I'm not sure. There are only a couple posters here, I think, who wouldn't consider missing the tournament to be a pretty disappointing season assuming our team stays reasonably healthy throughout the season. Those couple posters (@mildone and @Greene Rice FIG are the main ones I can think of) would potentially say the same thing about Indiana with the same rosters.
Ceiling on the team after three games ?
- Thread starter RUSCFORMERLYRULOU
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in all fairness to that game, we lost due to stamina as you could see the youngins getting tired with 7 minutes to go. they are getting better at playing the full game and increased stamina and now the fade is at 4 minutes:)
Right now …this is fun to talk about , but reality is let’s have A lot of nervous energy and excitement because we have the offensive ability to win four …but we have no idea on how it’s gonna come together on the backboard and on the defensive end
We will have a much better idea in the next week weeks with the scheduling getting real
We will have a much better idea in the next week weeks with the scheduling getting real
Huh? Where did I say I wouldn't be disappointed in not making the tournament? I never said anything remotely like that.
I think some of you are taking my coldly logical analysis and turning it into something it is not here. I don't form expectations based on my feelings or emotional attachments to a team. I form them based on logic and right now, having not yet played any tough teams except the one exhibition game (which we lost), and having just had a massive energy/focus melt down against a weak opponent, it's just not logical to be talking about final four.
Logic can't just factor in the pluses (e.g. having Ace and Dylan). Logic has to also factor in the negatives (youth and lack of experience against very good CBB teams). Logic must also consider the degree of uncertainty due to a current lack of information (which is the exact stage we're at right now).
None of that has anything at all to do with how I would feel not making the tournament. It's just the reality of the current situation.
By "disappointed" I'm referring to results vs. expectations. If you don't have an expectation of making the tournament then missing the tournament is not "disappointing" by those standards i.e. it is not below your expectations. I'm not referring to emotional state.
I agree that stamina is an issue that will improve over the course of the season. But with some of the better teams we play, stamina is going to be far better because it's been improved for four years for many of the starters.
So the real unknown, that won't be known for probably half the season or more, is how well our youngsters will do in a 40 minute war with some of the bigger stronger older teams we'll face towards the end of the year. We know our team fitness will improve rapidly. We don't know if it'll improve enough.
One way to potentially help form some realistic projections about that is, if the requisite data exists, to look up how well very young teams with highly ranked players (young being the average age of the top 8 players by minutes played) have done in the past, record-wise.
This is what I'm saying. Until we get deeper into the season, until we get deep enough to actually measure performance against really good competition, I will resist forming expectations of any kind. There are still too many unknowns.
I mean, I don't get very emotional about watching sports in general. The emotion I get during the game, which can ramp up a lot, fades away very quickly once the game is over.
If I'm playing in a game, that's a different thing.
That's fine, but I'm not sure what we're even discussing now..
I said you don't have an expectation of making the tournament, therefore, for you, a season in which we don't make the tournament would not be below your expectations. Is that wrong?
Let alone in November, how about after they got a sample size of a whole season? Where they lost 4 games in a row including an L to Florida State and had basically zero hopes of making the tourney? It’s such a pointless exercise that in terms of projecting tournament outcomes we won’t have much more progress in improving our accuracy when the bracket is released.
Youre telling me if we got to the sweet 16 and ended up against some cinderella 12 seed or something you would just have zero hope for us winning another game?
It would be disappointing if we didn't finish in the Top 40-43 teams at the end of the regular season.
The ceiling for this team is the same ceiling that the team 2 years ago had before Mag went down. National Champions
Two questions:
1) As of today, are the odds greater than 50% that we win at least one game in the NCAA tournament?
2) Once we make it into the tournament field, what are the odds that we win at least 2 games?
I'd like to chime in on the "stamina" and by reference, conditioning, issue.
What the St. John's game showed is that against a veteran, older, physical team, Bailey cannot play 37 minutes and not be very tired at the end of the game - and that Harper was also tired with 33 minutes in that game. One of the things Pikiell said before the game was that he was going to be trying different line-up combos, and roles.
It seemed obvious - and you saw it in the Monmouth game, the 1st real game both Harper and Bailey were available - that Pikiell was both still working on his rotation, and would find a way to enhance the chance Bailey and Harper were strong at the end of games.
I made a projection, prior to the Monmouth game, which came to pass in that game, that barring injury or foul trouble, Harper and Bailey would play (i.e. be n the court) the 1st 4-6 minutes of each half together, and in any closer game also be on the court together the last 4 minutes of the game - and maybe of each half ... but IN BETWEEN, Pikiell would never have a stretch where BOTH Harper and Bailey were off the floor. In other words, during the middle parts of each half, Pikiell would get each of Harper and Bailey their rest while the other was on the floor.
And that is exactly what happened in the Monmouth game - though Bailey did not play the last 4 minutes of the game because of cramps (a conditioning and hydration issue). And this is what is going to happen throughout the season. I DO expect each to get 32+ minutes per game in any close game.
What the St. John's game showed is that against a veteran, older, physical team, Bailey cannot play 37 minutes and not be very tired at the end of the game - and that Harper was also tired with 33 minutes in that game. One of the things Pikiell said before the game was that he was going to be trying different line-up combos, and roles.
It seemed obvious - and you saw it in the Monmouth game, the 1st real game both Harper and Bailey were available - that Pikiell was both still working on his rotation, and would find a way to enhance the chance Bailey and Harper were strong at the end of games.
I made a projection, prior to the Monmouth game, which came to pass in that game, that barring injury or foul trouble, Harper and Bailey would play (i.e. be n the court) the 1st 4-6 minutes of each half together, and in any closer game also be on the court together the last 4 minutes of the game - and maybe of each half ... but IN BETWEEN, Pikiell would never have a stretch where BOTH Harper and Bailey were off the floor. In other words, during the middle parts of each half, Pikiell would get each of Harper and Bailey their rest while the other was on the floor.
And that is exactly what happened in the Monmouth game - though Bailey did not play the last 4 minutes of the game because of cramps (a conditioning and hydration issue). And this is what is going to happen throughout the season. I DO expect each to get 32+ minutes per game in any close game.
It might just be semantics, but yes, that is incorrect. Because I haven't set any expectations. So no result can be above or below them.
All I have right now is high hopes. So of course I'll be a little disappointed if the team fails to make the tournament.
I will need a lot more information before forming any kind of expectation for the team this season. Same as any other team in any other season. As the season progresses, I'll start forming some expectations, which will continually be adjusted as the season plays out.
I'll add one other thing. I see very little value in fan expectations. Maybe no value at all. I'll still wind up forming some anyway. But at the same time, I'll understand that it's a pointless exercise.
It might just be semantics, but yes, that is incorrect. Because I haven't set any expectations. So no result can be above or below them.
All I have right now is high hopes. So of course I'll be a little disappointed if the team fails to make the tournament.
I will need a lot more information before forming any kind of expectation for the team this season. Same as any other team in any other season. As the season progresses, I'll start forming some expectations, which will continually be adjusted as the season plays out.
I'll add one other thing. I see very little value in fan expectations. Maybe no value at all. I'll still wind up forming some anyway. But at the same time, I'll understand that it's a pointless exercise.
All I have right now is high hopes. So of course I'll be a little disappointed if the team fails to make the tournament.
I will need a lot more information before forming any kind of expectation for the team this season. Same as any other team in any other season. As the season progresses, I'll start forming some expectations, which will continually be adjusted as the season plays out.
I'll add one other thing. I see very little value in fan expectations. Maybe no value at all. I'll still wind up forming some anyway. But at the same time, I'll understand that it's a pointless exercise.
Um... the board is experiencing some significant technical issues right now. I just tried posting a reply a bunch of times, and got an error message containing information I'm pretty sure the forum software devs don't intend to show to end users. And despite the errors, the posts showed up duplicated a bunch of times and then my post showed up under another user's account, which is extremely weird.
Again using Bart:
(1) He has the odds of making R32 as 50.4%, so yes.
(2) Ignoring the play-in game as a potential win (i.e. reframing the question as "Once we make it into the tournament field, what are the odds that we make the sweet 16?" the answer from Bart's numbers is 23.5%/81.6% = 28.8%.
So it looks like.. I am actually correct?
I think you are digging a little too deep in the word "expectations". To me it just means, basically, your expected outcome (or probability-weighted range of expected outcomes). If you have any thoughts about how good the team is relative to it's peers (and how that is likely to impact game results) then you have "expectations".
This. You just KNOW that Dylan HAS to own them after his epic trolling…. Plus he’d never let big bro have a chance at razzing him for losing to the Hoosiers!
We may not have the depth up front but all we need is Big E to hack him, Latham to stack him, and Z-bo to harass him!
We may not have the depth up front but all we need is Big E to hack him, Latham to stack him, and Z-bo to harass him!
Like I said, it's maybe just a question of semantics. I don't know how to arrive at any expected outcome without more information. A prediction at this point, with this little information, would be a wild-ass guess more than a logical expectation.
We have great talent in at least a couple of our players, and apparent talent with some others. Those are positives. But we have yet to see this year's team play a regular season game against a ranked team. We have yet to see how they react to a couple bad losses. These are unknowns and cannot, as yet, be objectively predicted.
The one thing I've mentioned earlier in the thread, a failure to maintain energy and focus with a lead, (occurred w/St. Johns and even more glaringly in the last game) is a common failing of young teams (older teams too, but typically much less so). Pike obliquely mentioned this concern in his last postgame press conference (I believe he listed the "need to play all 40 minutes" as one of the many areas he needs to address).
Basketball ain't soccer, but many years of soccer coaching experience taught me that getting players to maintain focus and intensity with a big lead is sometimes challenging. The younger the players, the more challenging it is. Is why I brought it up earlier in the thread. It's a potential negative of having our best players be freshmen. Not saying it will be a negative. Just that the potential is there and we'll have to see how well the team improves in that regard.
So yeah, there are some positives, some potential negatives and some unknowns. Not ready to predict anything outcome-wise yet.
Others here commonly refer to what appears to be their hopes as their expectations. Or perhaps they allow their hopes to color their expectations. Which is fine. But I try not to do that.
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I mean, you are pretty sure we aren’t the best team in the country right? And also pretty sure we are in, say, the top 150?
The error bars at this point are large, but we have a lot more than zero information.
Hell, just telling you we are Rutgers and showing you last years Kenpom final ratings would get you A LOT of the way to predicting this year’s results compared to just random guessing.
Today, I am not pretty sure of anything about our team. I haven't a clue who will wind up being the best team in the nation at the end of the season. In another few weeks or so, there will be lots more data and I might be able to make a semi-educated, heavily qualified guess about it.
BTW, I never said zero information (or at least I don't think I did and shouldn't have if I did). I think I said "not enough information".
I wouldn't know how to quantify the amount of information I don't know because I don't know what I don't know. What I am certain about is that I know even less about all the other teams in the nation than I know about us. And I know very little about us.
To my way of thinking, no team is the best team in the nation right now. I get that lots of people like to apply rankings and slice and dice statistics and all. But while that might be fun and can be predictive of who will wind up somewhere near the top of the pile come the end of the season, naming the eventual champion in a deterministic way at the start of the season, year in and year out, is not humanly possible. It's a wild-ass guess.
I'm never sure with you whether you are doing an elaborate troll routine or what. This is all basically nonsense but you seem to think it's somehow smart.
Really? You're not pretty sure we'll win more than 5 games? You're not pretty sure we will win at least one Big Ten game? You should be. This is less low hanging fruit, but you should also be pretty sure we will better offensively and worse defensively than we were last season.
Really? You have no opinion on whether Auburn or Mississippi Valley State is more likely? How about Gonzaga vs Coppin St? You certainly should have some.
Well, then your way of thinking is abject nonsense. You may not be able to identify the best team in the nation but it pretty self-evidently EXISTS.
Uh, no ****ing shit dude. I'm pretty sure that strawman could blot out the sun.
"you seem to think it's somehow smart" 🤣
I often wonder at what goes through the minds of other people. I never give any thought at all to seeming any particular way, intellectually or physically or whatever. Not even in person and it's laughable to think people would do that online with anonymous strangers.
You seem to be projecting your way of thinking onto me.
Well, I didn't say you "thought about seeming smart" I said you "seem to think it's smart". Those are different things. Reading comprehension is essential.
Cool, cool.
