2012-13 College Basketball Running Cordial Discussion

It's lovely to start the day giggling.

 

Does anyone truly believe Gonzaga is the best team in the country, or is voting for them No. 1 a copout because the other top teams lose sometimes because they actually play decent competition?

 

I don't think rankings are about best team as much as most accomplished team.

 

Seems like people are giving Gonzaga Basketball the Boise State Football treatment:

"Oh, sure, they're so high-fallutin' but they play in a shitheel conference" and blah blah blah.

Let's look at the meat of Gonzaga's non-con sked:

West Virginia: Big 12, win
Clemson: ACC, win
Oklahoma: Big 12, win
Washington State: Pac-12, win
(13) Illinois: Big 10, lose by 11
Kansas State: Big 12, win
Baylor: Big 12, win
Oklahoma State: Big 12, win
(13) Butler: 2 Final Fours in the last 3 years, lose by 1
Also beat 25-7 Davidson

Not sure what more people want from Gonzaga. Basketball is a lot more unforgiving than football, a lot harder to run a table in conference. The argument of "these are a bunch of 18- to 22-year-olds" holds true because you expect even the best teams to not show up a few times a season or just get outplayed.

30-2 with those OOC wins? Yeah, No. 1.

 

By the standards of wire service polls, Gonzaga is number one this week. But if either Duke or Indiana win their conference tournaments (I'd bet on Duke before IU), they will be ranked number one (or one-two) and one of them will be the tournament's overall number one seed.

 

Kentucky getting sent to Dayton may be a bigger humiliation than Kentucky to the NIT.

 

Grantland has a bracket (since they create brackets for everything) for most hated college basketball players of the past 30 years. And yes, I do enjoy the fact that Duke has its own region: http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/9038798/a-tournament-determine-most-hated-college-basketball-players-last-30-years.

 

Why include "2 Final Fours in the last three years" in the Butler line? Seems like you're trying to talk yourself into it. Might as well say, "2 Final Fours in the last three years; also lost by 30 at VCU, which also made a Final Four recently."

If Gonzaga's resume is as good as you claim, there's no need to add that.

 

Does anyone here actually remember the rankings?

When Syracuse, for example, won there titles, what were they ranked during the season? When Alford and Knight won the NCAA, were they ever ranked #1? What was their final ranking?

Does anyone here actually remember this stuff?

I would think it falls well below regular season conference champion, conference tournament and how they do in the NCAAs. Does anyone hang a banner saying they were ranked #1 for a week in 2013?

 

Not walking into anything, just quantifying Butler's recent resume because people have short memories and "Butler" might not stand on its own merit. But I'll stand corrected if Butler is now considered a power player and doesn't need to be substantiated with "2 Finals Finals in the last 3 years."

 

Eh. Doesn't matter what Butler did in previous years. Gonzaga's loss to this year's Butler team is the one that affects RPI, ranking, or whatever. Wasn't that the buzzer-beater loss? It's more worthwhile mentioning that than recent Final Four runs.

People know who Butler is.

 

I guess the point was that Gonzaga has a strong OOC schedule and is 12 points from behind undefeated.