jayschool

At least he didn't wait til late August.

My takeaway: Just about everybody except @tcp has really good taste.

XTC The Clash The Jam Stiff Little Fingers The Undertones Squeeze The Pogues Joe "King" Carrasco and the Crowns Funkadelic (particularly Maggot Brain) The Church Waylon Jennings

And the Undertones. Don't forget the Undertones.

XTC

Here's the lede from a story I paid for in The Athletic: Two months before his sixth season at Nebraska, coach Tim Miles was told his job was on the line. “I’m really going to need to see discernible improvement to keep you here,” then athletic director Shawn Eichorst told Miles in 2017.

As someone who lived 23 years in Colorado, I submit to you the very real differences. Bruh.

Solid use of semicolons.

Kiss. Of. Death.

Beat the Muskies!

I'd like to never hear again after Monday that the Big Ten hasn't won a title since 2000, not for Michigan's sake, but for the B1G. Too many SEC/ACC titles in the interim. Six runners-up in the interim, though. Which is OK.

I'm pretty sure he was referring to @colhusker

That's too bad.

Here's something interesting about Nebraska's RPI rank since the Huskers lost to Michigan in the Big Ten Tournament. Before the game, our RPI was at 57. After the game on March 2, it was at 64, which is where it was when the NCAA Tournament selection committee made its choices. From there, it went to 56 on March 12, the day after the selections, and is now up to No. 54, based on the success, I'm presuming, of Michigan, Penn State and maybe even a little North Texas and Mississippi State. Note how much our SOS and SOS rank has increased since we stopped playing. Too little, and definitely too late.

There are a few dozen people in central Pennsylvania who care. And maybe Pat Chambers' barber.

Maybe so, but the idea that EVERY SINGLE CONFERENCE gets a bid EVERY SINGLE YEAR doesn't incentivize those schools in those under-performing conferences to get better. Whether it's two conferences, eight conferences or somewhere in between, I think "relegation" is not a bad idea to pursue, thus opening the tourney to more teams with a legitimate chance of winning a game or two. Maybe it's simply putting a ceiling on how high a team's SOR/KPI/RPI/BPI can be to compete in the tournament: nobody above 150, for example, which would have gotten rid of the three lowest-rated teams.

I'm still waiting for Herm from Deshler to verify. Or maybe Roy from Rising City. Or Don from Diller. One of the experts, at least.

That's certainly a good point, but I would argue that "relegation" would incentivize teams in these conferences to improve their play or move to a lower division. Your point is valid, though, and it is exciting to see a team and it fans go crazy because they made the Dance, even if they have no real chance of ever winning a game (as I noted earlier, UMBC's miracle still would have happened in this system). Bottom line, nobody really cares what I think. Just tossing out an idea.

To answer your question more directly, I don't know. I'm not a good judge of watching teams from mid-majors and projecting how'd they do against teams from major conferences through the course of a season. I know that Nebraska was very nearly unbeatable at home this year. Thus, we should be favored to beat them at home. They lost to Indiana State, Missouri State and Bradley in road games. Were we to play them on their home court, we'd be underdogs, just as we were underdogs in nearly EVERY SINGLE ROAD GAME Nebraska played this year. So there's nothing new there. On neutral courts, Nebraska most recently was blown out by a Final Four NCAA team. Loyola has won four in a row on neutral courts against what was judged to be better competition than Nebraska. Short answer: depends on where the game is played.

Not right now. We haven't won a game in more than a month.

Were I king of the NCAA selection committee, I would allow for guaranteed spots for only the top 24 conferences (as judged by RPI or some other measure). A team in a conference in the lower tier would have to earn its way to the tournament throughout the course of the regular season. UMBC, champion of the 23rd best conference and with a 100+ RPI, would have made the tournament. If you're in a lower-tiered conference and win it, you'd be thrown in the general potential at-large pool. Bucknell won the 27th-ranked conference (the Patriot League), and with an 80ish RPI, would have been left out. Would they be missed? There are eight teams like that, and that means that eight better teams would have been in, making for an even more interesting tournament. Radford (Big South) RPI 128 -> MTSU RPI 33 Wright State (Horizon) RPI 99 -> USC RPI 34 Bucknell (Patriot) RPI 80 -> Louisville RPI 38 LIU Brooklyn (Northeast) RPI 232 -> W. Kentucky RPI 39 Stephen F. Austin (Southland) RPI 104 -> St. Mary's RPI 40 Lipscomb (Atlantic Sun) RPI 101 -> Boise State RPI 50 NC Central (MEAC) RPI 279 -> Temple RPI 52 Texas Southern (SWAC) 272 -> Nebraska RPI 56

We weren't favored in the majority of our Big Ten games, but won 13 of 18.

How's this for a safe statement: In PBA, we were the equal of any team in NCAA Division I men's basketball.

Nebraska's SOS gets better every day. Can the committee get a do-over?

Syracuse now on the list: Western Kentucky Xavier Connecticut New Mexico State Penn Arkansas Baylor Syracuse Tough to play yourself off that list, Orange. You may have to let us beat you in the tournament next year.