Top 25 talk

[Hugenerd]

Still not a single vote for La Roche. They only have a single loss, and beat the same CMU team that Brandeis and NYU lost to (La Roche won by 15 at CMU earlier in the season).

[sac]

Still not a single vote for La Roche. They only have a single loss, and beat the same CMU team that Brandeis and NYU lost to (La Roche won by 15 at CMU earlier in the season).

Their schedule is woefully poor, massey has them #351 out of 411.

Considering CMU was 3-8 overall going into the Brandeis/NYU weekend, thats a pretty tattered banner to be waving as your best win.

[deiscanton]

La Roche's "best win" is over Geneva, a provisional DIII team competing in the President's Conference-- in other words, Geneva is not eligible for their conference title or an NCAA bid this year.

La Roche's "worst loss"-- only loss-- is to Thiel, who is currently leading in the President's Conference title race.

However, the AMCC is a very weak conference, so it is not surprising that La Roche is running the table in that league.  Still, the story of how La Roche's head coach passed away last month is very tragic, and it is a very good story of how La Roche, in their first game under interim head coach Harry Jenkins, got a win six days after their previous head coach passed away.

I wouldn't proclaim Carnegie Mellon as the favorite to win the UAA men's title off of two home victories over Brandeis and NYU. 

[Hugenerd]

I wasn't the one who called CMU a decent team, that was Pat (see last page). All I was saying was that NYU and Brandeis both were swept by CMU and Case this weekend (they are combined 7-14 out of conference so far) and neither of those teams have particularly strong wins. Yet, they are both receiving votes still.

By the way, La Roche is in the same conference as PS-Behrend, who picked up 3 votes this week.

[Pat Coleman]

Decent as in not awful -- I didn't proclaim them the next coming of anything either.

Penn State-Behrend got a handful of votes. They've proven more on the floor than La Roche has -- obviously La Roche has other factors as well, but PSB has played a better schedule.

[Hugenerd]

I agree, but if you can justify the loss for one team, a comparison with another team that beat them handily I think is also relevant.

[Pat Coleman]

And these are all things I talked about on Hoopsville, but the fact remains PSB is more worthy of a spot on my ballot (and clearly voters agreed).

[Hugenerd]

I didn't say PSB wasn't more deserving, just that La Roche may also be deserving. PSB only got 3 votes also, so neither team is getting much love.

[Pat Coleman]

Good. Now that we're done talking about the things neither of us actually said, we can move on.

[magicman]

Good. Now that we're done talking about the things neither of us actually said, we can move on.

+1

[Hugenerd]

Still not a single vote for La Roche. They only have a single loss, and beat the same CMU team that Brandeis and NYU lost to (La Roche won by 15 at CMU earlier in the season).

Their schedule is woefully poor, massey has them #351 out of 411.

Considering CMU was 3-8 overall going into the Brandeis/NYU weekend, thats a pretty tattered banner to be waving as your best win.

Let's not overlook La Roche's actual Massey Rating: #23 (in the BCS style rankings).  Thats much higher than PSU-Behrend (86), Brandeis (84), NYU (145), Emory (73) and Ithaca (64), to name a few, and they are ranked higher in the Massey than at least 15 teams ranked or receiving votes. However, they have not even received 1 vote in the poll. Every other team in the Massey top 25 is receiving votes in the D3hoops.com poll. Thats all I am saying.  Where are the Mid-Atlantic voters?

[John Gleich]

La Roche's "best win" is over Geneva, a provisional DIII team competing in the President's Conference-- in other words, Geneva is not eligible for their conference title or an NCAA bid this year.

La Roche's "worst loss"-- only loss-- is to Thiel, who is currently leading in the President's Conference title race.

However, the AMCC is a very weak conference, so it is not surprising that La Roche is running the table in that league.  Still, the story of how La Roche's head coach passed away last month is very tragic, and it is a very good story of how La Roche, in their first game under interim head coach Harry Jenkins, got a win six days after their previous head coach passed away.

I wouldn't proclaim Carnegie Mellon as the favorite to win the UAA men's title off of two home victories over Brandeis and NYU. 

I think it's definitely a story to watch... but due to the strength of schedule, I don't think that they necessarily should be ranked at this point.

If they win their next 4 or 5 in a row (and other start to fall), then perhaps...

All they can do is beat the teams they play, but it doesn't automatically mean that they are (or should be) counted as one of the top 25 teams in the land.

You have to think about this... how would other teams have fared with this schedule?  How would, say, a middle of the road WIAC or CCIW team?  Or a top team, for that matter?

[deiscanton]

Still not a single vote for La Roche. They only have a single loss, and beat the same CMU team that Brandeis and NYU lost to (La Roche won by 15 at CMU earlier in the season).

Their schedule is woefully poor, massey has them #351 out of 411.

Considering CMU was 3-8 overall going into the Brandeis/NYU weekend, thats a pretty tattered banner to be waving as your best win.

Let's not overlook La Roche's actual Massey Rating: #23 (in the BCS style rankings).  Thats much higher than PSU-Behrend (86), Brandeis (84), NYU (145), Emory (73) and Ithaca (64), to name a few, and they are ranked higher in the Massey than at least 15 teams ranked or receiving votes. However, they have not even received 1 vote in the poll. Every other team in the Massey top 25 is receiving votes in the D3hoops.com poll. Thats all I am saying.  Where are the Mid-Atlantic voters?

Speaking of Massey Ratings, I actually did ask Dave McHugh this question on the Jan. 16 Hoopsville show a few days ago on how these ratings should be taken into account when doing Top 25 rankings.   You can listen to his answer-- he answers this question within the first 15 minutes of the show-- it is worth a listen.  According to him, in short, the ratings are taken somewhat into account-- but they are to be given a low priority in the evaluating process because there are many other factors to be considered when evaluating a team that the Massey Ratings system does not provide us.  He then goes into detail about these other factors.

[Hugenerd]

La Roche's "best win" is over Geneva, a provisional DIII team competing in the President's Conference-- in other words, Geneva is not eligible for their conference title or an NCAA bid this year.

La Roche's "worst loss"-- only loss-- is to Thiel, who is currently leading in the President's Conference title race.

However, the AMCC is a very weak conference, so it is not surprising that La Roche is running the table in that league.  Still, the story of how La Roche's head coach passed away last month is very tragic, and it is a very good story of how La Roche, in their first game under interim head coach Harry Jenkins, got a win six days after their previous head coach passed away.

I wouldn't proclaim Carnegie Mellon as the favorite to win the UAA men's title off of two home victories over Brandeis and NYU. 

I think it's definitely a story to watch... but due to the strength of schedule, I don't think that they necessarily should be ranked at this point.

If they win their next 4 or 5 in a row (and other start to fall), then perhaps...

All they can do is beat the teams they play, but it doesn't automatically mean that they are (or should be) counted as one of the top 25 teams in the land.

You have to think about this... how would other teams have fared with this schedule?  How would, say, a middle of the road WIAC or CCIW team?  Or a top team, for that matter?

You can play that game all you want, but how can you know for sure?

The best factual evidence I can think of is common opponent, but when I brought up CMU, everyone dismissed it, despite CMU beating two top 25 teams at home last week (the same site where they lost to La Roche by 15), who also dont have any strong wins (yet are receiving plenty of top 25 attention).  How does Brandeis' 291st ranked schedule impress you so much more than La Roche's 321?

[Pat Coleman]

Still not a single vote for La Roche. They only have a single loss, and beat the same CMU team that Brandeis and NYU lost to (La Roche won by 15 at CMU earlier in the season).

Their schedule is woefully poor, massey has them #351 out of 411.

Considering CMU was 3-8 overall going into the Brandeis/NYU weekend, thats a pretty tattered banner to be waving as your best win.

Let's not overlook La Roche's actual Massey Rating: #23 (in the BCS style rankings). 

69th in the non-dumbed down version of the rankings. There's a reason Massey has non-BCS rankings -- those are the ones he started with.