Bonnies vs. Duquesne-La Roche University (Sat. 01/22/2021 at 7:00 p.m.)

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It's time for the reverse fixture of the F'real Cup and the Bonnies lead 62-48 on aggregate! Maceo Austin has returned to the DUQes, but didn't play in the Dukes comeback win over Rhody. Obviously Marcus Weathers and Michael Hughes are two huge guys to watch out for, but Chad Baker is another person to keep an eye on. He only had 6 points in 20 minutes against us last Friday, but against the Powder Blue Rams, he put up 19 points in 36 minutes on 5/5 from 3. I think Welch guarded him in the last game

Also, I've heard some murmurs that people think Alejandro won't play, but that appears to be wrong. He should be a go on the bench.



Other than that, let's just let Tavian Dunn-Martin be inefficient and get out of that D3 gym with a win.
 
I don't know where to put this so I'm putting it here, and will contribute to major thread drift. Sic Tom Gleason on me if you don't like it!

Anyways, I just noticed Unfurled's info graphic about our remaining schedule and their quadrants, and I can't help but notice how flawed some of the quadrant qualifications still are. Our game against Dayton as it stands now would be a Quad 3. At 104, they have a realistic chance to play themselves into the top 75, so this would hopefully be moot.

Nevertheless, at current, a home game against Dayton would count the same on our resume as a road game against Canisius. Think I'm being too biased because of how familiar we are with those 2 schools? Okay, here's another: Michigan State at home, or UMass Lowell on the road, would count the same, Maybe I'm way off here, but that seems fucking ludicrous to me. I know Dayton lost to not one, but both of the 2 programs in the A10 no one ever wants to lose to. But come on. They're still an 8-3 team who won at Miss St, at Davidson, and vs Ole Miss. There is no way you can objectively say that Dayton at home is equally as challenging as a trip to Bellarmine (Who?). Yet on paper, it is.

That's my soap box for the weekend. Beat the Dukes.
 
Yet on paper, it is.

That's my soap box for the weekend. Beat the Dukes.
Not just on paper. This year is obviously peculiar, but in a typical year, home vs. road is worth is 6 to 7 points. That's a robust statistic borne out by years of results. That's equivalent to 70-100 places in the rankings depending on where in the distribution a team is. It might not be intuitive, but it is real.
 
Sadly, that's why we lose to Canisius all too often. That wouldn't be a problem, but the Committee doesn't believe it's real either, despite the lip service they pay to it.
 
Not just on paper. This year is obviously peculiar, but in a typical year, home vs. road is worth is 6 to 7 points. That's a robust statistic borne out by years of results. That's equivalent to 70-100 places in the rankings depending on where in the distribution a team is. It might not be intuitive, but it is real.

That's good info, and a bit more than I would have guessed. I always assumed home court gave about a 3-4 point advantage vs 6-7. Interestingly though, your note about 70-100 places means my thinking isn't all that far off. I can get behind playing #80 at home holding as much weight as playing #165 on the road. It's when you start getting differences upwards of 170 spots in the rankings, as quad 3 calls for, that the distribution loses me.

Put it thisway. I can't get behind a loss to a team in the top 100 carrying the same weight as a team sub 200. Sub 200 should hurt you more, regardless. That's my intuition saying that, but unless I'm totally not reading you right (definitely possible), it sounds like the data even supports that.
 
I think the quadrants help from a wider view of how you're doing, then the committee looks at where your losses came from. I'm sure they won't penalize you as much for a home loss to #80 as much as a road loss to #165, even if both are Q3.

Of course, the #1 criteria is whether or not you're in a P6 conference, but that's besides the point.
 
Yea, the quadrants are for viewing and the records are used but games within them are not equal. They still look at who you beat and lost to. Plus they look at kenpom, bpi sagarin and efficiency numbers so its not all about net.
 
Home court advantage is 3 to 3.5 pts. But that's home vs. neutral site. That makes home vs away 6 to 7 points.

So a loss to #70 at their place can indeed be as bad as loss to #145 at home.
 
Yea, the quadrants are for viewing and the records are used but games within them are not equal. They still look at who you beat and lost to. Plus they look at kenpom, bpi sagarin and efficiency numbers so its not all about net.
This is probably moronic, but it drives me nuts that they the committee (allegedly; it’s likely just a mechanism to push more shitty P5s in undeservedly) takes efficiency into account and we’re squarely on the bubble and we dribble out the clock when winning. Sportsmanship be damned, bomb a 3 with a couple of seconds left every single time. Make it and you’re credited with a three point offensive possession and a likely “stop” on defense. Missing is the same on offense and maybe you get a defensive stop if they rebound it. It’s obviously absurd that the system rewards that, but I am going to theorize (without having put any effort in to research the mathematic viability of said theory as is my right as an AMERICAN) that it would bump us up a couple of KenPom slots. Until everyone starts doing it.
 
This is probably moronic, but it drives me nuts that they the committee (allegedly; it’s likely just a mechanism to push more shitty P5s in undeservedly) takes efficiency into account and we’re squarely on the bubble and we dribble out the clock when winning. Sportsmanship be damned, bomb a 3 with a couple of seconds left every single time. Make it and you’re credited with a three point offensive possession and a likely “stop” on defense. Missing is the same on offense and maybe you get a defensive stop if they rebound it. It’s obviously absurd that the system rewards that, but I am going to theorize (without having put any effort in to research the mathematic viability of said theory as is my right as an AMERICAN) that it would bump us up a couple of KenPom slots. Until everyone starts doing it.
Nope, totally agree. Winn by as much as we can every time.
 
Efficiency is bullshit for the number geeks. Are you winning? Who are you beating? I don't care how "efficient" you are if you're losing games. You're losing efficiently. Great for you.

Criteria shouldn't be doubled up. Teams that are winning are going to inherently have better metrics, MOV, etc. Teams that have shown they can win deserve spots. You could play the toughest schedule in the nation and go 0-29 against Q1. Guess what, so could any school. Thats obviously to the point of absurdity, but you get my drift.

Regarding the comparison of "is this loss or that win better than another" - for years we, the collective, ahem, mid major crowd have argued that yes it is just as hard to go beat St. Joe's on the road as beating Miss St. at home. And now they gave us the quad system to show it. So which do we want?
 
Since I steered us off, I'll steer us back on. We're getting ahead of ourselves, and if they don't take care of business tonight, we'll all go reeling and the drift will take a whole new direction.

The biggest thing with the Dukes is their no quit style. We saw it last week, and in both games last year- and it cost us in the second one. If you start letting up when the lead stretches to 8-10, it wont stay there for long. That's a bit of stating the obvious, and applies for any team, but Duqesne's tenacity makes it more so. Maceo Austin's return should give them a little more pop on that front. If our guys use whatever juju they used in the second half Wednesday to make them the aggressor, then we will be fine.
 
The thing that kills conferences like the A10 is that half our conference schedule most years would be considered a "bad loss" where as a school from the Big 12 or ACC will only have one or two schools that are considered the same.

A school like Oklahoma a few years back can go 18-15 and make the tournament because they only lost to Quad 1 and Quad 2 teams.

I'm sorry, but 5-13 against tournament teams pretty much shows you aren't worthy of the field.

A10 needs to get creative with their scheduling. If you are projected to be a top four seed, you should be play those other three top teams three times each. Maximize your chance of good wins while limiting the landmines on the slate.

Also, why can't we have the bottom half teams in our conference schedule like Drake every year? Instead, we have a school from the bottom like SJU playing Auburn, Kansas, Bradley and Tennessee (and also Nova and Temple)
 
Efficiency is bullshit for the number geeks. Are you winning? Who are you beating?
How do you determine who you are beating?

With an efficiency measure, or something pretty much like it. Otherwise a 22-6 MEAC team looks identical to a 22-6 ACC team and a 22-6 A10 team.

The fact that the deck is stacked in favor of the monied conferences has nothing to do with measures of efficiency.
 
Not necessarily res. A 22-6 MEAC team is beating other MEAC teams that are going 0-12 OOC. You don't need an efficiency number to parse that. I really don't like the use of in-game metrics to determine quality of teams. ESPN had an entire article last season before the world imploded about how much better mid-majors that win perform in the NCAAT than middling major conference bubble teams. So I still think the main question to ask is, do they win games?

All that said, yes I do think the major conference teams are better. If you give me an 18-15 Oklahoma or a 29-2 MTSU in a 7 game series I do think OK wins more than half. But we aren't playing 7 game series. We're playing one and done, and if I compare them on a "deserve to get in" basis, MTSU showed they can win. If the NCAAT was about picking who could win the tournament, we wouldn't let in half the conference tournament champions. If that's what we want though, that's fine with me too. This all goes away if they would just absorb the NIT into the NCAAT and have a 96 team field. Because a bubble around 40th best team in the nation is tough, but if the bubble is around the 72nd best team, play better next season.
 
It's not a question of knowing, it's a question of measuring. Everyone knows 0-12 is not good. But not every 8-4 is the same and you need a consistent measure.

The eyeball test is the most unreliable ever invented. Read any game thread or talk to any air accident investigator.
 
Not necessarily res. A 22-6 MEAC team is beating other MEAC teams that are going 0-12 OOC. You don't need an efficiency number to parse that. I really don't like the use of in-game metrics to determine quality of teams. ESPN had an entire article last season before the world imploded about how much better mid-majors that win perform in the NCAAT than middling major conference bubble teams. So I still think the main question to ask is, do they win games?

All that said, yes I do think the major conference teams are better. If you give me an 18-15 Oklahoma or a 29-2 MTSU in a 7 game series I do think OK wins more than half. But we aren't playing 7 game series. We're playing one and done, and if I compare them on a "deserve to get in" basis, MTSU showed they can win. If the NCAAT was about picking who could win the tournament, we wouldn't let in half the conference tournament champions. If that's what we want though, that's fine with me too. This all goes away if they would just absorb the NIT into the NCAAT and have a 96 team field. Because a bubble around 40th best team in the nation is tough, but if the bubble is around the 72nd best team, play better next season.
It depends which conferences we are comparing. I don't think the major conferences are as a whole better, but they are deeper and have more resources to cover their blemishes.

I think you could go as deep as 10-12 conferences that have two or three teams that could compete in the ACC, Big 10, etc.

I would love to see how all the A10 teams would fare if they played only home games OOC and got Duke, Pitt, and Clemson at home every other year.

If you swapped out the fourth or fifth team in the A10 for the fourth or fifth from a P5, I don't think the drop off would be monumental.
 
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