But Mills was injured and they didn't go 29-3 or 30-2.

And they have him back, but he's clearly not 100%. They HAVE to take that into consideration (and according to Slive they do).

IMO St. Mary's would be a worse selection than Arizona. Haven't looked at those other 4 teams, but I bet it's a similar "worst of evils" situation.

St. Mary's was a tough case. I gave them a 50/50 shot and knew it would take the committee factoring in the injury.

Arizona of 2008 reminds me of St. Mary's this year. Arizona got in with the help of the committee realizing they had been hit with some horrible injuries. They also had a similar RPI to St. Mary's. Guess it just felt they got the benefit of the doubt last year while St. Mary's didn't. Have to wonder if St. Mary's had a 25 straight tourney streak on the line if they'd have gotten in.

but in the magical land of make believe all midmajors make the tourny because Rainmaker says they should therefor St Mary's is for all intents and purposes, 30-2 and should be a #1 seed

Uh, no. Arizona of 2008 had the #2 SOS in all of college basketball. They played 4 road games against Kansas, Memphis, Illinois and UNLV (#20 RPI) and went 2-2 (there's your road wins). Overall, Arizona had 3 top 25 wins and were 5-6 against the top 50. Now, many of their losses came without Bayless and others, but they played the toughest major conference schedule in the NCAAs. That's why they made it in as an at-large. Once again - quality wins and a great SOS.

Florida would have been a complete joke. Trust me on this one.

I personally would have probably gone with Creighton or San Diego State over Arizona myself, although that's as much gut as anything else.

Tell you what else though, if Mills doesn't come back from the injury looking like Joe Palooka (5/28 from the floor, 2/16 from three), I'm not sure they wouldn't have at least been closer in spite of all the arguments against them. But after those performances, I don't believe they make the field even if it was 68 teams deep.

I can maybe see San Diego State as they actually played people (#35 SOS). My issue with them is that they didn't win any tough games outside of a home game against Utah (solid win). But, they lost to Arizona, St Mary's, Arizona State, got swept by BYU and split with Utah. If they could have just won 1 game in the 5 against Arizona, ASU, St. Mary's, BYU (2 games) - I think they make it.

It was just a real flawed field for the final few spots and I'm not sure Arizona or Wisconsin make it if some of these teams scheduled better or fared better in nonconference (by even just 1 more win).

They did beat UNLV 3 times. UNLV beat Louisville without their best player. I think the Mountain West is a decent conference too, underated by many.

Wisconsin is an odd one as I've never really been able to gauge the Big 10. I watched them play a ton on the Big 10 Network this year. It's a very physical conference with tough defense that sometimes gets viewed as bad basketball. I have Wisconsin taking out Florida State this year because Bo Ryan is a much better coach.

In the NIT tonight it took an off-balanced 3-pointer at the buzzer by Penn State to send George Mason to overtime. Mason isn't a bad team, but I think it's evidence that Penn State probably didn't belong in the tournament.

I'm glad you can tell that from one game :confused:

Do you realize that their best player Cornley hasn't played most of the game? Take the best player off a lot of the bubble teams and let them play an NIT game. But I'll be sure to point out on thursday or friday a bubble team that looked worse.

I'll be damned, we agree on something in this thread after all ;)

Crap. The mason game is on?!

Ah damn, already over and Mason lost :(.

FWIW my anecdotal story is W&M played Penn St. early in the season. W&M gave them a run for their money. W&M was TERRIBLE this year.

Completely agree with both of these posts. Several Mid-Majors had the door opened wide by the majors this year and the mid-majors couldn't pull it out. Hell, as Jon mentions, if Mills just has a couple of good games they're probably in. The tourney (as they should) does take injuries to star players into consideration. If a team lost some games without their star player, but still had a good season and the star player is back they'll take that into consideration. But if the star player is still as hell of himself and essentially you still have the team that lost games, well, that is taken into consideration as well.

I don't know that you can make determinations by one NIT game. I'm really excited to see how St. Mary's does against Washington State later tonight. If they win, it will improve my opinion of them but if they lose I won't say they didn't belong. If they do go on a 2-3 game run in the NIT I think it will help them next season.

The committee is human. If they snub a San Diego State or St Mary's and those teams make a deep run in the NIT, they may think twice about doing the same thing if that situation comes up in 2010. If I were a team that felt they were snubbed into the NIT, I would use that tournament to rub the committee's face in it. If you don't think tons of articles bashing the committee will show up on ESPN and other outlets if St. Mary's goes on an NIT run, you are kidding yourself.

Patty Mills with 10 pts in the first 7 minutes.

Arizona just lost to this team by 16 a few weeks ago.:banghead:

Arizona beat them by 10 at home. If you want to play the comparison games, then St. Mary's should be able to beat Washington State by 10 to keep up.

Of course, I think it's all a little silly but to each his own.

St. Mary's is up 43-30 now and Mills has 17.

Sorry, it's not just this game. I saw them play a lot and just don't really think they are a tournament team. I do think that if they hadn't blown that game to Iowa, they'd have gotten a bid.

Well, yeah. They're not a mid major conference!

I already tried to point that out days ago. Good luck.

Heh, I pointed that out a time or two the past couple days, too, along with C-USA and the A-10. And the WAC inches up there.

Then call it non-BCS. People typically refer to the non-BCS as mid-majors. I don't care what it's called personally.

And if the A-10 and MWC don't count as mid-majors, it means 1 mid-major got an at-large bid.

No, people don't, although that's what you have done. I don't see too many people calling all non-BCS conferences mid majors in basketball. I see people calling non-BCS conferences in football, non-BCS conferences (for obvious reasons), and that's about it.

Considering that there are maybe 5-6 legit "mid major" conferences, IMO, with the some (a few) being too big/good/traditional, and the rest (many) being too small, it's an important distinction to make and one that you (and some others) have muddied from the start, IMO (which only contributes to the irresolute nature of the ongoing discussion).

If you want examples, I would throw out the WCC, Missouri Valley, Horizon and the CAA as definites. The WAC and MAC maybe a little too traditional (a touch too big), but they are close.

And your point? No team got in that didn't have a case for it. No team was left out that didn't have enough flaws to be left out. You could quibble about the selection committee's choices (as you have), but there's enough gray area on either side, that I can't see anyone being distinctly wrong or right about where any bubble team ended up.

They don't? Here's a handful of articles by major media outlets that took me a minute to pull up with Google News. Everyone of them considers non-BCS mid-majors. Every ESPN and CBS has consistently referred to there being only 4 mid-major at-large bids since Sunday.

Mid-major teams fall short in bid for NCAA tournament bids - USATODAY.com
Michael Wilbon - NCAA Tournament Selection Committee Doesn't Want Cinderella at the Ball - washingtonpost.com
Cinderella teams on the outside looking-in -- Newsday.com
Differences for Cal, St. Mary's: major and mid-major
5 Minutes for Blogging, March 16 | Bernie’s Extra Points | STLtoday
Should more mid-majors receive NCAA tournament bids? -- baltimoresun.com
Notes on Rejection Sunday - Las Vegas Sun


I personally don't care what it's called. Non-BCS or mid-major. It's just semantics. But don't act like I'm the only one using this terminology when essentially every major news source and sports personality is.

While I do agree with CR that maybe there should be a nother level of distinction and some select media outlets do tier them a bit differently, RM is right on this one - a majority of media outlets call the BCS schools majors and the next level - from the Mountain West to the A-10 to the CAA - mid-majors.

Right teams don't improve at all during the course of a season. :rolleyes:

Sorry if it wasn't clear that I wasn't making a claim on Penn St's entire body of work.

For the first time ever at FOFC, I agree with RainMaker.

"Mid-Major", by it's strict construction, doesn't meen the WAC and similar conferences. But in actual usage, it has at least since we segregated the "BCS Schools". That's the definitely the most common, mainstream usage. There should probably be a more correct term used, but that's what everyone uses.

As an A-10 fan, I know Xavier and Dayton (2 of the 4 consistently good teams, with St. Joe's and Temple) have gone on a campaign against being called mid-major in recent years. And really, if we just dropped a couple perennial bottom-feeders like St. Bonaventure and Duquesne, we'd consistently finish in contention with the bottom BCS conferences in RPI (I believe we've still beaten 1 or 2 in recent years).

I'm also disappointed no one brought up UMass when talking about A-10 schools having success in the NIT or NCAA tourneys. :( We'll still join that ATLT - we've even got road wins over Kansas and URI!

Duquesne has had a good couple of years. LaSalle, Fordham, and St. Bonnie's could all go, though. None have shown any inkling of improvement in 10 years.

As the executive director of the ATLT, I would frown on any road wins over the likes of Kansas. We need to keep our qualifications limited to stuff that UNO can do.

I never understood the campaigns against the term mid-major. Who cares? I never got why people took it as an insult. It should only be insulting if you take "major" and "mid-major" to be synonymous with "good" and "not so good," but I don't really think that's the case.

I think it's tough to tier the non-BCS conferences because they fluctuate talent wise so much. The A-10 and MWC are probably the only two that consistently put in multiple teams. Conference USA has been real bad the last few years and the Missouri Valley went from a conference putting in 5 teams to now 1. The WCC also had a few solid years when they were putting in 3 teams for awhile.

I agree with this.

Did you guys see this?

YouTube - Waddell's Backflip Dunk

Duquesne has finally shown some improvement, which is nice, but there's no way the A-10 will get rid of Fordham (dreams of penetrating the NYC market) and LaSalle has the Big 5 rivalry with St. Joe's and Temple. Either way, I'm pretty sure it's all just waiting for the eventual Big East split between the Catholics and the football schools. (which is another reason UMass should have bumped up to D1 football - for non-revenue generating sports it makes little sense to be in such a far-flung conference with schools using budgets 1/3 of ours.) I have nothing but respect for what Dayton and Xavier have done in basketball, but we really have nothing in common with them as schools.If it makes you feel better, we lost to both Jacksonville St. and #317 Toledo, so I'm sure UNO has a shot.

Don't forget that two years ago Duquesne had a few players shot and almost killed...two others that would have been big parts of this team this year "left early" to play in Europe.

Penn State won again tonight beating Rhode Island. They await the Florida and Miami winner.

Thought some people might be interested in how some of their team's players are doing at the Portsmouth Invitational. Was really excited to see DeMarre Carroll do so well in his first game.

Official site:

Portsmouth Invitational Tournament

Rosters:

Portsmouth Invitational Tournament

Not sure if this is the best thread to bump for this, but both Collins and Aldrich announced they will be coming back to KU for next year.

Collins, Aldrich announce plans to return to KU next season / LJWorld.com

I definitely like our team for 2009-2010 now :)

SI

Don't get too excited. The fact that he's in Portsmouth is very bad news for him.

At Syracuse, Harris, Flynn, Devendorf all to declare for NBA draft. I doubt Harris and Devendorf will even be drafted, but both have kids, and seem content to play in Europe.

The Harris thing looks like a falling out. Syracuse had a press release a few weeks back that Harris was leaving. Today, Harris comes out and says, "I never said that, but now that my name's out there, I might as well go". Interesting logic. Boheim says that Harris told him he was leaving during the tournament, and now has missed a month's worth of classes and won't return phone calls.

Dissapointing, as they could have been a championship contender next year, but that's how things go in college basketball. We're just not particularly used to that at Syracuse which has never really attracted (or targeted) NBA prospects. I can't think of anyone that left early between Pearl Washington and Carmello Anthony.

RealGM Football: Wiretap Archives: Paulus Could Play QB For Michigan In 2009

I have been saying that for years.

I just read that Cutcliffe has offered him the opportunity to try out as a slot receiver for Duke. Kind of a tough call here, as I don't see a guy coming in (in Michigan's case) after Spring Practices and becoming a starting QB the next season after having not played in 4-years. Receiver or DB, is a possibility, but I just think it would be tough to become a starting QB. Add on that he is, at best, a one-year starter and it doesn't seem like it would be worthwhile for Michigan (or any quality program) to go in that direction.

I wonder if Paulus has graduated yet. A degree from Duke is probably worth a lot more, long-term, than a shot in the pan of becoming a pro QB after not playing for 4-years.

So... anyone have an insight on what the hell is going on with Pitino and the equipment managers wife? Seems like whatever is out there is really bad, whether there is an element of truth in it or not, for him to go to the FBI.

The obvious thing that comes to mind is an affair/relationship, question is whether it is with the ex-wife, the equipment manager :eek: or somebody else that the ex-wife knows about. I know I shouldn't be that interested in somebodies life potentially being ruined, but damn if it doesn't have the makings of a really interesting saga.

Wow, is that what's going on? I never read past the headlines. That sucks.

Did the coaching changes thread get combined with this one? I couldn't find it!

Anyway, Pitino leaves Louisville to become an assistant at Florida!

OMG!

Uh, you do realize that's Pitino's son that's going to Florida, right?

Rick Pitino's son accepts job on Florida Gators coaching staff - ESPN

My guess is he wouldn't take it unless guaranteed the starting spot. Is the spread really that difficult to learn? I don't know Michigan's QB situation, but I believe they lost one this offseason already.

Also, what are the rules on eligibility? I thought it was just 4 years.

Yeah, I do. :D

Not college basketball but draft related.

Ricky Rubio (Spanish national team star, 19 years old next Oct) has finally declared for the incoming draft.

The main issue is that he needs to pay $8 Million to his current Spanish team to break his contract, so he won't go to the NBA unless he get's drafted in the top 3 that should guarantee a good future salary to recover from that $8M payment. His USA agent Dan Fegan, afirms that he should end in the top 3. ESPN mock draft has him at #2: ESPN - 2009 NBA Lottery Mock Draft

Let's see, but for sure i'm really looking forward to see what he can do in the NBA after being one of the top Spanish players at only 19 years old.