The Bonnies: 2020-2021 Season Thread

Are we playing a game tomorrow? I've heard nothing since Fordham was potentially going on pause.

If there's a COVD outbreak at Fordham, not sure it would be wise for them to play us in Olean.
Not at the moment. There have been some rumblings about playing at GMU on Thursday, but nothing concrete yet.
 
Kyle is not suffering from a lack of progression nor is he overrated.. Look, I critiqued him the other night- I thought we needed more command and control and less tentativeness from him offensively down the stretch, and I thought Bones got to him in an uncharacteristic way. That said - that criticism stems from the fact I know he's good enough. There's a big difference in critiquing one performance because it underwhelms compared to what you know a player's potential is, vs critiquing the player himself. Overall I couldn't be more clear in stating my agreement with the above supportive comments of Kyle.

Also, I hear Mason Thursday, Davidson Saturday at home. Davidson at home means Q2 instead of Q1, but whatever. I'd rather play them at the RC than at Belk.
 
Also, I hear Mason Thursday, Davidson Saturday at home. Davidson at home means Q2 instead of Q1, but whatever. I'd rather play them at the RC than at Belk.

That's probably as good as we could have hoped for. Defuses the road land mine a little as Mason beating us would move a road game to them up to the edge if not in Q2. Losing at Mason probably does us in either way, but it'd be less damaging than losing to GW and they're not of dramatically different quality. There's also the chance they pull a couple upsets down the stretch and we sneak a low level Q2 win out of it.

(Quick aside - Mason's losses this year: Belmont (neutral), Norfolk State, @Dayton, VCU, Richmond, @URI, @Bona, @Dayton again. Plenty of double digit margins mixed in there, but that's not what I was expecting.)

Davidson (home) will probably have a tough time staying in Q2 coming off COVID pause - especially with a loss to Bona, but it would be nice to get a home game against a top 100 NET team that should be a bit rusty still.

If things fall right, could potentially be two Q2 wins in games that we will be favored in. I assume we're still going to get St Louis at home and would like Richmond at home as well assuming we're still in a double bye position.
 
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Its official. We have Davidson at home Sunday 3:30 on NBCSN. Their first game after a month off so maybe they will only shoot 60% from the arc. We also are at Mason Thursday at 2PM. I think its ESPN+ but they tweeted NBCSN too. I have to think ESPN+ would have a mid afternoon game though.
 
Ice storm likely here in northern Virginia Thursday, possibly a serious one. I'm not sure this game will come off.
 
I am a big Lofton fan and appreciate his talent and contributions. He is one of the best PG's in the A10. Great leadership requires the ability to maintain composure under duress. The VCU meltdown is not an isolated incident. The scout on Lofton is to agitate him. He needs to be ready for it and not allow it to hurt his performance or put the team in a tough spot. That is all I got.
 
Re: Lofton. Good player but has not progressed. He is not even close to all A10 now--just look at the other guards in the league and Bones is latest to outplay him. Appreciate him but best not to overrate him (which also overrates the team). Lot of work to do for both. The technical and stupid fouls hurt. The horrid trey pct. is just one factor.
No.
 
The A10’s decisions today are some of the most asinine bush league nonsense I’ve ever heard in my life. Every time I think about it some other detail or theoretical possibility sets me off.

1) Nothing is balanced! Home and away splits are all messed up. Schedule strengths are not even close to even. Why did we get sent to St Louis rather than they go to Olean? Why is Bona being punished for filling a national TV time slot in a road game against the league leader that wasn’t scheduled?

2) It can’t even be made right as it’s designed. I assume they’re going to reschedule a bunch of games and make all of the at large contenders play each other. That’s just going to let UMass get a free double bye for feasting on cupcakes. You either screw our seeding or screw our at large chances.

3) There is a theoretical scenario where the A10 scraps the schedule and sends St Louis to Bona/VCU where they lose each game by 1. Then (if there’s anyone left to get it) they go on another COVID pause. Bona/VCU lose a game or two to Davidson/Richmond types by a decent margin. And then Saint Louis gets the 1 seed with a 4-4 record! Hooray! Obviously, that’s custom drawn and won’t happen, but the fact it exists is horseshit.

4) It’s not equitable. This is obviously great for Saint Louis and especially UMass and horrible for Bona. Clear winners and losers and the winners are the ones that botched everything up in general.

5) You’re throwing away a week of scheduling flexibility when teams need games and opportunities. Will this be fixed? If the semis are the four bubble teams (and who knows if that will even be possible) will there be a consolation game? Non-conference games that week? What if Bona is a projected 10 seed and then takes a loss in the quarters? We just hang for a week to see if we get 2016d having played 17 or 18 games?

I would rather do what the WCC did and have Bernadette bend Ken Pomenroy over and pull team logoed ping pong balls out of his rectal cavity rather than this garbage.
 
There are other parts of this that benefit teams (not us).

I know we’ve had unbalanced scheduling before (due to wins/losses and teams playing Fordham or worse twice), but this is complete garbage at first glance.

Gotta try to remain calm and focused. I feel myself sliding into the “woe is Bona” mentality I get pretty much every year now...
gotta fucking beat Davidson.
 
The A10 is not a bunch of irrational yahoos. There is method in what may appear to some of us as madness, just not necessarily Bona fan-pleasing method. I am going to assume they have an objective function of maximizing the number of NCAA bids the conference gets, given that each bid has been worth a minimum of about $1.5 million (and conference prestige) in past years. However, they do operate under certain constraints, including meeting minimum NCAA standards and not pissing off any of the conference members any more than whatever minimal level of satisfaction is needed to keep the current members in the fold.
We think we'll get 3 more scheduled games and one will be Davidson. The others should be UMASS and Dayton if we're to get at least one match with all the better rated teams in the league.
What happens with the extra week that's freed up is anyone's guess.
 
The A10 is not a bunch of irrational yahoos. There is method in what may appear to some of us as madness, just not necessarily Bona fan-pleasing method. I am going to assume they have an objective function of maximizing the number of NCAA bids the conference gets, given that each bid has been worth a minimum of about $1.5 million (and conference prestige) in past years. However, they do operate under certain constraints, including meeting minimum NCAA standards and not pissing off any of the conference members any more than whatever minimal level of satisfaction is needed to keep the current members in the fold.
We think we'll get 3 more scheduled games and one will be Davidson. The others should be UMASS and Dayton if we're to get at least one match with all the better rated teams in the league.
What happens with the extra week that's freed up is anyone's guess.

I don't buy this for a second. If they really wanted to be rational about maximizing bids they wouldn't have come up with a farcical system that objectively harms one of, if not both, the teams currently projected in the field on bracketmatrix and helps UMass most of all who has absolutely no chance of an at-large.

If you're truly concerned about maximizing bids, you give the double byes to the teams with the 4 highest NET ratings and then send Bona/VCU/STL/Richmond to Richmond to have a round robin seeding tournament prior to the A-10s where each team plays the other on a neutral court (ie Bona plays Richmond at the Stu and plays VCU at the Robins Center.) As it stands right now, Bona, VCU, and Saint Louis are Q1s on a neutral court and Richmond is an upperhalf Q2. Would Davidson/UMass have a gripe? Sure, but that's actually a plan to maximize bids and could see 4 teams go depending on who wins the A10.
 
We should want UMass and Dayton for the same reasons we want Davidson. Beating them helps the resume while losing to one and only one would probably not be a bid destroyer like losing to a bottom feeder. Besides, we haven't played any of them and they are all respected programs who also want and deserve a shot at post-season. I didn't say it was bid maximization without constraints. The constraints are real.
 
The way to maximize bids is by mixing upper and lower tier games.

We should want this Davidson game, a matchup with SLU, and then some combination of GW, SJU, and/or FU. Playing teams like Dayton and UMass doesn't do a lot right now.
Agreed. If we don't get SLU back on the schedule (AND WIN), I don't like our at-large chances. If we beat Davidson, UMass and Dayton to finish the regular season, we'd most likely be a 3 seed in A10s, but those wins do us no good when the powers are racking up quality wins left and right.

If we are the 3 seed, we'd have to make the finals and lose to someone only named VCU or SLU. If something crazy happens and UMass or Davidson gets the 2 seed, we're in trouble.

A lot of Ifs and hypotheticals, but a win Sunday goes a long way.
 
We should want UMass and Dayton for the same reasons we want Davidson. Beating them helps the resume while losing to one and only one would probably not be a bid destroyer like losing to a bottom feeder. Besides, we haven't played any of them and they are all respected programs who also want and deserve a shot at post-season. I didn't say it was bid maximization without constraints. The constraints are real.
A win against UMass and Dayton ain't helping our at-large chances. Sure, they'd be Q1/Q2, but when Minnesota, Indiana, etc. have wins against top 20 clubs and teams projected to make it, they won't be too impressed with two victories over fringe NIT teams.

Add in the fact that Ole Miss and Maryland will get cracks at Mizzou and Rutgers and a bunch of cupcakes will help them bolster their resume that only needs more wins.
 
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All good points about what type of wins will help our chances. Also consider what it does to have no bad losses. (Unless we consider URI a bad loss) I look at SLU at the moment being slightly behind us in some bracket projections, and that likely comes from a bad loss at Lasalle..even though it can be understood as to why that happened it objectively still affects their current positioning. Either way, as everyone also points out, we just need to win our games.
 
I honestly think we just need games and wins. Attempting to get into the head of the committee is a fool's errand (if I did though, I like Bill Russell's analysis). I will NEVER be comfortable with the committee. That said, the week off this week came at perfect time. At times, we did not have our legs @ VCU (part of that was the officiating not allowing us to get into a groove, and part of that is our short bench and 2 games a week).

Side note: I watched VCU-Richmond the other day. VCU was just as physical with Richmond as with us, and was again, getting away with it. I think officials anticipate "havok", as Seth Greenberg would not shut up about, and let them play. If you're going to do that, you need to allow the opposing team to be just as physical, which obviously did not happen in our game with VCU and did not happen in Richmond's game, either.
 
If we win 3 games, we will be the 1 seed most likely but could fall to 3 thanks to this new system. VCU has to play SLU, GMU and Davidson as of now. If they take a loss, we can pass them.
 
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All good points about what type of wins will help our chances. Also consider what it does to have no bad losses. (Unless we consider URI a bad loss) I look at SLU at the moment being slightly behind us in some bracket projections, and that likely comes from a bad loss at Lasalle..even though it can be understood as to why that happened it objectively still affects their current positioning. Either way, as everyone also points out, we just need to win our games.
This is a good point and one I considered with my seed list. URI on the road is a Q2 loss so not bad. Here are my bottom teams:
1613751031300.png
when you look at them,. they all have at least 1 Q3/Q4 loss. We have none. Boise St does not either. The main reson SLU is out right now is they dont have a lot of heft on their side. They beat LSU and us. The have 2 bad losses and a ton of home games in the Q3 and 4. They need some more games to get in and I think they will get there. I have struggled with our spot due to learning the process and my own bias. Looking around, many people have us in that high 30 low 40 range so I feel ok about 39.

This is what I have for first 4 out
1613751248685.png
 
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