MartintheMopMan

Good move. My rule is always, if the ticket price is 150% or less than the amount I'm going to spend on beer to watch the game, then go. Heck, if you can get 6 dollar tickets to all three BTN+ games it will be cheaper for you to go than for me to watch from home!   So, usually anything under 20 bucks. Which, I guess is 200% unless I'm at a bar.   Not that it matters, since the plane ticket really kills the deal.

Regular season.   Even if we got a Pick 'Em up in time, it doesn't seem fair to have one up for like what, 8 hours? Just rewarding the people who can sign on at work or don't work.   Correct me if I'm wrong Dalton or DJ

All right, given our performance on Saturday, I think I'm ready to get my prediction on.   Iowa has an elite defense. If we can move the ball against them, we can do it against anyone. They have an OK offense. They're no Western Kentucky.   If they fall victim to the Curse of Iowish placed on Memorial Stadium, then we can do this.   Corn-growing fools who just picked the same first letter as all the states around them - 35 Soybean-growing fellas who picked the letter first. Or not last at least. - 38

Turns out I'm not smart enough. I thought of that, but as far as I could tell my option is then setting up my phone to record my TV and using periscope to broadcast that. If I could do it another way, I couldn't figure out how.   And, I'm not doing that. I don't need everyone listening to my repeated explanations to my kid that there are no touchdowns in basketball and to try yelling "basket" or "2-points" instead. And when daddy stands up with his arms in the air, he's just anticipating a three pointer which is flying through the air and looks good. Yes honey, I understand it's confusing. No, we're not turning this off and watching Anna and Elsa.

Quick, someone post the vine!   He tried to take a charge from Troy and Troy just dominated him, makes the basket, would have gotten an and-1.   Tough and strong play. Though, maybe a little ill-advised in practice.

Tried to figure out how to stream my BTN+ for some of you guys here. Failed to make any inroads. I'm working on seeing if I can just stream the audio since I don't think there is radio coverage but am not really getting good results there either.   I'll do a search tomorrow and see if I can find any streams and link them. I have doubts, BTN+ games were the only games without streams last year. If I find any it likely will be after the game starts, since I get home from work right about tip-off time.   For the game itself; definitely concerned about JBJ's minute limits. His shot hasn't looked the same and to hear his knee is still bothering him makes me very nervous like I previously expressed in a thread. It's a shame the game won't be fully reflective of our team's abilities with all the limits though.    Whatever. Still crazy excited. April to November is the longest part of the year.

I can't decide here.   On the one hand, I do generally think it's not the school's job to administer the punishment for these things. We have a whole legal system, we don't need schools reacting to every arrest. I think of it like a job, I don't need my boss punishing me too for something that happened outside of work.   On the same hand, I think schools should be able to administer whatever punishment they want regardless because the student is definitely a representative of the university and they should be able to teach them a lesson about how they want to be represented. Again, like employers may not want to be associated with people who commit certain crimes. Totally cool. School should be ready for criticism of it's decision but willing to make the choices they want.   On the other hand, maybe people who say the NCAA should mandate stricter punishments are right. I mean, what can the legal system really do to him? The biggest punishment for a first time DUI is the $10,000 in fines, legal fees, and insurance coverage over the course of a few years. That doesn't harm someone like Barrett who can expect to make easily that in the near future. It's a common criticism for how the legal system punishes the poor worse than the rich. So, what really hurts him? Taking away the sport he loves and the exposure he receives from the sport.   On a third hand, does a suspension or whatever actually hurt him? In a "love of the game" kind of way sure. But, I don't think sitting out the rest of the season would hurt his draft stock. All it hurts is the team around him, and then we hope the team properly blames him instead of blaming the NCAA or school. Except we see all the time with punishments this isn't the case (I mean, look at SMU). And now we've made the NCAA an agent to mandate morality in a way I'm a little uncomfortable with.   Unfortunately, what I think I'm saying, is there isn't really a way to punish a guy like Barrett. A suspension might bother a player who isn't as well known and who doesn't have their future sewn up, but not someone like him. The most effective punishment is one that Ohio State may have started inadvertently. Public shaming and outcry. The worse his reputation and opinion of him at the end of the season, a few teams may think a little longer before drafting him and exposing themselves.   I don't know if I formed a cogent point in any of this, but I'm not going back and rereading it to see. I just like making words appear on the screen. I think the summary of my point is, the legal system can handle legal issues, and if a school wants to face the public outrage of one of it's representatives totally getting off unscathed for a serious incident, then that's the school's business. It's our job as the public to get outraged.

It feels like that every season to me. And honestly, for the big time openings? We weren't competing for the same coaching pool that they are. The people looking for a new coach at USC are not looking at the same coaches we are. We don't have the clout and we don't offer enough money. We already only pay "Football School Coordinator" money much less trying to hire away a head coach at a respected school.

I feel the same way about it. I won't feel super proud for being in a bowl at 5-7 and will be prepared to get made fun of at work. But, I certainly won't shun the benefits of going bowling.   It adds an interesting dynamic to the Coach Wilson question too that this isn't the thread for.

My article up above is about that situation this year. Written before Saturday's games, so we're actually in a better position now for it since some teams we needed to lose lost. There are 6 teams ahead of us in APR who could possibly pull together a 5-7 record, but it's pretty unlikely for 5 of them now. Rutgers is the team to watch for that situation. I mean, it's still possible for multiple 5-7 teams, but you always want to be the first choice.

And Purdue knocked off Nebraska.   I forgot we also needed Army, BC, and Vandy to keep not doing well. But, I think we can rely on that.

A potential superstar who has been underrated and undervalued by all the scouts too. 

Apparently, since Football is basically soccer, we could go bowling with a 5-7 record as long as fewer than 83 schools have records better than 5-7 and Nebraska, Rutgers, and Georgia Tech all have 4-8 records.   So, there's always that.   http://lastwordonsports.com/2015/10/30/indiana-football-go-bowling-5-7-heres/

And there were! They knew Holt was the next MJ

The comments on that article are amazing. Those cops must have been on the Michigan payroll!   Were they in Ohio?

Austin King is the other current choice.

Killer game for O. That's a good way to start the season.

"if they can just beat Purdue and Maryland, they're in" Sorry for not pulling the exact quote I was thinking of. Each author who picked us did so because they believed we could beat Maryland and Purdue. And is saying they may be better than their record indicates not about their skill level?

My fault. I didn't mean to bring a discussion of our opponents skill levels into a thread about an article whose conclusions are based on our opponents skill levels. It would be much better to think Maryland was going to be an easy game and be surprised when it wasn't.   What I meant to say was:   Oh yeah! Go team! We all have faith in you too!

Eh, "only have to beat Maryland on the road" is a much bigger task than they're making it out to be. Maryland is no where near as bad as their record indicates and I'm surprised they didn't talk about that more. Maryland just made the classic mistake of playing good teams during non-conference. Bowling Green is ranked 37th in FEI and 33 in S&P. West Ginny is 33rd in FEI and 9 in S&P. That's darn good. I mean sure they got creamed but still.   They then turned around and started into an absolute gauntlet in the Big Ten. Michigan, OSU, PSU in a row. They play at Iowa this week.   Their breather game is Wisco, then at MSU before we go to face them.   That schedule is coconuts. We would be right where they are if we played it too. It's ranked 11th in SOS.

He'd be better off imitating Gunner Stahl.

I'm pretty sure I agree with that assessment of the star and numbering system and it jives with what I was saying.   Still would need some kind of evidence showing recruiting class rankings were predictive though, since I strongly disagree. They may be correlative (as in, the best teams frequently have the best recruiting classes because they're the best teams and can get high level recruits) but that Georgia Tech had a top-10 recruiting class in 2012 does not tell you they're going to even be a tourney team. It has no predictive value.   In order to have predictive value, they have to be causally linked. "Because Georgia Tech has a top-10 recruiting class, they will be a high-skill basketball team" is a prediction based on recruiting class rankings. When you look at like, Duke, the cause is mixed up. Duke could make a final four run with a 40th ranked recruiting class simply because of their current players and coaching. So, the recruiting class is not predictive of their season.   That correlation may understandably throw you off. It's easy to think that because looking at recruiting class rankings you can see the same top school repeated as having top classes, the rankings must be correct for everyone else, but the causation isn't there. This problem is magnified because we're naturally drawn to the programs we recognize (and they are the ones that confirm our results). That leads to looking over the rankings which did not correlate with successful seasons and being reinforced by the ones that did.   Not that it really matters, because very few people actually make the argument a single class can turn a bad team into a good team. It's the addition of players through multiple classes that creates good teams. That's part of why dynasties exist in college sports. You need a whole string of successes to even get started so the barrier for entry is too much for most teams. Definitely. I doubt anyone would disagree with that. If you can't recruit you can't win. Though, it's again, usually on a macro level. You have to recruit well generally, not recruit one great player and surround them with duds.

Player rankings. We're talking about recruiting class rankings not player rankings. Recruiting class rankings are based heavily on the number of ranked recruits you get and their rankings. A class with 2 5-stars will beat a class with 1 5-star even if the second school only has 1 spot open and they got exactly the player they wanted. They tell us nothing about the team itself.   Player rankings aren't even very good outside of the top 35ish. The lower you get, the less time has been spent evaluating and distinguishing the players. The lines are blurry and the difference between a player ranked 69th and 70th is slight enough not to matter much. At a microlevel, in terms of looking at a player and saying they'll be successful because they were ranked whatever they tend to be a mixed bag. It's not a surprise, there are tons of factors you just can't evaluate in isolation like that.   At a macrolevel, they're very predictive of the player's general chance for success. I read a great article on this about football rankings but can't find it (because I didn't look). Basically, a 5-star player has better odds of being an All-American type player than a 4-star and so own. But that doesn't mean you can look at the number in the charts or the stars and know who is the better player. So, you can take a high 4-star player and a 3-star player and compare them and they might turn out to be very similar in their college careers.    If you have data showing they're predictive in another way, I would be interested in looking at it.

I never said there weren't? Just that the ranking of the recruiting class doesn't tell the whole story.   Do you think our 2015 recruiting class is "mediocre results"?

Our 2015 class addressed our needs really well and I'm generally quite satisfied with it. A big name coach building up a middle-of-the-road program like Miss St should be able to have those kinds of instant results and because their needs were "pretty much everything" his addressing those needs results in a higher ranked class.   Recruiting classes on their own are a meaningless measure of team success. If recruiting results in players that fit the scheme, address needs, and will be able to meaningfully contribute at a level expected of the program, then it's a successful class. If it is full of 5 and 4 star players but they aren't what the team needs, then it will have a great ranking but a bad year. Look at our 2013 class for a good example. 6th ranked but we didn't even make the Tourney and only two of the players are left. If we only had the two players left when we recruited we would have been ranked in the low 30s.