bukie

Heh, I should have just quoted that myself, since I knew you'd do that. :) I still don't think their overall profile is better than last year if they lose to Butler and don't win the conference tournament.

Just the time of year it happened. The committee has taken recent play into account in seeding, and if Davidson loses the Bracketbuster game and a game in the SoCon tourney, that'll put them at just 7-3 in the last 10 with only one win against a top 100 RPI team. They have a worse computer profile than last year, and it's not as if they were clearly safe last year despite winning their final 24 games. On a similar note, here's an article with some information from the committee chair on thoughts on seeding and selection. I think anyone projecting to the top 4-5 seeds at this point would be hard-pressed to blow it over the last 7-8 games of the year. Except Syracuse, because that's kind of what they do every year. :) If I was looking at it, I'd probably set as locks... ACC: UNC, Duke, Clemson, Wake Forest Big East: UConn, Pitt, Louisville, Villanova, Marquette Big 12: Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri Big Ten: MSU, Illinois, Ohio State, Purdue (if Hummel comes back healthy, the losses without him will be overlooked, I think) Pac-10: UCLA Other: Xavier, Butler, Gonzaga, Memphis That covers 21 teams over 9 conferences, leaving 22 other conference auto bids to total 43 bids taken. That leaves 22 bids up for grabs, IMO.

Last year, they also went a total of 23-0 against their conference and had the longest winning streak in the country going into the tournament, just to get a 10 seed. Neither of those two will happen this year. It's the equivalent of saying "If Davidson wins out, they're a lock". Well, obviously. Any team fits that criteria. Right now, though, they're not a likely tournament team, let alone a lock. They have an RPI of 50 this year as opposed to 35 last year.

You still think Davidson is a lock? I don't. They're maybe a 12 seed at best if they don't win their conference tournament or beat Butler at home.

You mean a game of GEICO.

and the East Coast is five guys going to Duke, I assume Duke hasn't finalized scholarships for next year's class, which is why the McD's East team hasn't been set yet.

I'll send you Ryan Theriot for the #1 pick back. :D

what was the trade? Feeling lazy? It's right there on the site. i see the draft picks that were exchanged and zimmerman, but i don't see the high-end keeper. Jason Bay was the high-end keeper. That happened before the roster wipe, so I'm guessing that part of it got wiped too.

Meh, we'll see. The #1 pick was really the only leverage I had to improve my keeper team/minors, so I traded down 10 picks to add a high-end keeper, a high-end pitching prospect that could start in the majors this year, and an extra later round pick. Of course, if I had known he's hamstring his roster 3 days later, I may have held out for a better deal. :)

11 man roster, indeed.

Little known MWC fact: New Mexico has actually been the best team in the Mountain West this year. By far. Of course, their non-conference was pretty bad.

They shot 36% in the first half, not exactly gangbusters.

Hey, Trent Meacham is alive.

Does the sound keep kicking out for everybody, or is it just me?

Is is possible to set keepers early and still modify them before Friday, or is it a one shot deal? I have my keepers in mind for now, but I'm still looking at a couple trade possibilities that may change that this week.

I think my roster's all straightened out: Majors: D Haren - 582.0 J Bay - 562.8 I Suzuki - 475.8 R Furcal - 146.8 R Theriot - Exempt S Marcum - Exempt F Carmona - Exempt H Bailey - Exempt K Johjima - Exempt M Cabrera - Exempt Minors: Alcides Escobar Beau Mills Bryan Anderson Eric Hurley Jordan Zimmerman Jeff Niemann Brett Sinkbeil Casey Weathers Wade LeBlanc Kei Igawa

they must be bad if they're worse than whoever wins the patriot league this year. though they do have us (since we're leading the PL) playing uconn in the first round. bend over. To give a general idea how bad the SWAC is, their second place team, Jackson St., is 7-2 in the conference. They're 8-13 overall, with their one OOC win coming against provisional D-1 2-23 UNC Central.

Jeff Sagarin keeps a daily updated conference rating for college basketball, both rating simple average (so each team counts equally) and central mean (so the middle teams count for more than the best or worst). Look it up here. In both ratings, for today, the ACC is on top, followed by the Big Ten and the Big East. However, the top 5 conferences (ACC, Big Ten, Big East, Pac-10, Big 12) are all fairly close, with the difference between 1 and 5 less than the difference between 5 and 6 (SEC). If you were grouping sets of conferences by similar rating, it would look something like this: High: ACC, Big Ten, Big East, Pac-10, Big 12 Mid-high: SEC, MWC Mid: Conference USA, MVC, A-10, Horizon Mid-low: WCC, WAC, CAA, MAAC Low: Most everything else Should be in the play-in game every year, because they're worse than the independents: MEAC, SWAC

Which, of course, isn't to say he's not worth Tyrus Thomas in a trade.

I hate to use the old cliche, but the check is in the mail. Today, because I apparently forgot to mention it to the wife when she was writing out checks last week.

This can only work in my favor. New rosters all around!

If we were to put together a collaborative "top 50" of teams that had decent at-large chances, I'd say only really the top 10 of that list is a "lock" at this point. In the Big East, Connecticut, Pittsburgh and Louisville are in for sure unless they completely fall apart. Marquette is in unless they can't beat any of the top teams at the end of the year (really, their schedule has been pretty easy to this point, and the last 6 games for them could determine whether they're a 1 seed or a 10 seed) In the ACC, all of the top 4 of UNC, Duke, Wake Forest, Clemson are in barring disaster. In the Big Ten, Purdue (getting a likely discount for games played without Hummel) and MSU (getting a likely discount for games played without Suton and/or Morgan) are in barring disaster. In the Big 12, Oklahoma is for sure in. Next team in line, believe it or not, is probably Kansas. In the Pac-10, I have a hard time saying for sure that any team is in, as nobody's played well enough in the league to warrant that. UCLA is probably closest, more on name than anything. In the SEC, nobody's in for sure except the team that wins the conference tournament. Outside the "Big 6", Xavier is a lock. Memphis and Butler are right there (Butler lost a game in league, but the Horizon is arguably tougher than CUSA this year). So, I guess if I had to break it down, my locks are: UConn UNC Duke Pitt Oklahoma Wake Forest MSU Louisville Xavier Clemson Purdue Marquette ...in that order.

Well, at least DePaul hasn't beaten themselves to this point.

Warning: Illini-related post... The Illini have struggled on offense over the past month (relative to earlier in the year). The biggest problem on offense would appear to be Alex Legion, who is the most inefficient offensive player on the team while he's on the floor, and yet ends the highest % of offensive sets (%Poss, a measure of possessions ended by missed/made shots). He's shooting 31% from the field overall, and 23% from 3-point range, and only 50% from the foul line. What's up with him?

Yeah, Davidson doesn't even have as good a profile as they did last year, and last year they got a 10 seed despite sweeping the SoCon regular season + tourney. If they lose a conference game in that awful conference, they very well may need to win the conference tourney to get into the NCAAs.