Week #4 - Games of Interest

[rambone 78]

The BE has had some good wins this season so far, but I wouldn't place any of their teams much above any of ours, except Villanova.

Both leagues are kind of meh. The Wildcats, however, are on another level.

[seanmc94]

Yeah. Mirror images. One league has four teams in the top 25 all with multiple wins vs the top 50; while the other has been repeatedly beaten by double digits.
Other than that; they are pretty much the same.

[bigappleram]

Hate to agree with Sean but not sure what you are talking about, while their may be separation b/w Nova and everyone else...the BE has had a head n shoulders better OOC than the A10. The A10s best OOC win is still ours, Nebraska. The BE has 8-10 wins of similar or better stature. Creighton is prob their 7th or 8th best team and just went into Lincoln and won. The OOC has been abysmal for our conference thus far, its not even close. The League needs its top 3-4 teams to dominate in conference to have a shot at securing 3-4 bids.

[Blue Man]

Yeah Sean is dead on here. A10 has looked pedestrian at best. If you were to ask all the pollsters again on their thoughts on the A10 standings, I don't think anyone would say VCU is the consensus #1. It's pretty clear when you get them in a half court they're a pretty average and young team. You could make a pretty even case for Dayton, GW, URI, or VCU. Right now the A10 does not have an elite team, honestly not even a very good team. It's an even league full of good to above average teams that have a lot of figuring out to do in the last month of OOC play.

I will admit, PC (loss to BC not withstanding) is miles better than I'd thought them to have been at this point. Butler, Creighton, Seton Hall are far beyond anything most people thought this year.

I don't think the big east has a team under .500 - and about half our league is going for .500 or under OOC's, chuck full of some really bad losses.

Big East is looking like the A10 last year, and the A10 is looking like last year's big east.

[rambone 78]

I'll give you the fact that the BE has been better overall. However, I don't think the disparity is as great as it seems right now.

Now, if the top half of the A10 doesn't start to show improvement as time goes on, that's another story.

The BE will get more bids this year, the A10 less. That much is obvious.

[twisted3829]

The problem is the a10 doesn't have many big wins, I think us over nebraska is the biggest win for the a10

[rodfromcranston]

VCU getting hammered at home by VA, makes the
whole A-10 look bad.
This is our flagship program, and they look very vulnerable thus far.
ZooMass is nothing special. Lots of talent but so far, a Frankenstein team.
St. Joe's, and St. Louis are rebuilding.
I thought Duquesne was up and coming, but so far, same old same old.
Bona is solid. Davidson looks good. Fordham is worse than ever.
Lasalle is nothing special. GM stinks.
Maybe GW will be the class of the league?
There is a power vacuum that is ready for us to jump into.
Going into A-10 play at 9-2 or 8-3, means a 20 plus win season
is possible.
We need to play consistently on defense, and get some shots to drop,
and we should be fine.

[rambone 78]

Yeah Rod, a lot of young teams, and we're one of them.

GW and Dayton might be the best we've got right now. I'd be shocked if VCU doesn't recover enough to get an NCAA bid, they should go at least 12-6 in conference, which will do the trick.

Then it's us, and maybe St. Bona, Davidson, and possibly UMass.

We've got to take care of business in December, and win those 3 games at home. A win over PC would be great, we've got a chance for sure.

Then a good start in conference. Win the games we're supposed to. I won't be surprised [not happy though] if we lose a couple in conference that we should win, as long as we can pull a couple of upsets against the top 3.

Some of the currently downtrodden bunch in this league will improve as the season goes on. As long as we continue to improve also, we should be OK.

[rjsuperfly66]

Some of the currently downtrodden bunch in this league will improve as the season goes on. As long as we continue to improve also, we should be OK.

The issue with that is that you fall into Big East 2014 territory. If you get into conference play without many tourney teams, it makes it hard to transform teams into that. Your overall conference RPI is relatively set by the time January comes around, since your head to head matchups are all conference based.

Right now RPI Forecast has just 1 A10 team in NCAA range and that is VCU with an expected RPI of 34. The next 5 teams in order (and this doesn't include yesterday's results) are UMASS, Davidson, Dayton, URI, and GW, ranging between a projection of 55-68. If 1 team rises, it's at the expense of the other's.

[RF1]

Give them their due. The A-10 was better than the New Catholic Big East (NCBE) last season. It is the reverse this year. The NCBE has a much better overall OOC record to date and far more signature wins. It is setting itself up nicely for conference play where a rising tide will lift the RPI of all teams positioning them well for NCAA at large consideration.

The A-10 is going to have a hard time getting many at large bids with the ways things have gone thus far. A-10 at large candidates will have to have done very well in conference play (12+ wins).

[rambone 78]

66, good points about the conference RPI. I read that on the A10 board.

Then it's up to the top teams to do very well in conference, in order to create enough separation between them and the rest of the league. I still see 3 bids. A couple of our teams will beat their forecast.

Clearly, a conference record like 11-7, which I forecast for us in the prediction contest, won't be good enough.

Being what we are, which is young and still inconsistent, means that we'll likely stumble enough times to keep us out of the conversation for an NCAA bid. Hopefully not.



Another thing, yeah the BE and A10 have flipped from last season.

[rjsuperfly66]

Updated through yesterday, RPI Forecast projects URI 20-8, 13-5 conference. Expected RPI is 67 (rounded up from 66.7).

Expected RPI's:

34 - VCU
61 - Davidson
64 - Dayton
64 - George Washington
67 - URI
72 - UMASS

Things can change. Avoid the bad losses (especially the teams at the bottom) and need to pick up some of the tough games.

VCU still plays Northern Iowa, Belmont, and Cincy. They are projected to win the first two, so a sweep would be huge.

Davidson plays at Virginia. Tough task but would be a huge win.

Dayton plays at Arkansas, who just lost yesterday at home to Clemson.

GW's remainder of non-conference is weak. Play DePaul and Penn St., can't afford the slipups to the other good conferences.

UMASS plays PC, BYU, Iona. 2 of 3 would be nice.

And URI has their crack at PC.

[rambone 78]

I would take 13-5 in a heartbeat.

You would think that would be enough to get a bid.

8-3 OOC too.

Well, the bottom 6 of the league are RPI killers, as I said in another thread.

That leaves no margin for error, at all.

With a young team that's likely going to throw a couple more GT type stinkbombs, that's NIT land.

[rambone 78]

VCU's RPI makes sense. They have by far the A10's toughest OOC schedule.

The conference tourney is where we have to do damage. Just like PC did last year.

[RF1]

I would take 13-5 in a heartbeat.

You would think that would be enough to get a bid.

8-3 OOC too.

Well, the bottom 6 of the league are RPI killers, as I said in another thread.

That leaves no margin for error, at all.

With a young team that's likely going to throw a couple more GT type stinkbombs, that's NIT land.

Think again about 13-5 in A-10 play. The RPI Forecast projects URI 20-8, 13-5 conference, with an expected RPI of 67. This would likely still not be enough for an NCAA bid. You would probably need an RPI of 45 or less to feel somewhat secure and that is sometimes even not enough (URI five years ago). The A-10 schedule is just not going to give teams the RPI boost that they got a year ago.

[Seawrightspostgame]

8-3 OOC? I will take it but I don't think asking for 9-2 is too much.

You have to beat PC sometime, never a better time than now to do anything.

BE has performed where the A10 has not. Luckily the league is young and could show up next year nationally.

Now is the time for URI to seize the top of the league.

To be fair, we do have VCU at home, who we have beat at home. I remember I watched it.... well not too sure, when they had Eric Maynor they came to us and we won right? I don't think they have an Eric Maynor on the roster.

[rodfromcranston]

Well, let's not forget the A-10 Tournament.
We could add a couple of wins or win the thing
outright.
Outside of GW, and VCU, does Dayton or anyone else scare you?
Depending on who gets upset, the tournament
could be out back door to the NCAA.

[rambone 78]

When I said I would take it, 13-5 is an awesome record, and would be for this team right now.

Maybe that includes a couple stinkers and a couple upsets of the top teams.

Maybe beating a couple of top teams would help our RPI more than the losses to bottom teams? I guess that depends on which bottom teams and whether they are road games or not.

I just can't see us better than that at this point right now. I know 13-5 probably doesn't make the NCAA tournament, but are we good enough to do that?

If we end up OOC at 9-2, having beaten the 3 we should have plus upsetting PC, THEN I'll start dreaming of a possible NCAA berth.

The So.Miss game was a good start. Can we play at a consistently high level yet? Even Dan has his doubts about that. I certainly do.

Maybe like Rod just said, maybe we'll be good enough by A10 tourney time to win it, and get the auto bid. That's what it's going to take imo.

[Obadiah]

13-5 in A-10 would be very nice. It would also be the best conference record URI has ever achieved in the last 14 years! Remember that in the Baron era we had a winning A-10 record in only five of his eleven seasons, with the best being the 11-5 record in 2008-09.

[rambone 78]

13-5 means beating every team that we are currently ranked ahead of, including road games.

That's asking a LOT of this team right now. I'd love to see it.

Nothing ever goes exactly to form, though.

[Blue Man]

Honestly where we stand at this point in time, and how bad the a10 looks - 20 wins shouldn't just be attainable...it should happen. We should finish no worse than 21 wins before the tournament based on how soft the conference is shaping up to be, combined with the rest of our OOC.

Really - We should go 14-4 in the A10. Win 1 of 2 either VCU or GW at home. Probably drop to UMass and Dayton on the road. One more unexpected loss that we shouldn't have. I'm not saying that I believe we're an elite team, just that based on what we've seen from the conference, the conference is plain bad, and I believe us to be better than that.

I get that we're young and have a lot to figure out...but so is the rest of the A10, and honestly our talent is on the higher end of the spectrum right now.

[Billyboy78]

We do have young talent. So do many other teams in the league. Our young talent will develop. I assume the young talent on other teams will develop too.

[Blue Man]

We do have young talent. So do many other teams in the league. Our young talent will develop. I assume the young talent on other teams will develop too.

agreed 100%, i just think our young talent is better than theirs.