bukie

Marquette the most impressive team ever to lose one of its best players then proceed to lose five of six, right? The schedule had as much to do with that as anything, but...yeah. :)

Oh, Marquette. Fought all the way back from at 16-point second half deficit to take a brief one-point lead with 20 seconds left, only to see Villanova win it with a layup at the buzzer.

Says more about the Cubs bench than anything else, IMO. ;)

Georgia Tech 86, Clemson 81. Clemson loses 4 of 5 to close out the year. Michigan 73, Iowa 45. BYU struggling with Air Force midway through the second half. Villanova about to blow a 16-point lead against Marquette.

I think that should be emphatic enough to render tomorrow's result meaningless...unless they go and lose by 30 or something. Considering Illinois' offense the past 3 weeks, winning by 30 would require them to hold Michigan to 12 points.

It's an Alford thing, mostly.

Michigan is 10-20 from three-point range and shooting 60% from the field overall. Doesn't look like this is going to be Iowa's year to win the Big Ten.

Speaking of bad losses, Clemson is trailing Georgia Tech by 10 with 3 minutes to play.

Actually, the record TT listed vs. the top 50 includes the top 25 also, so for instance Kansas is 9-4 against the top 50.

Like I said, I'd bump Washington and Villanova ahead of them pending today's results (Villanova leads Marquette by 16 at the half), and possibly Missouri or UCLA if they won their conference tournaments. Beyond that, there's too much of a gap between them and the other teams on that list.

The annoying part of the SEC being so bad is that a team like Kentucky has a better shot at an auto bid than a team like, say, Villanova.

I think Washington and Villanova could jump Kansas pending their results in today's games. Beyond that...Missouri? Maybe if they win the conference tournament. UCLA? Same. Clemson? I think less and less of them as the season goes along. Xavier...eh, possibly. Gonzaga? Hard to say how good they really are, but they've been scorching hot. Florida State? Getting better as the season goes along, but I'm of the opinion even a 4 seed is high for them. They've accomplished a bunch, but really aren't that good of a team. Illinois, even biased, is a stretch for a 4 seed. So, I guess I'm saying Kansas is likely still a 3 seed even with 2 bad losses in their last 2 games.

Should Kansas' spot be affected at all by that poor showing against Baylor? By the way, with that odd result, either Baylor, Kansas State or Texas will be in the Big 12 tournament final.

His patience is debatable, he saw about as many pitches per PA as Cedeno, and just barely more than Soriano. Part of the problem is his complete lack of power makes pitchers very confident to throw him strikes, but he did draw a fair amount of walks. Some interesting statistics on plate discipline: http://www.fangraphs.com/winss.aspx?team=Cubs&pos=all&stats=bat&qual=0&type=5&season=2008&month=0 Theriot was on the extreme end of team statistics for most of those: he swung at the second-fewest pitches out of the zone (Edmonds), he saw the highest percentage of pitches in the strike zone of any non-pitcher other than Cedeno, he swung at the lowest percentage of pitches in the zone (57.9%), and when he did swing at pitches in the zone, he made contact 96.7% of the time (also highest on the team). So, he was pretty good at not swinging at bad pitches, but then again, he was pretty good at not swinging at good pitches either. Whether making contact with almost 97% of the strikes he swung at is a good or bad thing depends on the point of view.

Theriot is not going to give you much more than seeing-eye singles and walks, no matter where he bats. His SB success rate was 63% last year, low enough to the point of being a detriment. He had an extraordinarily high BABIP last year due partly to a decent line drive percentage, but his groundball percentage was the third highest in the league. That groundball percentage also contributed to him grounding into the highest rate of double plays on the team last year, which doesn't make him an ideal choice to bat in front of your most productive hitters. I say this not as a Theriot hater, he can be productive when in the right situation. He was very patient at the plate (if only on the basepaths too!) and was able to hit his fair share of line drives for singles. But you're not going to get much more out of him than singles and patience, and he's a major double play liability. He's certainly an adequate offensive SS on a team that really has a loaded lineup top to bottom, but he's not an ideal top of the order hitter.

Robert Morris and Portland State won their conference auto-bids last night.

I'd like to get at least 3, depending on what I can find.

Providence manages to avoid getting DePauled.

It's the 4 anonymous teams game again! Let me just state ahead of time that I'm using Sagarin's numbers vs. top 25, because the RPI numbers are not readily available for that group. Team A: 24-6, 2-1 against the top 25, 5-3 against the top 50, 5-1 against 51-100, 10-5 road/neutral record, 2 losses outside the top 100, 1 loss outside the top 200, 8-4 in the last 12, SOS 48 Team B: 25-5, 0-2 against the top 25, 6-3 against the top 50, 3-1 against 51-100, 15-3 road/neutral record, 1 loss outside the top 100, no losses outside the top 200, 11-1 in the last 12, SOS 84 Team C: 23-8, 3-5 against the top 25, 5-5 against the top 50, 5-3 against 51-100, 10-5 road/neutral record, no losses outside the top 100, no losses outside the top 200, 8-4 in the last 12, SOS 19 Team D: 23-8, 3-3 against the top 25, 8-6 against the top 50, 3-2 against 51-100, 9-5 road/neutral record, no losses outside the top 100, no losses outside the top 200, 7-5 in the last 12, SOS 26 EDITED: Counted wrong for one of the teams (I only got to look at 3 nitty gritty pages on BBState, so the 4th I had to do manually). Fixed.

So, the next step (aside from waiting for bids): 1) Rank the 4 teams sitting locked together in the 16-19 slots (Xavier, Gonzaga, Florida State, Illinois). I'll post nitty-gritty-like stat sheets for them in the morning. 2) Rank the remaining 16 "in" teams that aren't placed in the S-Curve 3) Rank the 13 teams that will have already won automatic bids by the end of Thursday night (11 already plus NEC and Big Sky) Send them to me via PM/post them here by the end of Thursday night. As for the discussion during that time, I was thinking we could start putting together a bracket, now that we have the protected seeds pretty much settled. Assign legal regions and pods for the teams already placed in the S-Curve.

So, to sum up: S-Curve (20): 1. Pittsburgh 2. North Carolina 3. Connecticut 4. Oklahoma 5. Michigan State 6. Louisville 7. Duke 8. Memphis 9. Wake Forest 10. Kansas 11. Washington 12. Villanova 13. Missouri 14. Clemson 15. UCLA 16-19. Xavier/Gonzaga (WCC)/Florida State/Illinois 20. Syracuse Other at-large teams (16): Arizona State Boston College Butler BYU California LSU Marquette Michigan Oklahoma State Purdue Tennessee Texas Texas A&M Utah West Virginia Wisconsin Other Auto-bids (30): ACC America East Atlantic 10 East Tennessee State (Atlantic Sun) Big 12 Big East Big Sky Radford (Big South) Big Ten Big West VCU (Colonial) Conference USA Cleveland State (Horizon) Cornell (Ivy) Siena (MAAC) Mid-American MEAC Northern Iowa (Missouri Valley) Mountain West Northeast Morehead State (Ohio Valley) Pac-10 Patriot SEC Chattanooga (Southern) Southland North Dakota State (Summit) Western Kentucky (Sun Belt) SWAC WAC ...which yes, I realize totals 66 bids overall. We'll just work under the assumption that some at-large viable team is going to win a conference tournament here this week. Other teams still in consideration for bids that open up (roughly in order of support): Ohio State Dayton Arizona South Carolina Penn State Minnesota Utah State St. Mary's UNLV Miami New Mexico Rhode Island Auburn Creighton Florida Maryland Notre Dame Providence San Diego State Virginia Tech

OK, from the results, this is what is clear, with a caveat: I swear I'm not doing this to get Illinois into a protected seed, just that there is a distinct break in the numbers after 7 teams, and then again after 11 teams. So... Added to the S-Curve: 9. Wake Forest 10. Kansas 11. Washington 12. Villanova 13. Missouri 14. Clemson 15. UCLA The Next Four: Xavier, Gonzaga, Florida State, Illinois The Next One: Syracuse That would cover through 20 (top 5 seeds), and there's a clear break there, so that will work for the time being. We'll have to do something to separate those 4. As the bubbles go, here are the clear next 6: Tennessee Wisconsin Texas A&M Michigan Boston College Oklahoma State Which actually puts us at 35 at-large bids for now (stupid Butler!), meaning we're at an impasse for at-larges until more open up (as few as zero, as many as 10 more).

Hold on, let me keep doing the calculations until Illinois comes up as a protected seed.... ... ... ...dammit.

Still 20 minutes to get votes in to count for this round. Hurry and get those ballots in, because early tallies have me slightly disappointed (on a personal level ;)) in the rest of the protected seeds.

I thought they said NDState started D-1 in 2006 They've been provisional since 2006. This was the first year they were actually eligible for the tourney.