lillurk

Nebraska has been tough at home, and frisky all year buuut winning in the RAC???

Played 2 minutes against IU, missed 2 FT, fouled one time. That’s all, folks. Best of luck to him.

PSU may miss the tourney but Shrewsberry has done a great job there. Think he really maximizes what he’s got this year, though how on earth were they unable to land an interesting big in the portal? Truly think Notre Dame should look long and hard there.

Someone better versed in NCAA compliance can correct me, but a medical RS is applied for when you plan to use the extra year. So e.g. whether he stays or transfers, after two more years — when he exhausts his standard eligibility — Logan could petition for an extra year on the basis of missing most of one year earlier in his career.

As of today, none of the bracket matrix participants worse than the 5 line. A few have them a 3

I may have it wrong, now that you mention it; I recall him talking about how it’s noticeable because teams make some jumps you wouldn’t expect based on not playing, for example

Yes, I believe Pomeroy said similarly on one of his appearances on the Solving Basketball pod. The reason is pretty straightforward: including the preseason rankings improves their predictive accuracy vs. removing them entirely

As with the Rutgers game last week, I like the way the timing shapes up for the Hoosiers. One extra rest day, mitigated by a travel disadvantage. Both teams coming off emotional wins. And IU’s last two against NW have been Ls. This team’s leaders will want some measure of revenge. Should keep them motivated , and their reward should be a rabid home crowd on Saturday.

That CBS analyst with IU at, effectively, #6, and Katz with IU at 5 are more or less saying they believe IU is the team it was through the UNC game and since PSU. Torvik post-PSU has IU 6th, IU’s first seven game had them 13th over that span. And for one reason or another Torvik has been lower on IU than the other computer metrics all year. Do I buy that you can just wipe those six weeks away? Well they count on the resume. But I think 1) IU’s clearly capable of playing at that level, including on the road and in neutral gyms. 2) There are some hard-to-measure narrative reasons that help explain the poor play period (injuries, TJD sat some of the cupcakes during the omitted stretch, moping about injuries, the defense was shockingly bad for parts of that stretch, maybe the players’ only meeting made a difference…). 3) Notably, the other teams ranked highly in those samples are largely teams that we’d all agree really are top 10 or 15 level good.

I think X will be back by 2/25 :)

We did it

A fun fact: Smith and Loyer only have one more year of eligibility than Trey Galloway, because Trey can take the free COVID year since he played in ‘20-‘21

Agreed, and I imagine he’ll be good on tv. I think he’d take an nba job but I doubt they’re calling.

I think this probably is the end of the line for Cal at UK one way or another. I don’t know if he’s OSU’s style and I wonder if he doesn’t just retire or do TV. I would not be surprised at all if he doesn’t take another college job.

My beloved ‘cats are not going away, down 7 at half

Doing a little AP poll voter logic experiment…IU is going to end up as high as 12th or 13th tomorrow. Might jump TCU, Kansas St., Iowa St., Xavier, and even Marquette. I’d probably bet they end up at 14th if I had to pick one particular spot.

I do think the likely returning nucleus is interesting and gives you a fair “floor” with space to add some high impact transfers or a Scoop/Malik-style spring shakeout commit

Terrific angle of the work Trey, Trayce, and Miller did. Nothin’ doin.’

GOOD MORNING FELLOW LIFELONG* FANS OF THE NORTHWESTERN WILDCATS! CHICAGO’S BIG TEN TEAM AM I RIGHT?? DAYDREAMING ABOUT MY EARLIEST MEMORIES OF MY BELOVED CATS: EVAN ESCHMEYER AND SEVERAL FUTURE COMMODITIES TRADERS LOSING NON-COMPETITIVELY AGAINST THE MINNESOTA GOLDEN GOPHERS *valid today only, 2/12/23

Playing a C+/B- game and beating a good team on the road means a couple things, at least: 1. It means you’re good. 2. In a close one, it means you’re lucky. Nothing wrong with that. Doing it without two of your four best players is impressive.

Footwork Artist

Saw the end live but had to rewatch the other ~95% later. Folks have mentioned lots but a few things to note: 1. 2H defense was really terrific as a whole; I thought Galloway, Kopp, and Geronimo stood out, and of course TJD held his own 2. based on the play-by-play, texts/tweets/posts here, I knew Bates would be bad on DVR. It was worse: he was bad AND unlucky. His fifth miss (of five) was not a bad look and rattled out. I wouldn’t give up on him; this year he needs to stay outside the arc but if he gets stronger and works on decision-making — which is already improved from year one — he could put it together. 3. @Stuhoo is right, Bufkin traveled on the final possession. It almost looked like IU was expecting exactly what UM ran: middle PNR with a throwback plan B. Trayce dropped, Galloway got over so they didn’t force the switch and mismatch (THAT’S why Dickinson didn’t get a touch), everyone stayed home so Baker and Howard weren’t free, and Kopp walked up w/o fouling.

“What if Crean hired a Yaklich-style assist and handed him the defense” remains an interesting counter-factual thought experiment

I’ve been to Crisler many times, for IU/UM games and other conference games (Illinois and N’western come to mind specifically). This thread will be instructive if you’re unfamiliar: it’s not loud or intimidating https://mgoblog.com/mgoboard/we-need-crisler-be-hostile-environment-saturday It’s almost a totally different experience from Breslin or SSAH in every regard: comfy seats, pleasant, quiet atmosphere, great sightlines from every angle.

For what it’s worth Torvik’s IU rooting guide said XU @ Butler had as a conflicted outcome, probably for the reasons cited above: tradeoff between keeping the XU resume strong vs. chance a loss helps move IU above them on the S-curve https://barttorvik.com/bubble-guide.php?team=Indiana