Running 2023-24 NCAA Basketball Thread

Oh, wow. The Memphis message board is going to melt down and burn until it hits the water table. I have not set foot in there yet, but I guarantee that the Memphis-Rice game thread is going to be very entertaining. Just peeked. They're ready to run off Penny and promote Rick Stansbury - well, some of the twitchiest are anyhow.

https://csnbbs.com/forum-499.html

 

Miami also lost to Louisville - in Coral Gables. That sort of loss is the limburger cheese smell melted over an engine block that isn't deodorized by Q1 wins.

Right now, I see Duke, Chapel Hill, Virginia and maybe Clemson.

 

New Mexico State continues to be an eyesore of a basketball program.

 

The ACC shoulda done what the Big 12 has done and gamed the NET by beating up on soft nonconference schedules and then beating one another up in conference play.

Houston: No. 221 in KenPom noncon schedule strength, zero noncon wins over KenPom top-25 teams
BYU: No. 315, only noncon win of note was at home vs SDSU in early November
Iowa State: No. 344, best noncon win was home vs a flawed Iowa team
Kansas and Baylor played respectable noncon schedules
Oklahoma: No. 316, also beat Iowa, plus Providence at home. That's about it.
TCU: No. 345, best noncon win was vs an Arizona State team that's now 11-10.
Texas Tech: No. 251, might not have a noncon win over a team in the KenPom top-100 by the end of the season (best was vs Michigan).
Cincinnati: No. 298, lost to Xavier, lost to Dayton (in Cincinnati), beat no one of note in noncon play.
Texas: No. 300, lost by double digits to the two good noncon teams it played (UConn, Marquette)

There are very few bad losses in that group, yes, but that's more a reflection on their cupcake-heavy schedules.

 

Virginia Tech fits that bill as well ... sitting at 49 in the NET with eight losses, and none can really be considered "bad": South Carolina (NET 41), FAU (29), at Auburn (8), at Wake (50), at Florida State (86), Miami (67), at Virginia (45), Duke (17). Hokies are 9-0 against Q3/4. Their entire resume is built on neutral wins over Iowa State (10) and Boise State (44) and a home win over Clemson (33). Very few chances to improve the resume left, though. The best one is probably unrealistic -- winning in Chapel Hill. Outside of that, they get home games against Wake and UVA and there is potential for some disastrous losses, namely at Notre Dame and Louisville. Just a meh resume overall and the NET is severely boosted by blowouts against bad teams. I've watched enough to say the eye test tells me VT is an NIT team, but they could get hot and change that narrative, I guess.

 

Houston-Kansas, Duke-UNC and Tennessee-Kentucky. Not a bad little ESPN triple header.

 

I know my brain is largely mashed potatoes after years on night shift, because I wondered for a second why Kansas was playing a non-conference game in February.

 

Did some comparison of prominent or well known metrics. Learned that the RPI is still compiled.
Syracuse is 20th in the RPI, 76th in NET and 83rd in KenPom.
Would the Orange be in Lunardi's daily bracket watch if we were playing under the old rules?

 

Is Dook-Carolina dead as a larger cultural phenomenon? No talk on here, virtually none on my Facebook feed. These games used to be the talk of the sports world even in places that have never had a Food Lion.

 

I don't think it's dead, but they both haven't been this good in a while, so it hasn't been hyped as much. Although I'm thoroughly enjoying watching the ass-whipping.