Nebraska on the Selection Committee Board

[brfrad]

On 1/31/2018 at 9:27 PM, HuskerFever said:

 

Since when did we lose to the Delaware State's, Stetson, etc since we are 0 - 5 against the worst teams.

[HuskerFever]

23 minutes ago, brfrad said:

Since when did we lose to the Delaware State's, Stetson, etc since we are 0 - 5 against the worst teams.

 

It appears he's having trouble adjusting to the tier system as well 

[HolyBobpilgrimage]

12 hours ago, Cookie Miller Wasn't Dirty said:

 

I thought playing it at MSG was a dumb idea when it was announced. Turns out it was even dumber than I thought.

Fuckin guy...why is Delaney such a dimwit. Such a short sighted (money influenced) bonehead decision ?

[hhcmatt]

15 hours ago, royalfan said:

Yes, this conference tourney a week early is not a good thing in general.  Teams had to prep for conference games in December, instead of tuning in more on other games, like normal.  Expended more energy on huge conference games in general, where that energy would have been focused elsewhere.  And it probably affected some of the coaches scheduling out of conference as well, and the when lose a few more games than we would hope, we are buried in RPI with no way to save it as a league.  We are the Big Ten.  We don't need to shift our shit around for a building, especially one that doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense to play this thing at in the first place.  

 

We're shifting to 20 conference games next year. While you might look at playing in December as shifting around for a building it's really more of a prep for the new norm. Otherwise, we're playing it up in NYC for TV $$$ and expanding our recruiting footprint. 

[Chuck Taylor]

19 hours ago, huskercwg said:

One are that used to be emphasized (or at least considered) was how a team was playing at seasons end.  Why?  Oftentimes (like Nebraska this year) the team takes a bit of time getting used to playing with each other.  When the team character is built and players understand strengths and roles, they tend to jell.  Are you (collectively) saying that trait is not being looked at this year? 

I think it is being looked at. The tier system is a big thing, but not the only thing. The point of the tiers is encourage better scheduling. Some big schools (Syracuse is a good example) put together a weak home-only noncon, then made the tournament by winning home games against tough conference opponents. Teams that don't play (and win) road or at least neutral-site in noncon are penalized. It's a good idea, and while it's biting us now, it won't matter if we keep winning.

 

Hmmmm, I think I just answered something that had already been answered. Groundhog Day, I guess. 

Edited February 2, 2018 by Chuck Taylor

[hhctony]

10 hours ago, SkersHoops said:

This is the extreme..... but

Beating Duke @ Cameron Indoor vs. Beating Temple in (insert random city) = Tier 1

 

Wide enough for some teams to get lucky and make their tiers look much stronger vs. another team who could just be on the other side of the #. 

 

These wins currently would all be the same to the committee and better than beating Michigan at home.

 

Beating Duke, Nevada, Rhode Island or Middle Tennessee at home. Beating New Mexico State, Western Kentucky, Temple or St. Bonaventure on a neutral court. Winning at East Tennessee, Wyoming, South Dakota State, Wright State or Utah Valley.

[Cookie Miller Wasn't Dirty]

21 minutes ago, hhctony said:

 

These wins currently would all be the same to the committee and better than beating Michigan at home.

 

Beating Duke, Nevada, Rhode Island or Middle Tennessee at home. Beating New Mexico State, Western Kentucky, Temple or St. Bonaventure on a neutral court. Winning at East Tennessee, Wyoming, South Dakota State, Wright State or Utah Valley.

 

I'm okay with the concept of the Tier system. But I agree, the Tiers seem like they need to be reviewed. It's basically saying that winning on the road at Northeastern (that's right... EASTERN, not western) is the equivalent of beating A&M at home since Northeastern is 75th and A&M is 30th. That's clearly stupid. Maybe it should be top 50 road games or something.

 

Now as I'm typing this out, I'm starting to agree with others that the Tier system should probably be abolished. I think it'd be better to supplement RPI with just looking at the teams' best 5-6 wins. That way you get a feel for whether or not the bubble teams are capable of beating good teams. When determining seeds for the better teams (NCAA seeds 1-6 or so), then you start analyzing wins AND losses against top competition. But for the bubble teams, just looking at the wins is the most important since their bubbly resume already implies that they've lost a handful of games to top competition.

Edited February 2, 2018 by Cookie Miller Wasn't Dirty

[Donkey]

Looks like  the injury bug has bitten Maryland.  Admittedly, you want to play teams when they are at their best, but Nebraska needs all the help it can get.

 

http://www.baltimoresun.com/sports/terps/tracking-the-terps/bs-sp-cekovsky-maryland-purdue-0131-story.html

 

After losing forwards Justin Jackson and Ivan Bender last month with season-ending injuries, and now Cekovsky, Maryland is down to eight healthy scholarship players and only three big men: 6-10 freshman Bruno Fernando, 6-9 redshirt freshman Joshua Tomaic and 6-9 graduate student Sean Obi.

 

Just win. 

 

http://www.espn.com/blog/collegebasketballnation/post/_/id/120827/weekend-lookahead-tough-stretch-will-reveal-if-vols-are-for-real

 

Big Ten's best hope?

The Big Ten basketball standings look a lot like the football ones the past few seasons. The league is extremely top heavy, with two or three really good teams at the top, followed by a bunch of mediocre teams or worse. Oh, and Illinois and Rutgers are occupying the cellar.

ESPN bracket guru Joe Lunardi currently projects four Big Ten teams to make the NCAA tournament field: Purdue, Michigan State, Ohio State and Michigan. Barring a late collapse by the Wolverines, each of those teams seems pretty safe.

At least half of the Big Ten's 14 teams were included in every NCAA tournament since 2011, but the league isn't going to get anywhere close to that this season. An even bigger surprise: Nebraska might have the best chance at being the fifth Big Ten team to make it, barring a big upset at the league tourney at Madison Square Garden.

The Cornhuskers (17-8, 8-4 Big Ten) have won five of their past six games to climb into fourth place (a half-game ahead of Michigan) in the Big Ten standings. They're getting a week off before playing at Minnesota on Tuesday night. Nebraska has one victory over an RPI top-50 opponent -- 72-52 over Michigan on Jan. 18 -- and it doesn't play another top-50 foe the rest of the way. There's no margin for error.

Maryland (15-9, 4-7 Big Ten) has been undone by injuries -- center Michal Cekovsky became the latest frontcourt player to go down, with a left heel injury -- and is struggling to stay afloat, losing five of its past six games. The Terps host struggling Wisconsin on Sunday.

Edited February 2, 2018 by Donkey

[royalfan]

3 hours ago, hhcdimes said:

 

We're shifting to 20 conference games next year. While you might look at playing in December as shifting around for a building it's really more of a prep for the new norm. Otherwise, we're playing it up in NYC for TV $$$ and expanding our recruiting footprint. 

Not quite the same though, as those extra 2 games will replace non conference games in December.  In many cases some decent non conference games.  This year they do not and everything is forced to be compacted down and it is hurting the league.  

[hhcmatt]

9 minutes ago, royalfan said:

Not quite the same though, as those extra 2 games will replace non conference games in December.  In many cases some decent non conference games.  This year they do not and everything is forced to be compacted down and it is hurting the league.  

 

Our current decent non-con games currently consist of  ACC game, Big East game, Creighton, hoiday tournament and then Home-Away series (Cincinatti, Rhode Island, Kansas)

We're already signed for a holiday tourney next year during Thanksgiving which means we're playing some good teams right before the start of those two conference games and playing Creighton in the near future after that. Some years we won't play the Big East game.

 

The most likely game to go is the random home-away series. (Goodbye dream of bringing in former Big 8/12 members)

The second most likely game to go is a pay game.

 

Maybe everyone else in the league will change up their scheduling but for us we're looking at other slug of games in late November/early December.

[royalfan]

Probably scheduling a little more aggressively due to projected experience of the team.  I doubt we will typically have such a hard schedule.  Personally, I don't really care.  What I do feel I know is that this waste of a week is not good for this season and it would suck big time if it contributes to missing the dance.  

[ladyhusker]

In my nerd moment of the day (whatever, it's Friday afternoon), I got kinda curious about what things would be like if the tiers factored in the state of the team at the time the game was played, vs at the end of the season. Obviously that's an imperfect practice too, since early evaluations can be super arbitrary, and overall things usually tend to balance out -- i.e. we were really undervalued at the beginning of the season, as were teams like Boston College (and Ohio State), but teams like St. John's and, oddly, North Dakota and Long Beach State were valued better at the time of those games than they are now. But I was curious nonetheless. I used the TeamRankings site for RPI, on the date of the game itself. No idea if there are other places to find that information, but I Googled NCAA 2018 RPI and found that. 

 

The picture this paints is a touch different from our current resume -- not necessarily a night-and-day situation, but it does get rid of our Tier 1 goose egg. Interestingly, Minnesota would still only be a Tier 2 win, but Northwestern and Michigan are both Tier 1. Full listing is below, but the summary goes:

Tier 1: 2-6

Tier 2: 3-2

Tier 3: 6-0

Tier 4: 6-0

 

I guess I'd argue that, if RPI is so important and they trust it enough to make it a major component of bracket-building, they should trust it enough to evaluate the quality of the team at the time the game is played. If that were the case, what I see is a team who played a balanced schedule across a variety of team difficulties, won the games they "should", and is competitive against decent competition with a few decent wins, but wouldn't necessarily be considered elite. What that translates to in terms of a bid to dance, I have no idea. But our resume maybe looks a little better this way.

 

Date	Team	H/A/N	W/L	RPI	Tier
11/11	Eastern Illinois	H	W	236	4
11/13	North Texas	H	W	328	4
11/16	St. Johns	A	L	65	1
11/19	North Dakota	H	W	85	3
11/23	UCF	N	L	52	2
11/24	Marist	N	W	300	4
11/26	Long Beach State	N	W	70	2
11/29	Boston College	H	W	98	3
12/3	Michigan State	A	L	7	1
12/5	Minnesota	H	W	43	2
12/9	Creighton	A	L	56	1
12/16	Kansas	H	L	21	1
12/20	UTSA	H	W	249	4
12/22	Delaware State	H	W	348	4
12/29	Stetson	H	W	279	4
1/2	Northwestern	A	W	75	1
1/6	Purdue	A	L	13	1
1/9	Wisconsin	H	W	126	3
1/12	Penn State	A	L	123	2
1/15	Illinois	H	W	145	3
1/18	Michigan	H	W	30	1
1/22	Ohio State	A	L	14	1
1/24	Rutgers	A	W	179	3
1/27	Iowa	H	W	145	3
1/29	Wisconsin	A	W	135	2

[AuroranHusker]

PSA: Keep on keeping on, Big Red. Just win, baby!

 

[Norm Peterson]

Tier 1 wins. We’re all worried about not having any based on how  teams are ranked currently, as opposed to how they were ranked at the time we played. Something tells me there are not a lot of Tier 1 wins to go around and that a lot of the Tier 1 wins probably belong to Tier 1 teams who are not worried  about reaching the bubble because they are squarely in the field already. There are probably also a certain number of Tier 1 wins by teams who have no hope of making the field. So the real question is how we stack up against other potential bubble teams and my guess is that a lot of them have not fared any better against the top-tier then we have. 

 

Anyone able to come up with any status on this? 

Edited February 3, 2018 by Norm Peterson

[HuskerActuary]

9 minutes ago, Norm Peterson said:

Tier 1 wins. We’re all worried about not having any based on how  teams are ranked currently, as opposed to how they were ranked at the time we played. Something tells me there are not a lot of Tier 1 wins to go around and that a lot of the Tier 1 wins probably belong to Tier 1 teams who are not worried  about reaching the bubble because they are squarely in the field already. There are probably also a certain number of Tier 1 wins by teams who have no hope of making the field. So the real question is how we stack up against other potential bubble teams and my guess is that a lot of them have not fared any better against the top-tier then we have. 

 

Anyone able to come up with any status on this? 

 

Here's the tier 1 record of the last four in and the first four out as they currently stand on Bracket Matrix. For comparison, we are 0-5.

 

Last Four In

Washington 3-3

Houston 3-2

Virginia Tech 2-4

Marquette 2-8

 

First Four Out

Boise State 0-3

Western Kentucky 1-2

Syracuse 1-3

SMU 2-3

[HuskerFever]

32 minutes ago, HuskerActuary said:

 

Here's the tier 1 record of the last four in and the first four out as they currently stand on Bracket Matrix. For comparison, we are 0-5.

 

Last Four In

Washington 3-3

Houston 3-2

Virginia Tech 2-4

Marquette 2-8

 

First Four Out

Boise State 0-3

Western Kentucky 1-2

Syracuse 1-3

SMU 2-3

 

And this is where I'm sitting here on a long bye week thinking "sure would be nice to have at least one in the win column."

[ATupe]

51 minutes ago, Norm Peterson said:

Tier 1 wins. We’re all worried about not having any based on how  teams are ranked currently, as opposed to how they were ranked at the time we played. Something tells me there are not a lot of Tier 1 wins to go around and that a lot of the Tier 1 wins probably belong to Tier 1 teams who are not worried  about reaching the bubble because they are squarely in the field already. There are probably also a certain number of Tier 1 wins by teams who have no hope of making the field. So the real question is how we stack up against other potential bubble teams and my guess is that a lot of them have not fared any better against the top-tier then we have. 

 

Anyone able to come up with any status on this? 

The thing you forget about is the "eye test".  I've served on selection groups before, albeit smaller level, and we always focused on what the team has done in the last qtr of the season.  Nobody wants a team fizzling at the end.  The committee may not officially say it, but this will play in our favor if we win out.

[Cookie Miller Wasn't Dirty]

 

First Four Out! First Four Out!

 

Lunardi must have done some digging since his most recent comments on Nebrasketball.

[Vinny]

8 minutes ago, Cookie Miller Wasn't Dirty said:

 

First Four Out! First Four Out!

 

Lunardi must have done some digging since his most recent comments on Nebrasketball.

Haha, was just coming to post that his 2/1 update on their website has us in the "next four out".  Movin' on up!

[hskr4life]

First four out..... behind 2 mid majors....  

[HuskerFever]

BracketMatrix has us knocked down to only being in 1 bracket now. I'm going to chalk that up as:

 

1. A bye week

2. We'll see some bigger shifts after this weekend's games (other teams falling and hopefully we move up a few)

[HuskerActuary]

23 minutes ago, HuskerFever said:

BracketMatrix has us knocked down to only being in 1 bracket now. I'm going to chalk that up as:

 

1. A bye week

2. We'll see some bigger shifts after this weekend's games (other teams falling and hopefully we move up a few)

Agreed, not a big deal. You're going to see a ton of noise when you're talking about being in 1 versus 2 versus 3 brackets out of over 100. It would be much more meaningful to know how many brackets we are in the first four out or next four out and how that has changed over the last week (I don't have that info). 

[jason2486]

I almost chuckled at the above post regarding Maryland...only 3 scholarship post players left on their roster after injuries. We technically have 3 true posts, period! And one guy WAS a walk-on! Poor Maryland!

[HuskerActuary]

See tweet from Shelby Mast. As of this morning, he has put LSU in the field. Their RPI is 75 (seventy-five!!!) and are 4-3 versus tier 1, 3-5 versus tier 2, 0-1 versus tier 3, 6-0 versus tier 4. What a joke - apparently next year our non-conference should be filled with Duke, Villanova and Kansas and everyone in between in hopes of getting as many tier 1 wins as possible (being mostly sarcastic here).

 

 

Coming into this year, I really had no idea that winning games against top opponents was so much important than not losing games against bad ones. Dumb

[HuskerActuary]

I went through all of the brackets on Bracket Matrix and found those that had been updated since yesterday's games. Based on this, we are still probably the fifth team out or so.

 

MM - 6th out
Hasla - 5th out
BBP - 1st out
Bracketologist 3 - Not in first 8 out
Zac - not in field
WAG - Somewhere between 5th out and 14th out
T-Rank - 9th out
SM - 1st out
BracketTodd - somewhere between 1st and 9th out
BracketBingo - not in field
BBByJon - 2nd out
RealTimeRPI - not in field
GDBracketology - not in field
HoopsHD - not in field

Lunardi - 4th out