2015-16 Media love thread

[proshox]

How's that big bad Big East working out for Creighton so far?
WSU still has the spotlight. Creighton is an afterthought.

The current MVC is a blessing for WSU.

[Jamar Howard 4 President]

bringing up other teams to prove that KU hasn't underperformed come tournament time seems a bit silly.

I gave you 3 separate examples (one of which was even KU themselves) from the last decade of teams that won the national championship following a streak of underperforming years. Past underperformance to seed is not a useful predictor of future underperformance to seed. Period.

[ShockdaWorld]

I gave you 3 separate examples (one of which was even KU themselves) from the last decade of teams that won the national championship following a streak of underperforming years. Past underperformance to seed is not a useful predictor of future underperformance to seed. Period.

Haha. Yup. You are correct. You did. You gave me three different examples of thee different programs.

[Jamar Howard 4 President]

Here's some media love for the media love thread.

Paul's article on the game last night.

http://www.kansas.com/sports/college/wichita-state/article59453198.html

[Rocky Mountain Shock]

The current MVC is a blessing for WSU.

I hope my meter is broken again.

By our standards, Creighton is having a disastrous year yet their RPI is in the 80s (which would be towards the top in the MVC), largely in thanks to their conference. Meanwhile, each year we hope and pray that our RPI merely survives conference play. To call the current MVC a "blessing" for WSU is one of the most ridiculous things I've heard in awhile.

[Jamar Howard 4 President]

By our standards, Creighton is having a disastrous year yet their RPI is in the 80s (which would be towards the top in the MVC), largely in thanks to their conference. Meanwhile, each year we hope and pray that our RPI merely survives conference play.

Creighton's RPI rank is 86.
Creighton's KenPom rank is 39.
Creighton's Sagarin rank is 44.
Creighton has had national talking heads mention that they are approaching bubble territory. The bubble usually falls +/- #50. Does approaching mean 60? 70? Probably not 86.

There is more evidence that Creighton is better than their RPI and are being underrated by it than there is that they are living large off an inflated RPI rating.

The myth that the RPI always favors big conference teams in all cases really needs to die. It just simply isn't true.

[Zubcut]

This ain't exactly media love. ESPN's Myron Medcalf thinks the Shocks need to win Arch Madness to get into the NCAA tourney. He doesn't think they will get an at large bid. (About 3/4 way down the article)

http://espn.go.com/mens-college-bask...lp-shape-march


Basically he's saying the Shocks needed to go undefeated in the MVC to get an at large bid. This is the danger of playing in the MVC. It's impossible for the Shockers to get a good win. (At least this year) All you can possibly get is a bad loss. If you blow your chances in non conference games you have no chance to make up for it in the conference like in Power 5 leagues. Going 3-5 against the top 100 and 1-3 against the top 50, to go along with a terrible league could kill us on selection day. By comparison, Utah (who the Shocks blew out) is 5-6 against the top 50 and 11-7 against the top 100. That's what playing in a good league can do for you. WSU's RPI dropped 11 points by blowing out a conference team on the road by 26. Welcome to life in the glorious MVC.

[molly jabali]

This ain't exactly media love. ESPN's Myron Medcalf thinks the Shocks need to win Arch Madness to get into the NCAA tourney. He doesn't think they will get an at large bid. (About 3/4 way down the article)

http://espn.go.com/mens-college-bask...lp-shape-march


Basically he's saying the Shocks needed to go undefeated in the MVC to get an at large bid. This is the danger of playing in the MVC. It's impossible for the Shockers to get a good win. (At least this year) All you can possibly get is a bad loss. If you blow your chances in non conference games you have no chance to make up for it in the conference like in Power 5 leagues. Going 3-5 against the top 100 and 1-3 against the top 50, to go along with a terrible league could kill us on selection day. By comparison, Utah (who the Shocks blew out) is 5-6 against the top 50 and 11-7 against the top 100. That's what playing in a good league can do for you. WSU's RPI dropped 11 points by blowing out a conference team on the road by 26. Welcome to life in the glorious MVC.

I've never heard of Myron Medcalf.

The bottom line is, these prognosticators, to a degree, also want to create their own niche , and one way to do it is to take a contrarian position..

[Bluzrover]

I've never heard of Myron Medcalf.

The bottom line is, these prognosticators, to a degree, also want to create their own niche , and one way to do it is to take a contrarian position..

Which drives traffic to the website which means more advertising (even ESPN needs revenue). But it's always fun to have the deniers out there, makes it all the more fun when the Shox prove them wrong.

[Jamar Howard 4 President]

This ain't exactly media love. ESPN's Myron Medcalf thinks the Shocks need to win Arch Madness to get into the NCAA tourney. He doesn't think they will get an at large bid. (About 3/4 way down the article)

http://espn.go.com/mens-college-bask...lp-shape-march


Basically he's saying the Shocks needed to go undefeated in the MVC to get an at large bid. This is the danger of playing in the MVC. It's impossible for the Shockers to get a good win. (At least this year) All you can possibly get is a bad loss. If you blow your chances in non conference games you have no chance to make up for it in the conference like in Power 5 leagues. Going 3-5 against the top 100 and 1-3 against the top 50, to go along with a terrible league could kill us on selection day. By comparison, Utah (who the Shocks blew out) is 5-6 against the top 50 and 11-7 against the top 100. That's what playing in a good league can do for you. WSU's RPI dropped 11 points by blowing out a conference team on the road by 26. Welcome to life in the glorious MVC.

I hereby sentence Myron to dinner and a movie with @ShockerFever:. That should straighten him out.

[proshox]

I hope my meter is broken again.

By our standards, Creighton is having a disastrous year yet their RPI is in the 80s (which would be towards the top in the MVC), largely in thanks to their conference. Meanwhile, each year we hope and pray that our RPI merely survives conference play. To call the current MVC a "blessing" for WSU is one of the most ridiculous things I've heard in awhile.

You are wrong. Put us in a better league and watch the loss total climb. After our disaster of a non-conference our at large hopes would be CU worthy.

It is so easy to win 10+ games in a row in the MVC. We are basically getting the Gomzaga advantage from 2000 to 2010. Relative to the competition we will have three or fewer losses every year.

Going forward: Does anybody expect our non-conference performance to be worse than this year's?

We are in the top 25 folks with one borderline top fifty win. This has been the litmus test that proves being in a weak league has distinct advantages.

BTW - one of the unique advantages does not include excitement.

[jdshock]

You are wrong. Put us in a better league and watch the loss total climb. After our disaster of a non-conference our at large hopes would be CU worthy.

It is so easy to win 10+ games in a row in the MVC. We are basically getting the Gomzaga advantage from 2000 to 2010. Relative to the competition we will have three or fewer losses every year.

Going forward: Does anybody expect our non-conference performance to be worse than this year's?

We are in the top 25 folks with one borderline top fifty win. This has been the litmus test that proves being in a weak league has distinct advantages.

BTW - one of the unique advantages does not include excitement.

This argument happens far too often on shockernet.

Do you believe we are truly a fringe top-25 team? If so, I think you haven't watched enough basketball this year. Teams are bad this year, and we've been really good for the most part. If you believe we are actually closer to a top 10 team, then a better conference is better for us. If we had a chance to play top ten teams in conference this year, we would shoot up the rankings.

The bottom line: We were a skeleton of the team we are now when we lost our preseason games (three of which occurred in four days). We will end up with a worse seed in the tournament than we would have if we had been playing good teams when we were healthy (i.e., conference play).

Edit to add: if you think our non con was a disaster, look at Creighton, and yet some people are saying they're a bubble team because of their conference play. That opportunity wouldn't have happened for them in the valley.

[ShockCrazy]

You are wrong. Put us in a better league and watch the loss total climb. After our disaster of a non-conference our at large hopes would be CU worthy.

It is so easy to win 10+ games in a row in the MVC. We are basically getting the Gomzaga advantage from 2000 to 2010. Relative to the competition we will have three or fewer losses every year.

Going forward: Does anybody expect our non-conference performance to be worse than this year's?

We are in the top 25 folks with one borderline top fifty win. This has been the litmus test that proves being in a weak league has distinct advantages.

BTW - one of the unique advantages does not include excitement.

You are ignoring something though, we only have a good RPI ONLY because we scheduled fantastic in the non-con. Creighton had a much more disaster of a non-con than we did... SOS of 288, 3 top 100 games all losses, best win of Nebraska at 159 AND a loss to freaking Loyola.

A better conference would help us, not because we would get the benefit of the doubt, but because it presents more games against quality teams. More games means less room for variation on a small sample size, which if you believe we are truly a consistently top 25 program as I do, this is only a good thing. So far we have benefited from variation in previous years(mostly with regards to injuries), but this year we are seeing a bit of the other side. While we have recovered well and should easily make the tourney, our margins are slim because we have zero opportunities to pick up relevant wins the rest of the way.

[Rocky Mountain Shock]

You are wrong. Put us in a better league and watch the loss total climb. After our disaster of a non-conference our at large hopes would be CU worthy.

It is so easy to win 10+ games in a row in the MVC. We are basically getting the Gomzaga advantage from 2000 to 2010. Relative to the competition we will have three or fewer losses every year.

Going forward: Does anybody expect our non-conference performance to be worse than this year's?

We are in the top 25 folks with one borderline top fifty win. This has been the litmus test that proves being in a weak league has distinct advantages.

BTW - one of the unique advantages does not include excitement.

I'm speechless. I'm just going to agree to disagree instead of losing my ****. However, I will say this: we are top 25 in spite of the MVC, not because of it, and you don't earn much respect from the selection committee by drubbing 200+ RPI teams.

[Jamar Howard 4 President]

You are wrong. Put us in a better league and watch the loss total climb. After our disaster of a non-conference our at large hopes would be CU worthy.

If you think a healthy WSU would do so poorly in the Big East as to end up in the NIT, you make @KC Shox look like an optimist.

Creighton's non-con was a much bigger disaster than WSU's. Their non-con RPI sits at 161. WSU's sits at 75. Creighton is now 7-5 in conference and approaching the bubble. If WSU played in the big East, at 7-5, they would be safely in right now. More likely, they would be something like 9-3, 14-8 overall, and looking at a 7-8 seed. Guess what? That's exactly the seed range they are looking at now via the MVC.

One more example. Texas. Non-con RPI is 51. They are now 7-4 in the Big 12 and likely 1-2 seed lines ahead of WSU. Everyone (KU, OU, etc.) has at least 3 losses in Big 12 play already. 7-4 would seem very plausible if WSU was in that league. Texas 1-2 seed line advantage comes from their slightly better non-con.

Different conference = different W/L record but similar seeding. Normally I find myself fighting off the "MVC is a huge disadvantage" crowd. @proshox:, your "MVC is a huge advantage" argument is just as wrong.