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I'm getting sick of saying it, and you're getting sick of hearing it...

I should also mention.

That I recognize that our tourney resume is much better than our computer ranking. We might end up ranked around 40 or 50 in the computers, and still get a 7 or 8 seed.

I'm not doing a very good job of properly framing my points and putting them in context in this thread. Moving too fast.
tongue.r191677.gif
 
They aren't awful

Mississippi Valley State is awful. Rutgers is average for a college basketball team and bad for a BIG team. But we won. We beat the team we were supposed to beat. It counts as one win, just like the Maryland and OSU wins count. We are 6-3 with two road wins and we have two more road games against beatable competition before the end of the season. We aren't playing badly. We aren't going to beat everyone by 20. No one does--not even UK and some people think they might go undefeated.
 
Listen. I'm a Viking fan, so I know a thing or two about suck.

A couple of years ago, we won a bunch of close games and made the playoffs, only to get trounced by the Packers. You can say it's because Ponder was hurt, but that's only if you actually think Ponder is at least a CFL-caliber QB, which he most definitely is not.

Long story short, we got lucky. We won. And wins all count the same. But our performance was not that of a playoff team.

That is IU this year. We have some wins. They look good on the resume. But a 20-point win is better than a 2-point win. Decades of research proves it. That's why gamblers follow KenPom and Sagarin and don't give two flying rats behinds about RPI.

We are a mediocre B1G team who has an outside chance to contend for the title partly because, yes, we are in fact playing badly, and yet still find a way to win games like tonight.

goat
 
LOL. I expect we'll get an 8, and I'm 99% sure the committee

will "coincidentally" put us in UK's region. (Last week, I ended up with Indiana in Duke's region because of bracketing principles, but anything is plausible at this point.)
 
I wouldn't mind that.

The team that beats UK will be a team that looks very much like us on our best days - lights out shooting, in&out, finding a way to rebound without size.

If they go undefeated and we beat them in the tourney, my faith in the basketball gods will be restored.
 
An IND/UK round of 32 game would probably break

all sorts of ratings records for CBS (we know Nantz/Special K would go to Louisville to work that weekend).

Hence the "coincidentally" part of my statement. :)
 
"If we didn't have Yogi and JBJ, we might never win."

This has to be one of the dumbest things I've read on this board. You take the top two scorers off of any team and they wouldn't win.
 
Okay...

You don't want to talk about one game aberrations, because one game doesn't tell you anything...then you base your argument off one game the Vikings lost to the Packers in a different sport. Make up my mind about this one game thing, because I can't figure out if one game matters or not, based on your posts.

I'm sure 20 point win is better than a 2 point win. IU didn't win by 2 today. But your real complaint is that we play badly and win. Have you considered that the your problem might you, instead of the team? We aren't a mediocre BIG team. We're tied for second. If you think that being tied for second is mediocre, then I don't know how to explain this any better. Finding a way to win is good, and is the mark of a team that is better than mediocre. Every statistical model you love shows us as better than mediocre--and a tournament team. That's not the end all-be all of college basketball, but it is an improvement over last year's admittedly poor results.
 
You misunderstand.

I wasn't using the one game as evidence of anything. My point was we didn't belong in the playoffs. All year, the ball bounced our way. We lucked out. Most of our wins were by the skin of our teeth. Exciting, yes, but they don't bode well for future performance.

KenPom has us 7th.
Sagarin has us 6th.
RPI has us 4th.

What's the difference? KenPom is based solely on performance. Sagarin is mostly on performance, partly on wins, RPI is entirely on wins.

In other words, our record is better than our performance. We have been getting lucky.

goat
 
A couple thoughts on the NCAA tourney

We're definitely playing well enough right now to get in the tournament, so I don't doubt that we'll be selected. It's way too early to worry about the seeding, but hopefully it'll be from 5-12 so we don't get matched against a 1-4 seed.
 
We're going to earn an 8 or a 9.

But we're going to be slightly overrated when we do, so unless we are paired against another overrated team, we could be in trouble.

Considering how we're playing, and some of the losses we've already had, our NCAA resume is already pretty impressive. Unfortunately, our SOS makes it impossible for it to ever become impressive enough for a 4 or 5 seed, unless we run the table. But it will be impressive enough for an 8 seed or so, despite the fact that everyone will say we only deserve a 12.

goat
 
Silly

Our KenPom ranking is lower because our wins have not been by huge margins. But, exactly how did we get lucky in our wins? They haven't been those type of games. You have really been reaching in this thread (e.g., our offense isn't an abortion for God sakes) and this is another reach.
 
Re: We're going to earn an 8 or a 9.

In a post down below, you seemed to be complaining that we have won games by being lucky.

Weren't we lucky when Kent Benson tipped in that last second basket to preserve our undefeated season?

Weren't we lucky when Smart hit that shot against Syracuse (as well as singlehandedly scored the majority of IU's points in the second half)?

Wasn't Duke lucky when UNLV missed its last second shot in the Final Four or when Laettner hit his famous shot? Were the Bulls lucky when Jordan hit his most famous jumper?

I hope you're not selling this team short. They played with a lot of heart today (only 11 turnovers) and, since almost all of them are wearing at least one wrap from the knee to the ankle, I think they're hurt more than has been publicized.
 
Every study ever done in the history of ever

says that the best way to judge teams is on margin of victory, not win-loss record.

It's been proven time and again to be true. Sagarin, Pomeroy, Bill James, always, every one of them, vindicated.

Our KenPom ranking is lower because our wins have been by small margins, and KenPom is correct to do that. That's the point. Our wins are outpacing our scoring margins. That's not sustainable.

goat
 
I'm sorry, but I don't think you get what I'm saying.

I'm not complaining about getting lucky. I'm complaining about performance. I want to win. But I also want to be a better team than we are. I'm using these numbers and this discussion of luck to illustrate that our performance, overall, is not as good as many people around here seem to think it is. I'm not mad we're getting lucky. I'm ecstatic we're getting lucky. What I'm mad about is that, without the luck, we might not be a tournament team. That's what I'm mad about.

goat
 
I didn't ask that

I understand that. We aren't a dominant team and everyone can see that. You said we had been getting lucky and I asked you when, exactly. I don't think we have had any games that fit that description, but maybe you can point out a couple.

If you mean to say he law of averages will catch up with us, maybe, but our wins haven't been one point nail biters.
 
Re: I'm sorry, but I don't think you get what I'm saying.

You should stop being mad. I think it's difficult to tell the difference between winning because of "luck" and winning because of perseverance and never quitting.
 
Sorry, I misunderstood.

Yes, I'm talking about "lucky overall on average," not about individual games.

I do not think that means the law of averages will catch up to us. That's a logical fallacy. We're already 6-3. We shouldn't be, but those wins are locked in. By performance, we might be a .500 team (by my math, .506, actually), but we're going to finish with 10 or 11 wins in the league, anyway, even if we regress to our mean from here on out.

I just want to make it very clear that 6-3 is not who we actually are performance-wise, and 12 or 13 wins is as equally as unlikely as 8 or 9.

That said, our favorable schedule from here on out slightly increases the chance we overperform, which probably makes 12 wins at least somewhat more likely than 9.

So, yeah, All I've been trying to talk about here (at least when it comes to using numbers and "luck") is the fact that our record is outperforming our actual quality of play, and we shouldn't count on that to necessarily continue.

goat
 
Re: Can you just drop.....

......the whole angst routine and accept the win and move on?
Everyone expected a big margin win and we didn't get the margin but got the win.

It happens. There are countless games where the supposedly better team has a tight contest with its opponent.

I think you are going overboard with the "God awful" tag you keep using. Hell, IU was a preseason pick to only finish but a few higher spots than this same Rutgers team.
I think there is a lot more parity in this conference than you may believe.
 
I don't.

I think we have learned enough about statistics over the years to accurately measure where a team should be. Bill James came up with Pythagorean expectation for baseball years ago, and it's been successfully transported to football, basketball and hockey since. And by successful, I mean it's predictive value has been very strong. Some teams perform better than they should, and some teams perform worse than they should, but in any sport, the teams with the highest ratios of points scored to points allowed tend to be at the top of the standings.

By using this math, we can compare where a team "should" be to where it is, and this gives us a fairly accurate reading on whether or not they have been getting lucky, and by how much.

Now, because the B1G has an unbalanced schedule, some of what might look like "luck" is actually just good scheduling. IU has had a relatively middle of the road B1G schedule so far (slightly more difficult than average), so that's not a huge factor, compared to, say, Iowa, which has had an unbearably difficult schedule overall.

Numbers don't always match up with your gut, but numbers usually end up being right. That's why Vegas wins money every year and gamblers don't.

goat
 
Re: I cannot recall a recent time.....

.....when IU didn't play like crap on the road. Every road win is seemingly a squeaker, with a blowout win as a very rare exception. These losses have all come on the road. We regularly look like crap on the road going back through several regimes.

This pattern is an IU pattern, not just a Cream pattern.
 
Mediocre teams have....

.....very close games against awful teams all the time.
That's part of why they are mediocre. If we were a good team, we'd have run them out of the gym in the first 5 minutes of the contest. That's part of what makes a team mediocre: wild inconsistency.
 
Re: I honestly don't know how people could.......

....be mad about the current state of the union.
We're not a great team. Everybody knows this. We are outperforming the prognostications.
The facts are we are starting 2 true frosh and a guy that didn't play last year due to an ACL. WE also lost our ony post presence and are outrebounding teams with guys down low who have 2-3 inches on us. No reason to get all worked up over a team that seems to be defying the odds.

This post was edited on 2/1 1:17 AM by Big Red Crimson Buffalo
 
Problem is we can't stop teams from scoring.

Our idea of defense is the "hope they miss a wide open jumper" defense. We got away with it vs. OSU (the first time) and somewhat vs. Rutgers. OSU didn't let us get away with it the second time. And Rutgers probably won't in their building.

If outperforming expectations is your thing, that's fine. Personally, I'd like us to way outperform expectations and get to the third weekend of the NCAAs.

Losing our only post presence is on Crean. Because there shouldn't be only one post presence.

16-6 is a nice record. No question. But 16-6 should be the norm, not a pleasant surprise.
 
Re: I don't think anybody is.....

...content with just outperforming expectations. Just pointing out this is what we've got. That's all.
As for the post presence, Cream actually got guys. Hindsight is always 20/20. He did his job and recruited for the position. His only fault, perhaps, was that his crystal ball broke when he couldn't predict that Vonleh would be 1-and-done nor that Fischer would bail.
 
Re: "We're not a great team"

Right, so why get mad over this?
We're playing above what I expected (different from "wanted") at this point. This concept that we should be performing much better than we are simply ignores the the true makeup of our team.
 
I don't have a problem with most of what you're saying.

Separating "expect" from "want" is good. The problem I have is with those people - and at times in this thread, it seemed like you were one of them - who think that we should be HAPPY with "expect." Who think that we should just forget about "want."

I'm not willing to do that. I recognize that our overall performance is on par with what we are, and our results are even a little above that. We are going to finish higher in the B1G than I thought we would. But I absolutely refuse to be happy about that.

goat
 
"He did his job"???? Seriously?

That is what you believe?

It was talked about from day one that VonLeh was a one and done. Many hoped he would stayed for a second year and many said he wasn't ready but the many also said he was gone.

Sure he was blindsided by Fischer but I don't think there is any rule that says you can't have more than one or two bigs on your team at a time. Good grief, look at PU, they have two 7'ers.What if Fischer would have gotten hurt, flunked off the team or any other number of scenarios. CTC had NO backup and it is his "job" that he does.
 
under your theory

Are the things that have caused us to do better than expected purely random events, or things that were within our control? Did good preparation play a role? Players who play well under pressure? I assume you think factors like that are what get us to our expected norm, but then, from that point on, it is just chance whether you go, for example, 17 and 13 versus 13 and 17?

If that theory is correct, I am going to spend a lot less time yelling at the tv and just come to grips with the fact that there is nothing they can do now, fate is in control.
 
Goat is correct in this thread.

Our win total outpaces our performance to date. As they say, water finds its level, cream(not Crean) rises to the top, etc.

With the way we're playing, I would suspect we finish rather lacklusterly. 10-8 is likely. Bubble at best.
 
We've also played a tougher than average league schedule so far

So lets see how the rest of the season goes. Our scoring margin may very well catch up to our record, playing fewer road games and more home games.

Team Rankings projects us to be favorites in all but two of our remaining games...
 
Exactly right!...

IU will be an 8 or 9 seed (if they get in) and that's probably tops for this team.

In his 7th season!
 
We'd probably still get in at 10-8.

The bubble's that soft. And the wins over BUT/SMU/MD (three top-20 RPI teams) would dwarf most bubble resumes.
 
You are likely correct as well. I agree. But nothing, 10-8 included

is guaranteed. They'll havd to keep fighting
 
How did Duke's offensive system work against Virginia last evening? It didn't, until they began throwing in 20-25 foot shots in the last part of the second half. And then, would you say Virginia's defense broke down?

When IU hits from behind the arc, they're on key, and when they don't, it's not pretty. But, when they do, they are capable of winning games over teams with more powerful talent. Ours is not a power game and finesse works best with those who can play the finesse game. We have a couple players who attempt to play their own power game and it doesn't blend well with what IU does best.
 
Folks, what more could we do on those......

.....perimeter shots?
There were a bundle of shots behind the arc yesterday by Rutgers that had guys falling back onto the floor with a hand in their face. They hit an unusually high number of long range shots that they normally do not. This was done with guys right in their face. I can't fault the defense on that.
 
Vonleh moved up a class

Every basketball fan with a pulse knew that NV was only in college for 1 year ... he moved his high school graduation up a year early!!!

What's hard to figure out?

As far as Fischer leaving.....recruit more 6'9+ players than guards and 6'7 wings that he loves and he wouldn't be in the tough situation he is in.

No bigs = no NCAA wins.
 
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