bukie

Don't think I've ever seen an Illinois team play as bad defensively as they did in the second half there.

Fouls are even. There is no home cooking.

Jereme played like crap the first 20 minutes. It'd be great if he could pick it up for the second half.

One thing I learned yesterday: holy crap do the Hornets announcers and fans have an unreasonable disdain for Rose.

In a way, it's better for the Bulls if Boston wins this, because I just think they're the more likely of the two to coast to the finish and try to turn it on for the playoffs.

All eight road teams won tonight. Weird.

Four more teams left to beat: Charlotte, San Antonio, Atlanta, New York.

At least they should be, but for some reason "experts" don't like the back half of the Big Ten near as much as the back middle of the Big East.

Honestly, the WIsconsin win helps Illinois, because at least they have a win over Wisconsin.

That's silly. What could Kiper have seen at a workout that he didn't already know about Cam? Maybe he saw a check from Cam's agent.

The SEC is a monumental joke of a basketball conference. Yet they should still get 4 bids (Kentucky, Vandy, Florida, Tennessee). As weird as it is to see 11 Big East and 9 Big Ten teams in that field, I'm not so sure it's completely wrong based on the performance of the SEC, Pac-10, ACC and mid-majors. Sure, give the MWC 3-4 bids, the A-10 2-3 bids, and I totally agree George Mason, St. Mary's and Utah State (even with their cakey schedule) should make it. But the MVC has been bad, CUSA is terrible, and no other league has really stepped up aside from a single team. The bids have to go somewhere.

Just for fun, let's compare Alabama (SEC leader) and Penn State (Big Ten 8th place): Alabama: 289th non-con schedule, 150th overall schedule, 3-8 road/neutral record, 1-1 vs. top 25, 2-2 vs. top 50, 2-6 vs. top 100, 2 losses outside the top 100, lost to Iowa Penn State: 101st non-con schedule, 3rd overall schedule, 1-7 road/neutral record, 2-5 vs. top 25, 4-7 vs. top 50, 7-10 vs. top 100, 1 loss outside top 100, beat Iowa

I had a quiet afternoon, so I went and ran some data on college teams. Using a combination of Pomeroy's ratings and Sagarin's ratings, I created a rating that took into account those pythagorean ratings (KenPom Pyth, Sag rating, Sag Predictor), SOS ratings for each, NC SOS for KenPom, and top 25/50 wins/losses according to Sagarin (KenPom doesn't publish those nice and easy). I'd still like to find a nice, easy spot where I can grab R/N records for all college teams and get an idea of bad losses (all I calculated was non-top 50 losses, which makes a team like Illinois look better...totally not on purpose). Things I didn't look at at all: Team name, conference name, conference record, W-L, RPI. Yes, some of this ended up weird. Which I expected, really. So, these are the results (autobids are highest projected team in each league, spoilered for huge): First four games project as: Duquesne-Gonzaga, UCLA-Xavier, Florida Atlantic-Texas Southern, and Stephen F Austin-Hampton. Notes on weirdness: - Holy crap, the back end of the bubble is weak, even if you disagree greatly with who is on the inside for now. - Both Sagarin and Pomeroy love the Big Ten and Big East teams. Indiana, Seton Hall and Iowa would've been close to the back end of the bubble had they qualified (losing record) - The results are very unkind to the non-big-6 conferences, which is why I'd like to incorporate more of the road/neutral numbers.

Other stats...top 30 players in WP82: 1. james,lebron, 36.4 2. paul,chris, 31.7 3. rose,derrick, 29.0 4. howard,dwight, 26.3 5. williams,deron, 26.2 6. gasol,pau, 25.8 7. bryant,kobe, 25.6 8. durant,kevin, 25.3 9. ginobili,manu, 24.5 10. wade,dwyane, 23.0 11. allen,ray, 22.9 12. aldridge,lamarcus, 22.0 13. pierce,paul, 20.9 14. randolph,zach, 20.9 15. odom,lamar, 20.4 16. griffin,blake, 20.2 17. ellis,monta, 20.1 18. terry,jason, 19.8 19. westbrook,russell, 19.7 20. horford,al, 19.4 21. nowitzki,dirk, 18.8 22. deng,luol, 17.4 23. west,david, 17.3 24. gay,rudy, 16.9 25. rondo,rajon, 16.8 26. kidd,jason, 16.7 27. felton,raymond, 16.5 28. nash,steve, 16.5 29. stoudemire,amare, 16.2 30. johnson,joe, 16.2

Wonder why that is? Do people in the Western Conference, who see the Jazz 4 times a year, think that Deron is overrated or something? It's weird because other than Texas and Minnesota, every state with a West team chooses Sloan, even Tennessee and Louisiana who are sort of Western Conference outliers. Or maybe its because they compete with the Jazz and don't want Deron to play in Utah anymore. either way, Sloan is really old. The chances of him coaching longer than Deron Williams plays are slim to none. it would be pretty stupid to choose Sloan over Williams even if you were a huge Sloan fan. Even Texas is oddly close, considering Williams is from there.

Jereme specifically asked to come off the bench. He played the 3rd most minutes of anyone yesterday behind Davis and McCamey. Richmond playing time isn't an issue right now. No he's getting anough minutes. I agree with that. But, it is worth noting many of the younger recruits have brought up him not starting to Klee. That's gonna be an issue with guys like Hamilton and Parker. They are gonna want to be starters from day one and not sit behind players with less talent. Bruce specifically asked Jereme if he was more comfortable starting or coming off the bench, and Jereme said he'd rather come off the bench. If that makes the '13 recruits nervous, they just need to be better informed.

There's an oddly clean national line in the Williams-Sloan debate: http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/fp/flashPollResultsState?sportIndex=pollindex&pollId=106821

Jereme specifically asked to come off the bench. He played the 3rd most minutes of anyone yesterday behind Davis and McCamey. Richmond playing time isn't an issue right now.

His list so far: C: 1. Mauer, 2. McCann, 3. Posey, 4. Wieters, 5. Santana 1B: 1. Pujols, 2. Cabrera, 3. Votto, 4. Gonzalez, 5. Morneau 2B: 1. Cano, 2. Pedroia, 3. Kinsler, 4. Utley, 5. Someone Else SS. 1. Tulowitzki, 2. Hanley, 3. Castro, 4. Andrus, 5. Someone Else, Jr.

Also glad that Illinois was able to return the favor to Minnesota for last year. No chance Minny gets in ahead of Illinois this time.

But that's just it.... Illinois didn't play well. Still can't shoot and still turn the ball over too much. We did have a really good night at the free throw line which I've been saying this team needs to do. It just so happens that Minnesota didn't shoot well and turned the ball over than we did. Tomorrow everyone will talk about how Weber's benching Tisdale and McCamey was the key to the victory. But honestly, Minnesota played just bad enough for us to win. We need to shoot better because we can't rely on other teams shooting poorly and turning over the ball like Minnesota did. Illinois played extremely well defensively tonight. They've had trouble with turnovers all year, but tonight they were able to force a ton of bad shots and hold their own rebounding against a much bigger team. This was a bad matchup for Illinois, McCamey and Tisdale were their worst players, and they won on the road by 9. I'm not sure what more you want from the team.

Though going 9-9 from the line the last 5 minutes also helps.

Said it before and I'll say it again: ANY road win in this league requires a team to play really well. Or be Ohio State.

The Jazz have had one losing season since Sloan took over in 1988, and they finished in the top 10 in offensive efficiency every year but that one.

Some perspective on Sloan: Sloan started coaching the Jazz on December 9, 1988. Four of this year's NBA All-Stars were under 3 months old at that time (Rose, Love, Durant, Westbrook), and one wasn't born yet (Griffin).