We are not listed. No surprise as I believe he picked us 11th in the BE. Has 7 teams from the conference in his rankings including Louisville at #1 overall. Regardless, other than Louisville and Syracuse, the BE should have a down year. That IMO opens the door for our talented, young squad.
Jay Bilas' Top 68
- Thread starter sirvoo
- Start date
Hah...nah Temple is clearly a top 68 team no question. Though I don't think they will be that good at first in the Big East, they are clearly a top 68 team. I bet they have some random schools in there like Ball State above us...I don't see how we are any worse than top 40-45.
No excuses...good analysts realize which teams are primed to be relevant again even if it's been a while since they have. Look at Iona...they were nothing notable then they started getting these big time players and now they get high rankings from analysts. I bet you they are listed. It should not be about culture of winning lately...it should be about THIS upcoming season. By the way, I was wondering before what this team would have looked like had Harkless stayed. Can you imagine Harrison, Harkless, Sampson, Branch, Jones, etc.? Ok I have to stop dreaming lol. I think had we kept Harkless, with this current lineup, we would be picked to be a top 5 Big East team and a sure fire top 25.
Disagree (I know that's a shocker). There is one guy returning that any analysts would pay any mind to off of last year's achievements, DLo obviously. There are 3 three recruits that are fairly well discussed on sites/boards though none are considered program changers from the get go (CO, Jakarr, Branch). There's one Juco that was on a national team and got a little press.. That's about as much as national analysts can be expected to digest on STJ when they really have to be following 100+ teams (BCS teams plus mid majors with potential). So even if Bilas is correct not to have STJ in the top 68 he really doesn't know enough about the team to say why, at least that's what I think. You need returning All Conference Players and new McD AA's/Top 25's to make an impact in the preseason rankings. Luckily they're useless after 4 weeks of play, the rankings . . . not the players.
You need McD AA's/Top 25's to make the top 68? News to me. As I said, I'm sure there are tons of mid-majors on that list that we will be better than and have way more talent than. To have 6 ESPN100 players on the team including our leading scorer, a healthy coach Lav, and a much bigger and deeper team, there is no reason to not be in the top 68 or top 40 for that matter. It's rare to get a McD's AA's...to be a top 68 team you don't have to be great. Last year, some of the top 68 teams included: Mississippi Valley State (didn't even know they existed), Vermont, Lamar (who?), Montana, Loyola, South Dakota St., etc. Granted that's last year, but still...it just goes to show what kinds of teams crack the top 68. If you don't think we would beat either of those teams at least 7/10 times, there is a problem. Many teams on the list don't even have ONE ESPN100 player. Come on now...to not make the top 68 means they don't know who we are.
I didn't read all his comments about each team but from what I gather most of the teams he listed were referenced because they had players returning with experience. If you win 13 games and don't bring in any top 25 prospects I wouldn't hold it against you if you didn't have us in the top 68 as of now. Players like Jones(will be our best) and sanchez(hopefully will be in the fold) will prove him wrong.
[You need McD AA's/Top 25's to make the top 68? News to me. As I said, I'm sure there are tons of mid-majors on that list that we will be better than and have way more talent than. To have 6 ESPN100 players on the team including our leading scorer, a healthy coach Lav, and a much bigger and deeper team, there is no reason to not be in the top 68 or top 40 for that matter. It's rare to get a McD's AA's...to be a top 68 team you don't have to be great. Last year, some of the top 68 teams included: Mississippi Valley State (didn't even know they existed), Vermont, Lamar (who?), Montana, Loyola, South Dakota St., etc. Granted that's last year, but still...it just goes to show what kinds of teams crack the top 68. If you don't think we would beat either of those teams at least 7/10 times, there is a problem. Many teams on the list don't even have ONE ESPN100 player. Come on now...to not make the top 68 means they don't know who we are. [/quote]
I generally believe that we are underrated and we are better than what the pundits have been predicting for our team. I also have said to myself: "We have all these top 100 guys! What gives? Why are we so underrated?" Then I started thinking about it some more and I did some quick math and I was surprised by what I came up with:
There are 100 'top 100' recruits entering every year into a freshmen class to play ball. I presume there are 85 to 90 or so 'top 100' guys that are playing in their sophomore year. (Top 5 to 10 guys go to NBA, assume some other guys stop playing basketball all-together). Presume 80 to 85 'top 100' guys play in junior class at a given time.. and then presume 75 to 85 guys play in a senior class. So when you add that all together, there are roughly 340 to 360 'top 100' guys playing in D1 at any given time.
Now use St. John's as example. We have 6 'top 100' guys. Are we an average top/good/great team with our 6 'top 100' players? Sure, that seems reasonable. So, divide 340 to 360 top players by an average of 6 top guys per team. That math equals 56.6 to 60 teams. That's insane to me.
I was shocked by that. If on average, for the better teams, they each contain 6 'top 100' guys, in D1 basketball, then there will be 57 to 60 teams each with 6 'top 100' guys.
I found that fascinating. Long-story short: It's really hard to be a top 25 to 35 team...
When the pundits don't list us in the Top 40 or Top 50 or Top 60... I understand why now. There are tons of top 100 players out there playing all around the country. I don't get bent out of shape when people rank us so low... We have to earn their respect. It'll come with time I hope under Lavin's leadership. We have wait this out, be patient and hopefully make all these pundits eat their words who don't have time to understand the talent level we have (we have great juco transfers who don't count toward this math)...
Anyway, so i thought i would share this. I found it interesting.
Is my math off? Am i making a mistake? I may be making a mistake in my analysis. All criticism of this welcome.
Thanks.
I generally believe that we are underrated and we are better than what the pundits have been predicting for our team. I also have said to myself: "We have all these top 100 guys! What gives? Why are we so underrated?" Then I started thinking about it some more and I did some quick math and I was surprised by what I came up with:
There are 100 'top 100' recruits entering every year into a freshmen class to play ball. I presume there are 85 to 90 or so 'top 100' guys that are playing in their sophomore year. (Top 5 to 10 guys go to NBA, assume some other guys stop playing basketball all-together). Presume 80 to 85 'top 100' guys play in junior class at a given time.. and then presume 75 to 85 guys play in a senior class. So when you add that all together, there are roughly 340 to 360 'top 100' guys playing in D1 at any given time.
Now use St. John's as example. We have 6 'top 100' guys. Are we an average top/good/great team with our 6 'top 100' players? Sure, that seems reasonable. So, divide 340 to 360 top players by an average of 6 top guys per team. That math equals 56.6 to 60 teams. That's insane to me.
I was shocked by that. If on average, for the better teams, they each contain 6 'top 100' guys, in D1 basketball, then there will be 57 to 60 teams each with 6 'top 100' guys.
I found that fascinating. Long-story short: It's really hard to be a top 25 to 35 team...
When the pundits don't list us in the Top 40 or Top 50 or Top 60... I understand why now. There are tons of top 100 players out there playing all around the country. I don't get bent out of shape when people rank us so low... We have to earn their respect. It'll come with time I hope under Lavin's leadership. We have wait this out, be patient and hopefully make all these pundits eat their words who don't have time to understand the talent level we have (we have great juco transfers who don't count toward this math)...
Anyway, so i thought i would share this. I found it interesting.
Is my math off? Am i making a mistake? I may be making a mistake in my analysis. All criticism of this welcome.
Thanks.