SJUWillRockNYC
Well-known member
I'll be very interested next year to see if the 4th place B.E. if they have a similar record like shu, if they get in. If not then they might be turning the B.E. conference into a 3 bid conference.
Bubble Watch
- Thread starter hnkcolumbia
- Start date
I will be rooting hard for UCONN, Marquette and Creighton to win. The only way we can stick it to the NCAA committee is for these 3 teams to do well in the tournament.
Only one committee member from the north east. A prejudice against the north east ?
12 angry men with negative attitudes toward the big east?
This is a non political sight. Let’s stop now. Thanks.
Joe Schmoe
New member
I was surprised that the Mountain West Conference received six bids. I took a look at their Ken Pom rankings. The highest rated team was San Diego State (KP rank 21). Utah State (KP rank 48) was MWC their lowest ranked of the tournament teams. The 6 MWC teams were seeded as three 10 seeds, one 11 seed, one 8 seed, and one 5 seed. Ken Pommeroy had SJU ranked 28.
One of the MWC's conference keys to success were the confernence had three "punching bags" to build up won-loss records. Fresno State (KP 238), San Jose St (KP 247) and Air Force (KP 260). The Big East's "punching bags" were Georgetown (KP 202) and DePaul (267).
Consider the following course corrections:
1) Contact the scheduling department at the MWC, and schedule their schools.
2) Contact Ken Pommeroy and suggest he adjust his metrics to more accurately reflect what the tournament Committee values.
3) Identify how the Big East can be perceived as more favorably by the Committee.
I hope Creighton and Marquette make it to the final four. But I do not have it in me to root for UConn.
And besides, they won it last year with one of the most historically impressive tournament runs and it did not do the conference any favors this year.
If the person with the least clout is Chairman, he can be easily manipulated. Football conferences are jealous of the Big East and skewed the whole process. They used the MWC and Virginia to shit on the Big East. As I said before, we should put our personal feeling aside and root hard for UCONN, Marquette, and Creighton.
I totally understand you point, and agree. Up until the UConn part. I am too much of an old crank to root for UConn.
Unfortunately, I don’t think it matters at all in the long term. I hope I am wrong but I think a clear message was sent to the BE.
NCAA doesn’t want SJU to stick it to Pitino, I get it, don’t like it, but let’s be real and honest, his ego is off the charts; to paraphrase The Art of War, his biggest strength is also his biggest weakness. But how about the achievements and story lines of Holloway and English?
SHU picked to be a bottom feeder, wins 13 games in unarguably one of the top 2 conferences, including wins over the “big boys”!
Or PC, new coach, replacing the Providence “lifer” who jumps within the conference, loses their best player early, yet goes on to have a really good year?
Despite the acceptance of some posters that the BE got what they deserved, I disagree vehemently. To not take one of the three BE bubble teams IMO was calculated, planned and executed.
There is no way you can “Pick Up Stix” ANY of the numbers or metrics and come up that Virginia was more deserving than any of the 3. And Michigan State who beat Baylor and Illinois but all their other wins were pedestrian and finished the year losing 5 of 7. Or FAU, who beat Texas A&M and Arizona early, had absolutely horrible losses including the Temple game, and essentially had the same string of largely pedestrian wins.
Last one from the Mountain West, Boise State, whose best wins were in conference, like SHU, none of them close to the level of teams SHU beat, lost to Butler, Clemson, Virginia Tech, Washington State, out of conference.
I am not buying at all what the NCAA is selling, to use a word becoming popular in the media, IMO they “weaponized“ the spaghetti criteria to strategically perform a hatchet job on the conference. Don’t see it any other way.
I agree with Panther. I hope all 3 BE teams are in the final 4 and one of them wins the championship. That would be a pyric victory for us and the conference, but screw the NCAA. The BE always outperforms the field in the tourney, so it is NOT farfetched.
+100.
I agree with you but have to point out that the ACC probably feels the same way and in most years would be correct but not necessarily this year. UVA (who many feel should not be in the field of 68) was their fourth best team this year.
I always root for the Big East teams against teams out of Conference teams (although rooting for UConn stops in the National Championship game). I might have to make another exception if any of them face JMU, but I would love to see those three in the Final Four.
We at the very least need them all to go far in the tourny, we have one or two not make it past the first weekend.
Oh, and root even harder for the ACC to go down in flames during the first weekend.
Invite never arrives for Red Storm
Rick Pitino and his St. John’s basketball team gathered on campus Sunday to see the NCAA Tournament field unveiled. Even after 48 hours of watching conference tournament upsets and stolen bids, the players were “pumped,” in Pitino’s words.
They watched as each regional was unveiled, paying special attention to which teams ended up on the Nos. 10 and 11 lines, where they had hoped to see “St. John’s.” Said Pitino, “The room got more somber with each [regional].”
The reality, however, was that it was over before it started. As it turns out, the Red Storm’s best shot at getting an at-large berth vanished when they lost eight of 10 games from Jan. 13 through Feb. 18. St. John’s not only wasn’t in the 68-team field, it wasn’t even one of the last four candidates to get cut.
The Red Storm’s late-season resurgence and six-game winning streak didn’t save them. The high level of play they displayed in upsetting Creighton, beating Seton Hall and taking overall No. 1 seed Connecticut to the wire also didn’t save them. No Big East team with 11 conference wins and no team with a NET ranking as good as St. John’s 32 had ever been denied a bid — but that didn’t save them either.
The one-point loss at Creighton? The one-point loss to Marquette at the Garden? The three-point loss at Providence and the six-point loss to Seton Hall at UBS Arena? Those were killers.
“I’ve never been on this end of the stick before as a coach and it certainly hurts, but for me, it’s the hurt in the eyes of my players,” Pitino said. “That’s what hurts the most.”
Selection committee chairman Charles McClelland explained that five automatic bids went to teams that were not going to make it — Oregon in the Pac-12, UAB in the American, Duquesne in the Atlantic 10, New Mexico in the Mountain West and North Carolina State in the ACC — but even if there had been only four, St. John’s wasn’t getting in.
McClelland said the bid-stealers “made it a very difficult process,” and when he was asked specifically about St. John’s, he pointed out that the Red Storm played seven games against the conference’s top three — UConn, Marquette and Creighton — and went 1-6. He added that they had “no significant non-conference wins of note.”
“Every possible upset happened . . . more upsets than I’ve seen in a long time,” Pitino said. “You’ve just got to say the committee did the best job they could. We weren’t considered.”
There can be no doubt that the selection committee and its use of the NET metric — which Pitino called “fraudulent” — needs to be reexamined when the Big East has only three teams in the field: No. 1 UConn, No. 2 Marquette and No. 3 Creighton. That hasn’t happened since 1993, and for it to happen for a conference power ranked No. 2 behind the Big 12 on kenpom.com? That raises eyebrows.
When the prospect of the Big East getting only three teams into the NCAAs was raised to UConn coach Dan Hurley after his team’s Big East championship win Saturday, he replied, “If we don’t get six teams in, that’s incredibly disrespectful.
“If Seton Hall is not in, that’s embarrassing, and there’s a larger problem relative to the respect that the Big East gets,” he added. “St. John’s is just as good as everyone else . . . There’s a lot of truth to what some of these conferences did relative to manipulating the NET. When you look at some resumes of some of these programs that are in the leagues that are considered the best, they . . . literally beat nobody in the non-conference.”
Pitino said the Red Storm would decline any invitation to play in the NIT. The program resources, he explained, are better used for building next season’s team and not for preparing for more games.
“If we’re going to move forward, most of our time now needs to be spent recruiting because we’re going to have to bring in probably seven or eight new players,” he said. “And preparing for the NIT does not help our future.”
At season’s start, Pitino said he measures the success of a season by whether a team makes the NCAA Tournament. When asked about that, he replied, “I look at it more as reaching your potential, and I think we reached our potential. We didn’t reach the NCAA but . . . down the stretch we looked like a really good basketball team . . . We’ve had a lot of people that really, really enjoyed watching us play.”
Invite never arrives for Red Storm
Roger RubinRick Pitino and his St. John’s basketball team gathered on campus Sunday to see the NCAA Tournament field unveiled. Even after 48 hours of watching conference tournament upsets and stolen bids, the players were “pumped,” in Pitino’s words.
They watched as each regional was unveiled, paying special attention to which teams ended up on the Nos. 10 and 11 lines, where they had hoped to see “St. John’s.” Said Pitino, “The room got more somber with each [regional].”
The reality, however, was that it was over before it started. As it turns out, the Red Storm’s best shot at getting an at-large berth vanished when they lost eight of 10 games from Jan. 13 through Feb. 18. St. John’s not only wasn’t in the 68-team field, it wasn’t even one of the last four candidates to get cut.
The Red Storm’s late-season resurgence and six-game winning streak didn’t save them. The high level of play they displayed in upsetting Creighton, beating Seton Hall and taking overall No. 1 seed Connecticut to the wire also didn’t save them. No Big East team with 11 conference wins and no team with a NET ranking as good as St. John’s 32 had ever been denied a bid — but that didn’t save them either.
The one-point loss at Creighton? The one-point loss to Marquette at the Garden? The three-point loss at Providence and the six-point loss to Seton Hall at UBS Arena? Those were killers.
“I’ve never been on this end of the stick before as a coach and it certainly hurts, but for me, it’s the hurt in the eyes of my players,” Pitino said. “That’s what hurts the most.”
Selection committee chairman Charles McClelland explained that five automatic bids went to teams that were not going to make it — Oregon in the Pac-12, UAB in the American, Duquesne in the Atlantic 10, New Mexico in the Mountain West and North Carolina State in the ACC — but even if there had been only four, St. John’s wasn’t getting in.
McClelland said the bid-stealers “made it a very difficult process,” and when he was asked specifically about St. John’s, he pointed out that the Red Storm played seven games against the conference’s top three — UConn, Marquette and Creighton — and went 1-6. He added that they had “no significant non-conference wins of note.”
“Every possible upset happened . . . more upsets than I’ve seen in a long time,” Pitino said. “You’ve just got to say the committee did the best job they could. We weren’t considered.”
There can be no doubt that the selection committee and its use of the NET metric — which Pitino called “fraudulent” — needs to be reexamined when the Big East has only three teams in the field: No. 1 UConn, No. 2 Marquette and No. 3 Creighton. That hasn’t happened since 1993, and for it to happen for a conference power ranked No. 2 behind the Big 12 on kenpom.com? That raises eyebrows.
When the prospect of the Big East getting only three teams into the NCAAs was raised to UConn coach Dan Hurley after his team’s Big East championship win Saturday, he replied, “If we don’t get six teams in, that’s incredibly disrespectful.
“If Seton Hall is not in, that’s embarrassing, and there’s a larger problem relative to the respect that the Big East gets,” he added. “St. John’s is just as good as everyone else . . . There’s a lot of truth to what some of these conferences did relative to manipulating the NET. When you look at some resumes of some of these programs that are in the leagues that are considered the best, they . . . literally beat nobody in the non-conference.”
Pitino said the Red Storm would decline any invitation to play in the NIT. The program resources, he explained, are better used for building next season’s team and not for preparing for more games.
“If we’re going to move forward, most of our time now needs to be spent recruiting because we’re going to have to bring in probably seven or eight new players,” he said. “And preparing for the NIT does not help our future.”
At season’s start, Pitino said he measures the success of a season by whether a team makes the NCAA Tournament. When asked about that, he replied, “I look at it more as reaching your potential, and I think we reached our potential. We didn’t reach the NCAA but . . . down the stretch we looked like a really good basketball team . . . We’ve had a lot of people that really, really enjoyed watching us play.”
Especially, a Big East team that wins 13 conference games. At one point, a team from the Big East who won as many conference games as Seton Hall was a lock. Heck, a team like us who won 11 conference Big East games were locks as well. Not to mention, a hot Big East team.
That's easy as I despise UNC and Duke. Frankly, I only have interest in watching the respective schools from my state in South Carolina and Clemson (the only ACC team I'll root for in the tournament).
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Larry Wright
Well-known member
Seems committee had teams set and could only play way in over weekend if you won conference tournament.
Best thing Pitino said was that NET is fraudulent.
Makes zero sense to me for NCAA to have a ranking tool that is not used as primary.
Makes zero sense to me for NCAA to have a ranking tool that is not used as primary.
I wake up just as confused and upset at the committee as I was yesterday. I don’t really know what their criteria was or what they want out of teams in the future. It’s just clear to me there was an anti-Big East bias, thinking we’re a higher profile Atlantic ten. The teams that got benefit of the doubt from their resumes were in the Acc, sec and big 12, while metrics only mattered if you’re a mid major.
Only takeaway for Pitino and the players is to never be on the bubble again. We didn’t necessarily deserve to make the tournament, but we need to make it a no brainer next time.
Frankly, outside of Ledlum and Jenkins, I won’t be missing the other seniors. Time to move on, get our core five back, and hit the portal much harder
Only takeaway for Pitino and the players is to never be on the bubble again. We didn’t necessarily deserve to make the tournament, but we need to make it a no brainer next time.
Frankly, outside of Ledlum and Jenkins, I won’t be missing the other seniors. Time to move on, get our core five back, and hit the portal much harder
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