Cats trailed by 11 early, but put it together to win 76-62 against Michigan at home.
Gotta love this season - the good teams always overcome the loss of a key player. The really good teams reload every year.
Lets see if our guy can keep it going.
Go B1GCats
rsl
Cats tied for 3rd with 4 games left ; 2 on the road. Cats Achilles heel has been road games in the conference , only winning 2 of them. Could be a liability in any seedings for the Dance if they can’t at least win 0ne more of them.
Being injury riddled probably doesn’t help their pairings let alone their chances of doing well down the final stretch before the conference tourney ( It looks like only 8 guys suited up tonight)
Harry
They’ll get some chances for some good neutral site games (Q1 or Q2) in the conference tournament, too. And winning late in the season always seems to impress the tournament committee.
Shy of winning 3-4 more games or falling flat, it looks like they’re stuck in 7-10 limbo, which would make it hard to advance to the 2nd weekend.
5 ranked teams lose tonight including #8 Duke, though all of the losses were on the road Still has to help Cats in their quest for the ncaa and subsequent seedings
Harry
I’m just not sure we can do much other than keep on winning the games we should win and maybe pull off a good road win. Tournament wins would help, too. MSU’s NET ranking of 23 just seems unjustifiable, and unless ranked teams start having bad losses (like our Chicago State Q4 loss) I don’t see us climbing out of the 50s.
I know MSU played a number of tough opponents early, but they lost most (all?) of those games. The NET rating bugs me. Hopefully, we can beat MSU on the road, and that should have a chance of pushing our NET somewhat higher.
Shawn
With the CSU loss, we aren’t likely to get out of the 50s even if we win out, unless we win the B1G tourney
Cats moved from 55 to 52 today. Iowa moved up to 62, but with a 16-12 record they’re not quite on the bubble yet, they’d probably have to go deep in the conference tournament or win it to get in. Minnesota has a 17-9 record but a 74 NET. Not sure any other teams could make the NCAA Tournament without winning the conference tournament.
I’d love to sweep MSU (remember, my wife is a Spartan). But at this point, I wonder whether it would simply hurt them more than it would help us in terms of NET ranking. The only reasonable explanation for MSU still being as high as they are is if it gives heavy weight to where they started.
I’m also surprised that NET doesn’t give any weight to the age of a game or have something to discount single outliers (i.e., don’t weigh best and worst games as much). I know that technically, that would throw out or minimize the Purdue win as much as it does the CSU loss (although we took Purdue to OT at their place, too), but I guess it just irks me that it’s such a black box.
-Michael
Sort of surprising that someone hasn’t sued the NCAA over the secrecy behind the NET rankings. They’ll sue over almost anything these days.
At the rate things are going, and the NCAA’s track record in litigation, you may not have a NCAA to worry about too much longer.
Coach
I’m afraid that’s the current direction; not that I m a big fan of the NCAA , but I’m not a fan of the Wild West either. I’m hoping Charlie can use his political connections and anything else to keep the organization relevant
Harry
The NCAA makes most of its money ($1.14B in 2022) on the basketball tourney.
It still appears to have a firm grip on that product in part because there are 32 basketball conferences who get automatic bids for the winners of their conference tournament. The other thirty six are chosen at large from the 319 other teams that comprise Div 1 college basketball.
In football, the power-5 can pretty much decide to do whatever they want. There are only 134 football teams in the FBS and 65 are members of the power-5.
If the power(ful)-5 decide to cut the NCAA out, it isn’t clear that they would have the leverage to bring basketball along with them. They have enough teams to have a single elimination tournament like March Madness. But that would still leave the NCAA with more than enough teams (286) to continue March Madness including bball powerhouse conferences like The Big East (UConn, Marquette, Creighton, etc.) and the West Coast Conference (St. Mary’s and Gonzaga) AND a whole bunch of Cinderella teams like Loyola (Chicago).
Unless the power(ful)-5 (soon to be the power-4) are willing to acquire the NCAA, I’m not sure what they would have to offer that would encourage the NCAA to willingly give up their cash cow for just a slice of the football revenue.
Jeff
All very logical Jeff, however the way the Bug 2 are starting to throw their weight around and the fact that they only seem driven by greed it wouldn’t shock me to see them demand elimination of low major auto bids and threaten, with support from Fox and ESPN, to take their ball and go home.
I guess that wouldn’t surprise me either.
There doesn’t appear to be a lot of love lost between the NCAA, B1G, and SEC.
A power move like what you describe would certainly be interesting. Then I guess it is all up to the networks to decide if they would like two competing national tournaments or not and whether the NCAA could play one network off against the others in order to keep their “traditional” tournament afloat.
Jeff
Remember, the NIT used to be the more prestigious basketball tournament. Now teams refuse to participate in it even when they are invited.
-Michael
A post was split to a new topic: Shots fired on Evanston campus
and Fox is now funding an alternative to it.
MSA’s home loss only moved them from 23 to 24 in the NET rankings.
Nebraska’s win over Minnesota moved them from 43 to 41.
Northwestern slipped from 52 to 53.
Palm has Nebraska as a 10 seed and Northwestern as a 9.