Comments on: Tourney Talk with Andy Cox of Crashing the Dance

By: Tom Too

Tom Too — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 22:55:14 +0000

Yep…he said “I think”

By: JimC

JimC — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 22:24:01 +0000

Hey wait a minute about Manny. I skimmed that article and thought he said something like I “think” I’ll be back.

By: Dylan

Dylan — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 22:19:05 +0000

The Old Spice next year should be good for the RPI/SOS though. Some solid competition and three games at a neutral site I believe.

By: FL Wolve

FL Wolve — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 22:08:36 +0000

JB may or may not have challenged his WVU teams in the OOC but RPI-wise, his OOC strength of scheduling was weak and that’s putting it nice.

His OOC RPIs for 2003-2007 were

2003 193
2004 121
2005 141
2006 61
2007 217

By: Ken in Vegas

Ken in Vegas — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 21:18:08 +0000

All this just goes to show how misleading and irrelevant RPI can be. Hence, why the selection committee doesn’t look at it. Although they do look at our records against the RPI, so that nullifies some of their logic. I guess there is just no perfect way to do it.

By: Avery Queen

Avery Queen — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 21:17:32 +0000

how often do they tweak the rpi system? seems like it would make sense to have some sort of limit on the spread between teams.

say #20 RPI plays #300 instead of a margin of 280 being used in the formula, they could just set a maximum to 200 so that it doesn’t matter if you play team #220 RPI vs. #300. because really it shouldn’t.

By: Dylan

Dylan — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 21:03:25 +0000

I agree jgunnip. It is definitely not easy, but if you do a good job at it the rewards are large.

Wisconsin beat Virginia Tech and Wisconsin GB out of conference and lost to UConn, Texas, and Marquette. Their non conference RPI was about equal with Michigan’s (37 and 38) despite no top 50 wins.

By: jgunnip

jgunnip — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 20:12:25 +0000

It’s not easy scheduling OOC games against teams consistently in the 100-100 RPI range because most of those teams are looking for some sorta of home and home or 2 for 1 sort of scenario to get big games at home. A lot of BCS schools aren’t willing to do this.

Also, some of it is luck. For example, Idaho’s RPI finished at 299, 305, and 301 the last three years. Citadel was 334, 301, 317. You could say they got lucky in that these teams were much better than expected. MSU also scheduled a Bradley team (99 RPI) that some argue was worse than expected.

I would love to play more teams like Bradley, Houston, and Northeastern and I’d also like to see us play more than one true road game before conference play starts. But say we go on the road to play a George Mason or Cleveland St. Those are quality wins or losses that don’t hurt that much.

I know a lot of the scheduling this year was geared towards getting a team coming off one of the worst season in school history some confidence by playing some guarantee games. At WVU, Beilein had a good track record of challenging his teams OOC.

06-07
Tournament in Orlando: Montana, WMU, Arkansas
@ NC State, @Duquesne, vs UCLA

05-06
Tournament in KC: Texas, Kentucky
St. Bonaventure(in Rochester NY), Oklahoma (in OKC), @UCLA

04-05
@Duquesne, @LSU, @NC State, vs George Washington

03-04
vs St. Louis, George Washington(in DC), Maryland (in DC), Florida (in Miami)

By: raiderfan

raiderfan — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 20:06:20 +0000

I just keep seeing Balwinkle (sp?) hitting those three’s from the baseline against the 1-3-1. That is what kept them in the game. Our bottom guy, Merritt killed us last time vs. Iowa, has to rotate to the ball faster. Whoever it is they have to fight thru the picks. I think the key is to get out early. Iowa is not deep and do not play well coming from behind. JB will have the boys ready, no doubt about that, but we will have to play with the intensity all game like Minny or Purdue. I saw someone else say this, but do you guys think JB will really let Shep and A Wright try to guard Kelly? He can just shoot over the top of any of our pg’s so it would make sense. Or maybe Manny? I have not been this excited for a Michigan game since the OSU football game in ‘07 when they were #1 and we were #2. I like the way we are playing now and I like the way we match up with Iowa. I think we stay hot and get huge games from Stu and LLP.
BLUE 67
Iowa 54

By: Manny is coming back

Manny is coming back — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 19:59:49 +0000

I agree Kevin…. Im glad that he made up his mind already about staying… Who knows how well he ends the season (could pull off a stephen curry preformance) in the tourney’s… I think next year is going to be a special season…