SouthSideRyan

That is horribly flawed.

http://www.austinillini.com/images/Michigan%20NIT%20dynasty.jpg

What the hell was the point of this? What an ass.

Football's a bad analogy because not every team plays each other. That's why they have championships. The teams that win the conference championships are the champions. The teams that win tournaments in basketball are the tournament champs. The tournaments aren't intended to crown a champion, they're intended to steal another bid for your conference. It's definitely the opposite of what you said though, nobody remembers who won the tourney at the end of the year(unless it was a team that wouldn't have made the tourney or if you're Steve Alford), but people remember who won the regular season.

The four runners mentioned are only those on third who tried to score on a fly ball. Soriano had 10 total outfield assists in 2008, which would have also included runners thrown out trying to score from second on a single and runners thrown out trying to stretch singles into doubles. Strangely, BBR mentions that Soriano played an inning at second base last season ... does anyone remember when this happened? :-k 4th game of the year against Stros. You have a good memory. Mine's old and crusty. BR's game logs.

The four runners mentioned are only those on third who tried to score on a fly ball. Soriano had 10 total outfield assists in 2008, which would have also included runners thrown out trying to score from second on a single and runners thrown out trying to stretch singles into doubles. Strangely, BBR mentions that Soriano played an inning at second base last season ... does anyone remember when this happened? :-k 4th game of the year against Stros.

You're being pretty disingenuous when talking about recruiting here. MSU '09: 1 Four Star, 1 Three Star. They lose Suton, Gray, Ibok, and Walton. They're the class of the conference now, and IU won't be close to them next year. UI '09: 2 Four Star, 2 Three Star. They lose Frazier, Meacham, and Brock. They're clearly better than Indiana now, and return their best talents next year. MN: 1 Five Star, 1 Four Star, 2 Three Stars. Clearly better than IU now, they lose Abu-Shamala. PU: 1 Four Star, 3 Three Stars. Clearly better than IU now, they lose Calasan and Green. They return all their best players. Wisky: 2 Three Stars. Clearly better than IU now, they lose Krabbenhoft and Landry. I do think they fall off, but still their system should be enough to keep them ahead. OSU: 0 recruits. Likely to lose at least 1 of Mullens, Turner, or Buford to the pros. They could lose all 3 and still have more talent. UM: 1 Four Star, 3 Three Stars. May lose Manny Harris to pros. System team, with experienced system players. NU: 1 Three Star, 1 Two Star. They lose Craig Moore. Again its a system team with experienced system players. Should probably still finish ahead of IU. Iowa: 2 Three Stars. They lose Cyrus Tate. I'm not shy about being down on Iowa, and I think you guys beat them at home this year. You've got a good chance of beating them out next year. PSU: 1 Three Star, 1 no ranking. They lose Pringle, Cornley, & Morrissey. If DeChelis doesn't make the tourney this year, he might never make it. Talor Battle's a stud, but he won't have much supporting cast behind him. IU: 3 Four Stars, 3 Three Stars, and Jeremiah Rivers. They lose nobody(besides Jobe when they force him out.) Off of this, i put IU 9th ahead of Iowa and PSU. I think you're really overrating what a non-stud recruit can do in his first year. You've got 3 freshmen starting for you from the get-go and you think they can manage a 16 win improvement on that alone? That's not even getting into the '10-'11 season where IU has nobody verballed right now compared to Illinois who has 2 Fives and a Four, OSU who has 3 Fives, 2 Fours, and a Three, MSU who has 2 Fours, Purdue who has 2 Fours and a Three, and Wisconsin who has 2 Fours. And(as you said), it's not like IU's gonna be able to get stud commits coming in cause they'll have all of 1 open schollie. I have no clue how you can rationalize that IU could be better than Purdue in '11. I have no clue how you think IU could develop their '09 recruits that much better that they could somehow make up the astronomical difference in talents between them and Illinois. Not to mention that Illinois's 2 classes combined are better than IU's. Minnesota's '09 recruiting really isn't any worse than IU, they just have less scholarships available. I don't know how you put IU with MSU, OSU, and UI, but don't include MN. IU is presently a horrendous basketball team and has a deep, solid class coming in next year. How that equals to an extra 16 wins in a top 4 conference is beyond me.

There's the issue. Who is Indiana a decent bet to finish ahead of next year or '10-'11? For next year, I've got their best case scenario as 8th in conference. For '10-'11, I'd think MSU, Purdue, Illinois, OSU, Wisconsin, and Minnesota are all pretty safe bets to finish ahead of IU. That leaves them as 7th at best fighting with 4 other teams with way more experienced talent.

CCP, I'm not ignoring your IU post, just want to look up some #s first before I make an ass out of myself, and since I'm at work, it's gonna have to wait.

It's for spring semester only. Jordan was on academic scholarship before this, and I don't believe he can go back now. Could mean a lot of things(Bill Cole transfer, Jordan was gonna lose his academic scholarship, wanted to honor Jeff for his hard work and didn't care about junior/senior year cause Michael can probably swing it) but it will not affect any future recruits.

Indiana will not make the tournament next year. They'll be lucky to make it in '10-'11.

OH MY GOD STOP PUTTING EVERY COACH'S INTIALS WITH A C IN FRONT OF IT

People need to stop saying Vitters was 19 last season.

Hmm they rank Purdue as finishing 23-8 and only losing two more...at Mich St. and at U of I That is because there's a statistical difference between the odds of losing each individual game, and the overall odds of finish over the course of the season. Pomeroy can't even add correctly!!

The Utah game probably wasn't a proud moment.

Big win for Iowa, they may just lose me my friendly wager here about them outperforming their 6-12 record. I still think they come up just short, 5-13, but man I did not see tonight coming. Wisconsin might have to start worrying about their tourney berth. They're tough to beat at Kohl and have an easy path in the Big Ten, but none of their 5 non IU road games look like gimmes, and they do have Illinois and Purdue at home. They could wind up 10-8 and not have a win over a tourney team. They wouldn't have a bad loss(maybe Iowa), but 20 wins(assuming a BTT win) and no marquee wins is not a tourney berth. This was a killer loss for them and puts them solidly in that 5-8 tier of which at least one and as many as 3 aren't making the cut.

Whoooo, back in the Big Ten Title race.

Kevin Coble has 25 points early in the 2nd half and Northwestern is up 2 on MSU. Sorry for the jinx Jon. VA Tech up 12 on Wake late 1st half on ESPN2.

Really makes you wonder why Wisky is only a 3.5 point favorite in Vegas.(opened at 2.5)

Aardsma too. Neither turned into much,(Though Aardsma turning into a functional Neal Cotts is worth more than Hawkins was) but that was a great trade by Hendry.

What did Karros do? I don't remember that Similar thing, took a full page ad out in the Trib, thanking Cubs fans for a great year and said what an honor it was to be a Cub, how much he enjoyed it, etc.

that just makes him a exceeding larger injury risk. Why? Gambler's fallacy? It's not like he's 23 years old. He's past the age where pitchers are at most risk. Obviously, you don't ride him like a mule just because he's 28 years old, and I'd still monitor him like I would most pitchers, but people have been predicting injury flameouts for Z every year since '04.

Z's never made less than 30 starts in a full season and has never spent significant time on the DL.

he was never given the chance to adjust Read your PM's. My PMs haven't worked for a while I guess I'll just have to share what I have to say to you with everyone. This is a discussion board, not an argument board. If you can't find a better way of DISCUSSING baseball, you will not be long for this place. Everything has to be a huge argument with you, and it really needs to stop. You've been warned enough times already to tone it down. I'm not sure how many more times you will get. Haha, what??

Steve Rosenbloom is a [expletive] moron.