I promise I'm nothing of the sort! Please read the whole thing. I believe Gonzaga is a darling of the AP, and NCAA commitee. BYU took it to their ass. BYU played good, I bet they make the tournament.
Based on what: Please take the time and effort to support your claim instead of being your usual, self-absorbed, delusional ignoramus BYU's BEST WIN prior to Gonzaga was against at home against Stanford, a team that will not qualify for the NCAA Tournament (BTW, you constantly bash the Big East, are you really going to praise the PAC-12?) They Are 13-5 in the 9the best conference in the league, and got SWEPT by Pepperdine and in their only good scheduled game, lost at home against UTAH. I would say with 100% confidence without doing research that Villanova, Butler, Xavier, St. Johns, Georgetown and Providence are better than BYU. Take the time and effort to prove me wrong.
hmmm, how come you never support your claims? BYU beta Gonzaga, that's more impressive than any win SJU, GU, Butler or Providence has. BYU lost in 2 OTs to SD State lost by only 4 to Utah who is as good as 'Nova lost a close one to Gonzaga and beat Gonzaga Providence has one nice win vs. ND but also lost to BC and Brown GU beat no one ion non conf(like BYU) and both beat Stanford by just 2 SJU lost to Gonzaga, didn't beat a single tourney bound team in non conf Butler beat Carolina which is a good win but also lost to Indiana and Tennessee BYU is every bit as good as any non Nova BE team. they were lacking the one signature win to be a tourney team and they got it over the weekend.
See I love this argument. The Big East teams' wins over other Big East teams are meaningless. However, BYU's win over Gonzaga is a major accomplishment. Also, on what planet is Utah as good as Villanova? Utah's Two best victories are Wichita State and BYU. Villanova has ten victories over RPI Top 50 teams.
I know, beating mediocre non conf teams is huge, it shows how great the BE teams are so when other BE teams beat them they are huge wins. Utah is pretty damn good. stop looking at RPI. I think 'Nova is really good b/c I have seen them play not who they beat in the overrated RPI. Good teams take care of business. VCU was 'Nova's best win and VCU and I am not sold on VCU. Utah beat Wich State which is better than any 'Nova win all season. they lost by only 3 at Allen Fieldhouse and while I think KU is overrated they are really tough at home and better than any non 'Nova BE team.
Can you translate that into English? I Agree, Utah is pretty darn good. Villanova is Great. Because it destroys your argument? That would explain your orgasmic love of Gonzaga. Like UNC has this season? All six of the Big East teams I listed above are better than VCU You amaze me: You reward BYU for playing in the WCC, but punish Villanova for playing in the Big East.
Looking at their close loss to Utah and SDSU you may've been able to make that point, but when you lose to the San Diego Toredors who have a losing record in the (we can all agree) weak WCC and were swept by the Pepperdine Waves whose 2 wins over BYU are the only reason they don't have a losing record in the WCC as well (8-10 vs. 10-8) you may want to rethink BYU as a "very good" team. The fact remains: while Gonzaga's a good team, they do enjoy coasting with an undeservedly larger 'margin'than most others courtesy of a press that for whatever reason carries their water as they rack up one underwheming win after another in a pretty weak conference. 20 wins with a WCC-heavy schedule is not the same as 20 wins in e.g. the Big 10 or any of the other big boy conferences. So what could Gonzaga do to counter the accusation that they're content to play a softer non-conference schedule than ranked schools in other conferences? Obviously play more teams from the major conferences otherwise their body of work will be viewed as fairly incomplete and their win-loss record (and ranking) as deceptive and which has been incubated for the most part by their association with the WCC. Compare Gonzaga for example with the University of North Carolina. Forgetting all of UNC's scandal-related issues for now, it should be noted in defense of UNC that prior to conference play, they take on teams from other major conferences instead of padding their "W's" on the back of 'wins' over the likes of "Cupcake St." Take this year for example: 3 of UNC's first 10 games were against teams from the Big East (Butler), the Big 10 (Iowa) and the SEC (Kentucky). Now while they lost each and every one of those games to their Big East, Big 10 and SEC opponents, at least they stepped up to the plate even if they struck out so to speak. Gonzaga should 'step out' more often. Watch…they'll probably only drop to around #7-9.
it means you overrate BE teams b/c they beat some mediocre non conf teams so that when another BE team beats those BE teams it makes those wins look bigger than they actually are. slow down there Hackett, the only team close to great is Kentucky. B/c RPI is a joke. I don't have a love of Gonzaga unlike you who has an irrational hatred of them. I think Gonzaga, like 'Nova, is a quality program. Not quite elite but a good program. You act like Gonzaga is Marist. UNC is not a very good team this season. You are severely overrating the BE. How am I punishing 'Nova? I think they are a worthy 1 seed at this point. they have taken care of business but I am not impressed w/ a)their non conf sched and b) the BE but I still think 'Nova is really good.
Question for you: do you judge non-conference schedule based on where the opponent was at the time or where they are now? Does 'Nova get credit for beating a ranked Michigan team? Is UNC's loss against Butler not a bad loss since they weren't ranked at the time but are now? I think it's a tough thing to put in context when things were so different 3 months ago. Before the season I would've put Michigan/VCU/Syracuse non-conference games plus the Big 5 games which are tougher in real life then on paper up against 90% of other team's non-conference schedules.
No, I do not give them credit for beating Michigan as Michigan stinks. UNC's loss to Butler wasn't bad at the time and looks better since Butler will be a tourney team. Their non conf sched on paper heading into the season was good but Mich and Syracuse were not anywhere near as good as recent years. it works out that way sometimes, I give them credit for setting up the sched but it wasn't as tough as it should have been.
OK, so I'll just use UNC as an example since it's obviously who you know best. By that token, how many OOC wins did they have this year? A decent win against Ohio St, wins over a mediocre UCLA & Florida?
OSU was a good win in Chicago. UCLA was playing better around that time but no they'd don't have a ton of great non conf wins but they played a tough sched when you factor in the teams they lost to. The Heels don't really have a bad loss as far as the team they lost to- the way Pitt beat them was bad but it wasn't a bad loss at Pitt. Carolina isn't in the running for a top seed either, right now they are likely a 5 or 6.
OK so what about Duke? Wisconsin is obviously Wisconsin, but they have nothing else other than a win over an unranked Michigan St. And speaking of Wisconsin, all they have is that Duke game. Their next best is against Georgetown, which we know you don't think highly of.
I don't think duke's non conf sched was all that tough outside of Wisconsin but that whipping at Wisconsin may have been the most impressive win all season for any team. Wisconsin also beat Oklahoma
I think you have to put it into context. That Ohio State game represented an impressive win considering all the other things hanging over UNC's head. I mean even the Chicago Tribune which doesn't have a dog in the fight was calling UNC out: NCAA should punish the University of North Carolina for cheating scandal Editorial Board University of North Carolina has acknowledged that a vast scheme of fake classes operated at the school for nearly two decades. Athletes took fake classes at University of North Carolina, report shows More than 3,000 students — about half of them athletes — got credit for classes that required no attendance or significant work and were not supervised by a professor. Hundreds of fraternity brothers enrolled in the courses, but the main beneficiaries were football and basketball players. Fake grades were written for fake courses to keep the players academically eligible to participate in North Carolina Tar Heel sports. According to a report recently released by the university, counselors steered athletes to the African Studies department, where one employee, identified as Deborah Crowder, created the fake classes. The chairman of the department, Julius Nyang'oro, reportedly became aware of the scheme. Both have left the university. The quality of the work done by students was irrelevant. The courses existed solely to boost the grade point averages of struggling students. The extent of the scheme didn't become more broadly known at the university until Crowder retired in 2009 and football players' GPAs started dropping. How did the scheme last so long? The report blames a lack of scrutiny by administrators. When a university official noticed around 2005 that the department was responsible for supervising 300 independent study projects a year, the employee and the department's head scaled back the phony courses. Nobody asked how one professor could supervise 300 independent projects, each of which should have involved original research. So the NCAA which governs college athletics, faces a particular challenge. It has sanctioned universities for various kinds of rule-breaking in athletic recruitment and fraud in academics. It likely has never dealt with an academic fraud that was practiced so broadly and systematically for such a long period of time. Should North Carolina forfeit every victory in every sport for the nearly two-decade run of this fraud? Schools that competed against North Carolina presumably played by the rules — athletes competed when those athletes were students in good standing. The NCAA forced Southern Methodist University to cancel an entire season of football in the 1980s after the school was caught in an extended scheme of illicit payments to players. But the NCAA has not since then imposed the so-called death penalty, even in some truly scandalous cases. The most damaging evidence here is that the North Carolina phony course scheme carried on for so many years and involved so many students, yet didn't come to light until the, um, quarterback of the scheme quit her job. Every graduate who went to school during the phony-class era now faces the embarrassing question: How much of your degree did you really earn? The NCAA should come down hard on North Carolina. Copyright © 2015, Chicago Tribune cComments NCAA must . . . or UNC-CH will never be punished. North Carolina is corrupt. UNC alums control every aspect of the state of North Carolina. Their alums make up 60+ percent of the University of North Carolina System's BOG. The UNC System consists of 17 universities and the system's BOG... JACOBJJACOBS AT 1:23 PM NOVEMBER 08, 2014
