throwback

Hmmm - kind of makes Izzo's comments about NU playing like junkyard dogs and like his teams USED to play make a little more sense. Sounds like he's a pretty soft player, not someone I'd want on my team either. What does Coach Miles always say about getting popped in the mouth and then it's all about how you respond? Well he got popped in the mouth on the first shot of the game and curled up into the fetal position from the way it sounds. Also could be a player whose confidence is slipping, so he tries to convince himself that he just isn't taking things seriously enough and that's why he's not getting the results. More often it's because he's just not good enough.

I read somewhere that the women's team is scheduled to play tomorrow and they will proceed with the game. Yeah they just decided to keep fans out of that area of the arena for the women's game - apparently the metal that fell is decorative only and is only in certain parts of the arena, so it'll probably be a pretty quick fix. Apparently they did consider playing the Iowa-Ind game in an empty arena. For some reason Indiana dismissed that idea pretty fast, which may answer a question posed in another thread. A few years ago didn't we play OSU a day or two after the reg season ended because of a weather postponement? I would guess UI and IU would have to do that as well. Would be a brutal closing stretch for Iowa heading into the B1G tourney, which would start 3/13 - it'd be 3/6 at MSU, 3/8 home vs Ill, and then maybe 3/10 at Ind.

Although the NCAA committee doesn't solely look at number of wins in picking teams or solely at RPI, the RPI plays a key role. And the biggest thing we can do is rack up wins because we can really affect our RPI by picking up wins down the stretch. Our winning percentage is 1/4 of the RPI calculation. The other 3/4 is based on strength of schedule (opponents' win pct and opponents' opponents' win pct), and that isn't going to change much at this point in the season. Our SOS will probably go down slightly over the final 6 games. So we need wins to affect that 1/4 that we can control. At 14-10 we have a win pct of .571 and an RPI in the mid-50s. (These win pct numbers aren't exactly what's placed in the RPI formula because there may be some bonus points added, but they're close.) So if we had just flipped two games from losses to wins and were sitting at 16-8, we'd have a .667 win pct, which would be worth about .024 to our RPI, which would boost us into the mid-30s. Huge difference. Because our win pct is not great right now, we can boost it quite a bit with wins. Most teams at this point in the season don't have that opportunity because they already have a win pct that's reasonably high. They'd have to go undefeated in their final 5 to 7 games to boost the RPI, but what happens more often is they go 3-3 and their RPI nosedives a bit, causing them to fall off the bubble. If we go 4-2 the rest of the way, our win pct goes to .600 and our RPI gets a boost of about .007, which would get us to around #46 RPI (assuming everyone else stays in the same spot, which obviously won't happen, so this is a rough calculation). Go 5-1 and now we're at .633, which is worth about .015 and puts us around #37 RPI. So we just need wins right now to get that win pct higher. And an opening round B1G tournament loss would be devastating to the RPI. Need to get at least 1 B1G tourney win to keep the win pct as high as possible. So maybe being the #5 seed wouldn't be all bad.

This just proves the point that when national "experts" actually do their homework, NU looks better than they'd think at first glance. Unfortunately a lot of them aren't doing that. We just have to keep winning to force them to take a closer look.

Will the official parade be before or after we break into PBA, tear down the basketball standards, and carry them down O Street?

NU 74 PSU 61

Coach Miles on the road recruiting tonight, so we're supposed to have an assistant coach hosting with Greg Sharpe. I won't be able to type notes while it's going on, but I should be able to listen & will try to upload some notes later, unless someone else can take notes.

LOL!!! You're probably right. Would make all kinds of sense for him to do that. Does he vote? Just quickly scanned the list of voters. Looks like Painter, McDermott and Mark Fox may be the only coaches who have faced Nebraska this year. OK then so was it Painter or Fox who voted for NU?

We have a few 100+ RPI losses - PSU, Purdue, UAB. However all were away from home and only UAB is outside top 125, so he may be talking out of his ass a bit. Meaning I'm sure most "experts" glance at 10 overall losses for NU & 4 in the non-con and have no idea that 7 of those losses have come to Top 25 RPI teams, as they probably assume NU scheduled soft in the non-con. That said two Top 25 wins, one of which came in a true road game, should offset the three 100+ losses in the eyes of the NCAA committee, especially for a team that has played a Top 30 schedule. Bottom line is we just need to keep winning, go at least 4-2 down the stretch to stay in it. And one more Top 25 RPI win wouldn't hurt, whether it's Wisky or in a Big Ten Tourney quarterfinal game. The better OSU & MSU play from here on out, the better for us. Most of these national guys have no idea what NU has done this season, other than seeing the final score yesterday. And I doubt most of them have done much homework on NU yet, so they're just guessing/making assumptions. The ones that have at least glanced at numbers probably don't realize NU has won 6 of 8, another key component for the NCAA committee. In other words, NU's roughly first half of the season has the 3 100+ RPI losses. The roughly back half of the season thus far has the two Top 25 RPI wins and no 100+ RPI losses. Finishing strong is worth quite a bit. At this point, I'd pay attention more to what the regional guys are saying, such as the Big Ten Network analysts. They're on the NU bandwagon big time in the past 10 days, because they're seeing it up close and personal. Most national guys aren't paying close attention yet. If we keep winning, we'll force them to do some homework. Just got to keep winning.

Never would have guessed no one else has managed to win 6 of 8 in the same time frame. Very impressive!

NCAA RPI rankings thru Feb 17: http://www.ncaa.com/rankings/basketball-men/d1/ncaa-mens-basketball-rpi BIG TEN 6. Wisconsin (+1 spots from last week) 15. Ohio State (+1) - L, W 16. Michigan (+1) - L, L 18. Michigan State (-8) - W 24. Iowa (-1) - L 33. Minnesota (+8) - W 53. Nebraska (+16) 91. Illinois (-21) - W 102. Indiana (-24) - W 104. Northwestern (-6) - W 108. Purdue (-1) - L 112. Penn State (+2) - L Non-Conference 8. Creighton (+5) - L 14. Cincinnati (E) - L 19. UMass (-8) - L 88. Georgia (+25) - W 116. Miami (-4) - W 155. Florida Gulf Coast (+14) - W 165. UAB (+9) - L 173. Arkansas State (+18) - W 209. Northern Illinois (-6) - W 274. Western Illinois (-12) - W 327. South Carolina State (+8) - W 348. The Citadel (-1) - W NU vs Top 25: 2-7 NU vs Top 50: 3-7 NU vs Top 100: 5-7 NU vs Top 150: 8-9 NU vs 25-50: 1-0 NU vs 25-75: 1-0 NU vs 25-100: 3-0 NU vs 50-100: 2-0 NU vs 50-150: 5-2 NU vs 101-200: 5-3 NU vs 150+: 6-1 NU vs 200+: 4-0

Coach Harriman was on Sharp & Benning this morning, around 9:40 am - he was great as always. Not sure if I can embed it properly, but I'll give it a shot: http://cdn.stationcaster.com/stations/kozn/media/mp3/Feb_17_Seg_8_With_Nebraska_Coach_Chris_Harriman-1392652152.mp3 Nope. Sorry.

It's also worth remembering that the bubble is incredibly large right now, and it stretches far beyond the list of 8 teams that are the "first four out" and "next four out". As the next couple of weeks progress, teams will suffer bad losses and fall off the bubble, We just need to make sure we're not one of those teams, and eventually NU will start appearing on those lists as the number of candidates winds down. Additionally most of the bracket people are just looking at a snapshot of right now - some of them don't take the time to project a team going forward. And if they do they probably rely on places like RPI Forecast that still have us finishing 3-3 with an RPI of 69.6. That finish and that RPI obviously won't be good enough. Right now we're not in. We still have work to do. And honestly having us not appear on these lists is probably the best motivator the players need. So it doesn't bother me. The longer we stay "under the radar", the better ... although wins like yesterday make that pretty tough to do.

NU's defense in 4 of the past 5 games (minus Michigan) has been outstanding - to me, it's no coincidence Parker & Rivers have played more during that stretch. NU's help defense and on-ball defense both are significantly better than they were even just a month ago.

I'll bet he does feel that way, as we did score a few really tough shots late in the shot clock - then again Miles said Petteway is 57% in the last 5 seconds of the shot clock and Pitchford is 45%, so it's not like they haven't done some similar things in the past. He also probably has conveniently forgotten the missed over and back call that led to a MSU 3 in the first half and the fact that MSU was in the bonus in the second half before they ever committed a foul, so it's not like NU received every break in the game. He did give NU credit for playing harder than MSU at least. Bottom line is the game was in doubt at the 4 min mark, and NU went out and won it ... and he knows it.

Agree on the grades - kind of crazy to think that, while we threw in some huge shots late in the shot clock, our overall offensive performance wasn't off the charts by any stretch & yet we still win by 9 and nearly lead throughout. In other words it didn't take a perfectly played game with us getting every break to win at a Top 10 team. Wonder what's going to happen when we actually play a perfect game.

NU is 9-2 against the spread in B1G games this season, but just 1-2 ATS when a double digit underdog. And NU is 1-4 against the number as a double digit road underdog this season in all games. NU was 3-6 against the spread as a double digit road underdog last season, so that makes Coach Miles 4-10 against the number as a double digit road dog while at NU and 0-14 outright. The good news -- one of those 4 "wins" against the number came last year at Michigan State, a 66-56 outright loss as an 18-point underdog. NU also played MSU within 9 points at home last season, so Coach Miles has kept it at least respectable vs Izzo in both meetings previously.

royalfan, I'll let you take this one To be fair I did say "look like" And they just put IU's remaining schedule up on the screen, they'll be fortunate to win 2 of their remaining 6 - the only game they may be favored in down the stretch by Las Vegas is home against Nebraska ... and if we go on a nice winning streak here, that could change too.

Whew - when Indiana decides to play bad, they don't mess around do they? They look like the worst team in the league today by quite a bit.

Early line has MSU -13.5

You're right that we had a 4 seed in the Big 12 tournament, but we got in the NCAAs in 1998. We barely got in, but we got in, lost to Arkansas as an #11 seed I think.

Remember throwback, and I'm not certain because I haven't gone in depth yet this year, but was it two years ago that they had trouble finding teams that were tournament worthy for a normal year (with the expansion and everything)? I haven't looked so I don't know if there are teams with a better resume than FSUs that are getting left out but we can't really look at that RPI number all by itself and say yes or no for a team. We know what type of team RPI-wise usually gets in for a typical year, and we know we want that number to be lower, but can't set a for sure cut-off number. It's a comparison of resumes lined up with the RPI being a single component out of many components going into each resume. You're correct - RPI isn't taken in a vacuum. But it would be pretty rare for a 60-plus RPI team to earn an at-large bid - maybe with a Top 10 road win or two. But it does depend on what everyone else does too, like you said. Bids are kind of like grading on a curve.

Yeah those 2 neutral site Top 25 wins are huge for FSU vs us. Wins away from home are usually extremely important to the selection committee. Either way I'm not sure I agree they'd be "in" with a #62 RPI. I'd guess ESPN is projecting where FSU will be by the end of the year, not based on where they are now.

In my uneducated opinion, 19-11 (11-7) and a win in the tourney would be an NCAA lock. 18-12 (10-8) and a win in the tourney would be on the bubble and we probably would need a win over Wisconsin or at Michigan State. 9-9 in conferece would require a huge run in the tournament. Agreed - 19 wins (including B1G tourney) makes us a bubble team, but probably a bit short. 20 wins almost certainly puts us on the good side. Maybe a 10% shot at getting to 19. However Sunday's game is a wild card. Find a way to pull that one off, and possibly it changes the requirement by a full win. Nothing to lose, everything to gain Sunday. I'm not sure we have another game that offers that kind of a possible reward on the remainder of the schedule, especially with Indiana dropping like a rock. Not to get completely ahead of things, but while Wisky at home would be a very nice win, I'm not sure it's one that turns the heads of the committee. A quarterfinal B1G tourney win on a neutral floor would be very, very helpful. We just don't have that eye-catching performance away from home yet that makes the resume stand out. The committee loves those kinds of neutral site/road wins above almost all else.

RPI Forecast gives us about a 33% chance of being at least .500 in the league (17-13 overall or better). Considering the 0-4 start, I'll take a 1 in 3 shot of getting to 9-9.