Change the name of the school and the name of the coach and this could be a listing of threads in pretty much any teams' fan discussion board after a loss.
Yes, we'll be #1. Yes, we deserve to be, based on the rankings and results thus far. No, it doesn't matter one iota—as we all know, it only matters who's #1 at the end of the season. And 3 games is too small a sample size to pick a 'best team'—which is why we're looking at an AP poll with a 1-loss previously #1 MSU and UK... They should wait a couple months before ranking teams, like they do now with the football playoff rankings...
Last edited by Papa John; 11-13-2019 at 10:06 AM.
After reading the 'fast paste' thread, I can't tell if the guy is a genius troll, or if I should feel sorry for him.
Either way, it's no reason to come unglued.
As far as substantive takeaways from that game: Evansville played a smaller lineup, and routinely attacked Kentucky forward Nate Sestina off the dribble. Sestina is a grad transfer from Bucknell, and while he is a versatile offensive player, he doesn't appear to have the quickness to stay in front of attacking wings. He'd do better as a center (6'9" 234 lbs), but Kentucky was sticking with Nick Richards at center (and will soon get EJ Montgommery back from injury).
The other stuff is a bit flukey--everyone has bad games from time to time, though it is certainly hilarious to see it happen here--but Sestina's inability to stay in front of drivers is a structural problem Kentucky will have to address.
Heck, why couldn't Duke be the favorite? Our defense would probably be too much to handle for many of these early-season offenses. As it was against Kansas.
But obviously what matters is where we stack up after several months of development and teams gaining cohesiveness. Hopefully we won't need to force 20+ turnovers to beat good teams in March.
VCU upset #23 LSU last night, in a homecoming for Will Wade. Apparently there is no love lost between VCU and their former coach. Hilariously, VCU students trolled Wade dressed as FBI agents and even jokingly attempted to hand cash to players. Lots of articles and pictures floating around about it, here's one:
https://247sports.com/Article/vcu-ba...on--138541517/
Just was giftwrapped a win courtesy of the zebras @ Seton Hall. Their manhandling of people and getting away with it chaps my hide. The Seton Hall coach showed way too much restraint. His team got hosed.
Windy City Devil
Although I agree MSU is allowed to be too physical, I didn’t see a blatant foul on either of those last two plays- but I was surprised the refs let the plays go. I also thought the Spartans were the better team and Seton Hall stayed in it due to hero ball by Powell, which eventually cost them when he forced it into a defense who knew what was coming. It was difficult to watch because I like seeing MSU lose, but I want it to have as few losses as possible when Duke plays there.
The AP ranks college football starting as early as it does with hoops...except it arguably actually means something because, with fewer games and less opportunity to correct a bad result early in the season, football teams can cost themselves from the jump. The CFP committee can say they don't pay attention to rankings when making their own later in the season, but I don't buy it. It's human nature.
Rankings in college hoops are largely just an exercise to catalyze interest throughout the season, and I'm all for it. What's the value of sports fandom if you can't argue about meaningless fluff for an entire season (and offseason)?! It's why I don't understand some posters around here who go out of their way to denigrate Duke's top-5 ranking early each season or why anyone would care. It's just fun to debate with friends (and annoying coworkers) about why your team is ranked too low, your rivals are ranked too high, and who is a fraud in the top-25 in November, December, and January.
That tOSU beadown of Nova on Wednesday night was something to behold. I don't take much from it on either side beyond that a team playing a true home game can catch fuego early and the opponent basically has no shot. Nova looked bad on both ends, but Ohio St was torching the nets and built an insurmountable lead from the tip. It was impressive. Reminded me a bit of what the natty champs Nova team did to KU (or am I think of OU?) in their NCAAT game a couple of years ago.
I suspect neither tOSU is as good as it looked, nor is Nova as ineffectual as it looked. I'm just so glad college hoops is back and we get some random top-25 matchups to keep our attention when our guys aren't playing. Curious is that Nova-tOSU matchup is a home-and-home. Not sure why Jay Wright would play @tOSU otherwise, rather than a neutral.
There's some Big East-Big Ten/Eleven/Whatever Challenge going on this week that has given us some pretty interesting games, and the OSU-Villanova game was one of those - I'd guess one-off match-ups without return games the next year between the exact same teams.
This is why there was that quite good Mich. St.-Seton Hall game last night, two teams who can actually make 3s (we better be at our best when we go to East Lansing if they shoot that well again), but also a not very good Georgetown team handled easily even at home by Penn State, the perpetual 'sleeping giant' of college b-ball, and Depaul surprisingly slamming Iowa. And interesting to see Wojo's Marquette come from way behind to catch and beat Purdue, a shell of last year's team that couldn't hit anything in the 2nd half.
Oh, Chris Collins' Northwestern also beat an evidently quite bad Providence in this challenge too, and Northwestern really needed that after losing their opener to mighty Merrimac. Yikes.
Ah, but certainly you all know the Merrimac's name had been changed to CSS Virginia (no doubt pronounced Vuh- JIN- yah with a nice drawl), so see what you can do with THAT... (and let's see if Tony Bennett's kids clang more off the rim this year than last)