but as noted, the Pac-10 sucks to a really historically remarkable degree. Hell, they wouldn't finish better than sixth in the A-10 this year.
You can quibble with this a bit if you want, and perhaps CSU is not the second best team in the conference. Would you seriously suggest that Wright State or Valpo or (this will send shivers up your spine) Green Bay would finish in the top half of any major conference this year? Perhaps one of them might finish a position or two higher than I have suggested, but if you are honest, you would have to admit that the second-best HL team would rarely if ever finish in the top half of any major conference in any year. So if the second-best team in the HL had to play in one of the major conferences, they would not be close to qualifying for an at-large bid based on the criteria you suggest. Yet you think they should get one because they play in a weaker conference?
Yes, there are way more at-large teams coming out of the major conferences. There are also way more good teams coming out of the major conferences as well. Restricting bids to teams in the top half or as somebody suggested, the top third of their conference is simply ridiculous. The HL right now is Butler and the Nine Dwarfs. Would anybody here seriously suggest that Wright State is more deserving of a big than the sixth place team in the Big Ten or the eighth team in the Big East because they are in third place in a sh*tty conference?
Now the suggestion comes up to take the automatic bids from the weak conferences and give them to the better conferences. Somebody suggested no automatic bid to a conference that did not have at least half its members in the top half of the RPI. Careful what you wish for. First of all, that is pretty mean-spirited. Two of the conferences you mention are the historically black ones, and obviously, there are going to be some serious PR problems kicking them out so that there is more room for HL caliber teams. The GWC doesn't have an automatic bid. But you also mentioned the MAC. Here's news: Historically, the MAC has done better than the Horizon. The MAC was putting teams in the tournament well before there was a Horizon. The MAC is down this year, and has been for a few, but it has also often been pretty good, and has put teams in the Sweet Sixteen. Remember Ball State? Kent State? There have also been years when the HL simply sucked. What you are trying to do is move up from the status of Have-a-Little, Want-More to one of the Haves by taking some away from the Have-Even-Lesses. The problem is that you are a whole lot closer to the Have-Nots than you are to the Haves. If you start yanking auto bids from conferences, the HL's number is going to come up one of these years.
The same applies to the idea of requiring a conference to have half its teams in the top half of the RPI to get an automatic bid. In a lot of years, the HL would not qualify. It has some seriously bad teams, and often, more bad teams than good ones.
As for the suggestion that the committee require non-conference road wins, you really must be joking. This comes back to the same thing over and over. If you want teams to come to you, start by drawing more than 3000 a game. Complain all you want about Syracuse playing all their games at home. They draw about as many in one game as UWM does in a season. And in the unlikely event that the NCAA would ever institute such a rule, Syracuse would respond by finding five dog teams within easy driving distance and signing a four-for-one deal with each of them, so that every year, they would take a short trip to play some team they can't help but slaughter, while the other four sacrificial lambs showed up at the Carrier Dome. That would guarantee their road win, and the rest of their road games would be against other majors. There is absolutely no chance that they would play a mid-major that had even the slightest chance of beating them. So your proposal would give a financial boost to the really bad conferences, while completely screwing over teams like yours. Not such a good idea. Oh, and it would also mean that you would have to either start beating some of those majors on the road, which you have heretofore had a hard time doing, or going on the road to play teams you know you can beat. Enjoy your road trip to Mississippi Valley State.
Bottom line: You think teams like you are being treated unfairly. Even if you are right, it is not going to change. The NCAA is not going to make rules that guarantee mid-majors more slots, or require teams to play you at your place. The NCAA simply has no incentive to do so. You want better treatment? Win more games. Draw more fans.
Joined: Feb 2005 Gender: Male Posts: 433 Location: 'Tosa
Re: Ryan: Expand tournament « Result #4 Today at 12:42am »
Debatable as to whether we'd have made it in '05. As a 12 seed, we still would have likely made the cut, especially cutting all the fat from the BcS conferences, which was my design. CSU was far underseeded, and mid-majors have been getting higher seeds as the committee slowly wakes up. 24-3 CSU would NOT have been a #14 now. As for Hampton, they played arguably the most overrated seed ever in Iowa State, and were promptly destroyed by GTown the next round.
I'm just saying when a team in ANY conference gets with more than 10 losses, they should get shown the door. That was my main point. Limit the amount of teams a conference can send.
Joined: Apr 2007 Gender: Male Posts: 428 Location: Milwaukee, WI
Re: Game 24: at Green Bay 2/6/10 « Result #8 Yesterday at 10:14pm »
Has it really gone completely unnoticed that Ant threw down a half-hearted dunk in the 1st half of this game? How long have we (some of us- me included. lol) been b*tchin for some jams!! (despite the sarcastic sound of this, I was actually pretty psyched to see that- best play of that ugly game for us IMO).
Of course I will take winning- no matter if it's Wisconsin or Northwestern style- over a "losing" more athletic style that doesn't discourage dunking and above the rim shenanigans. But that is beside the point- it is sad that we have reached the depth to where we are arguing whether we'd trade a dunk for a win. We should win- period. Nothing else should fricking matter.
On a serious note- Haggerty looked like an upperclassmen in the 1st and some of the 2nd half. If Ant reaches his potential (which he seems on the way to doing), Tony Meier remembers who he was in this league as a freshman, Ja'Rob and Lonnie get even better, Mitchell Carter is a reliable starter or 6th man, we find a JuCo or an overlooked freshman phenom point guard*, the incoming recruits are as solid as this year's recruits, and Tone is ok... we should be on another uptick next year (20+ wins is no guarantee, but I'd imagine that should be the goal). Yeah, that is a crazy amount of pieces to have fall into place... but you can't deny that the pieces are there..
But that is next season.. What the heck am I talking about. Who knows though- "technically", we could still run the table to 20-11- THIS SEASON.
Well, I'm still psyched to the sweet or bitter end- GO PANTHERS!!!!
*Oxy-moronic? Maybe. lol.
EDIT/PS: As glum as us chums may be about the current state of the union in Pantherland.... Our worst margin of loss is to MU (by 20- which doesn't really reflect the competitiveness of that game)) and our next worst scoring differential is 16 to Detroit- all of our losses (save Detroit) were winnable for a good portion of the game.
Are we out of our league in these losses? Hell no. Can we somehow not figure out how to close out the majority of close games? If you have watched the past 4 seasons, you are probably laughing like myself... Maybe we'll figure it out. Maybe we won't. Unfortunately (if I may steal a reference from ghostofdylan)....., "we are already on our last mulligan". This Thursday that is..
Joined: Feb 2005 Gender: Male Posts: 1,449 Location: Milwaukee
Re: Getting More Students to the GAmes « Result #9 Yesterday at 9:53pm »
But who really can do that. This is college, and I've been thinking about this, they only reason some kids have a following is just the fact that they know where every party is, and kids want to party.
I don't mean to rehash, but is there anywhere to see a highlight of the thing so I can see what all the fuss is about since the game wasn't on TV here?
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Unfortunately (if I may steal a reference from ghostofdylan)....., "we are already on our last mulligan". This Thursday that is..
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