2022 college basketball coaching carousel of progress

They also lost to St. Louis, which wasn't exactly a juggernaut - slightly above average A-10 team in a down year for the conference. Iona's KenPom was #89, so outside of the gaudy record, I think it's mostly the presence of Pitino that makes them a draw.

 

St. Louis made the NIT. It won 23 games. So it must have been at least somewhat above average.

The problem is a mid-to-low major like Iona has absolutely no margin for error, while a team like Indiana - which won TWO regular-season games against Big Ten teams with winning records - gets second, third, fourth and fifth chances to give the Selection Committee a reason to put them in the field.

What was St. Peter's KenPom? Do you think they looked outclassed by any of the first three teams they played in the tournament?

The Selection Committee could save itself a lot of grief by simply mandating that at-large teams must have a .500 or better conference record. That would have taken care of Indiana, and the Big Ten would have had to survive with only eight selections. Because the tournament clearly showed it didn't deserve nine.

 

St. Peter's is 102 today on KenPom. Can't tell what the pre-tourney rating was.

 

Assistant coach has Me News.

 

They were 117 the morning of the day they beat Kentucky. FWIW, Iona was 94 that same day and on Selection Sunday. They lost this season to Niagara, Siena, Manhattan and Rider, all teams ranked 190th or worse in KenPom. No team with those kinds of losses is getting an at-large.

 

And yet a team they outdistanced by three full games in the regular season advanced to the Elite 8, knocking off Kentucky and Purdue along the way and was still playing while the rest of the Big 10 was home. Mayhaps Iona and St. Peter's were much better than the committee gave them credit for.

 

I mean, kind of like college football, there's no "good" way to do this unless you can force power conference teams to play decent mid-major teams. Yeah, they'll schedule teams projected for NETs or KenPoms of 250 to 350, because they want cupcake tune-up matches in OOC. As a fan of URI, the best we can usually get is a home-and-neutral with a lower tier Big East or ACC team, or a home-home-away.

 

Or get into a decent pre-conference tournament.

 

I know Ohio, after beating UVA last year in the tourney, couldn’t get any majors in Big Ten land to play them. Moved into the SEC and found Kentucky and LSU willing.

 

The crazy, would-never-happen idea I pitched on another board - Just make the preseason NIT a massive, 256-team double elimination tournament. Hell, open it to all teams! Seed them based on last year's NET, or just randomly. The chaos would be delightful and way more interesting than what typically happens now.

 

I think that would take the entire month of November and probably part of December to slog through, and leave teams with no scheduling flexibility for the first month of the season since they'd have to block out dates for the tournament. You'd basically put the entire season on hold for a month.

 

Yes, and? That kind of happens now anyway, unless one of the blue bloods is playing in a non-conference tournament.