A dominating bowl win by the EMU Eagles over the San Jose State Spartans ends a 9 win football season.
This sentence would have only been possible in a video game for about 20 years. Great job Eagles and great job Chris Creighton. Good to see Neatherly sent off after a great journeyman's career, but as we all know sometimes football coaches do not stay retired. I think some school will lure the lifer out of retirement next year.
Basketball has one more game before starting conference play at home. I had the flu and missed the Detroit game which of course turned out to be a great one. The season still comes down to 3 games in Cleveland in March. With all the talk of expanding tournament$ is it time the NCAA goes to 96 from 68?

Yes, expanding the tourney to 96.

I'm numerically inclined so I quickly saw that 32 x 3 = 96 and that if teams seeded 33 - 96 played each other that mini-field of 64 would be cut in half to be 32. 32 + 32 = our 64 teams which the learned at the NCAA discovered many years ago has great properties for dividing in half until one gets 2 and then 2 divided in half becomes a NC. We all learned this many years ago: 64, 32, 16, 8, 4, 2 and then NC.

As far as fans, it eliminates a game of say team ranked say 150 - 200 versus a team ranked #2. Now that team ranked #200 may play a top 40 team. The upsets might be a MAC champion vs. a B1G team which was seeded say 50 instead of a top 10 or top 20 team.

I looked at Ticketmaster and BG might have a decent crowd on their sideline IF all of the tickets not shown as available for sale or resale are in fact spoken for.

The NMSU side is a different matter. Who would give up mid 50s in New Mexico for 20s in Detroit?

Was there ANY option other than warm weather team?

New Mexico State wanted a bowl game bad. Scheduled Valparaiso to ensue they got one.

(12-26-2022 09:47 AM)fanfrompowellspub Wrote:  New Mexico State wanted a bowl game bad. Scheduled Valparaiso to ensue they got one.

They actually didn't need to play that game. They were 5-6 and applied for a wavier from the NCAA to go to a bowl because they only played 11 games, the wavier was approved before the Valparaiso game. If you noticed San Jose State also only played 11 games (7-4), that was because the week they had a player pass away they were supposed to play New Mexico State and the game was never made up. New Mexico State had also already beaten a FCS team (which you can only count one towards bowl eligibility) so the Valparaiso game really didn't matter either way.

I'm not sure why they played it other than maybe for the gate of another home game. I don't understand why them and San Jose State didn't just played the weekend of the conference title games (like Buffalo and Akron did). SJSU would have been favored I think, so maybe NMSU was trying to avoid a 5-7 record?

(12-26-2022 09:47 AM)fanfrompowellspub Wrote:  New Mexico State wanted a bowl game bad. Scheduled Valparaiso to ensue they got one.

NMSU leads but to me they only beat one team, Liberty.

The rest were FCS or FBS dogs.

BTW, the date/time stamping is off by 2 hours. It is 2:50 p.m. Eastern.

Transitioning to round ball...

If I had posted November 1 that one of our teams would be 3 - 9 and the other 8 - 3, would anyone had picked the right record for the right team?

Lest I forget, some thought Castro would be gone by now and MBB would be hoping to contend for a MAC championship and a NCAA bd.

(12-29-2022 05:39 AM)emu steve Wrote:  Transitioning to round ball...

If I had posted November 1 that one of our teams would be 3 - 9 and the other 8 - 3, would anyone had picked the right record for the right team?

Lest I forget, some thought Castro would be gone by now and MBB would be hoping to contend for a MAC championship and a NCAA bd.

Steve, I whined for years about Murphy's weak OOC schedule. Coach Heath, while not playing many P6 teams, assembled a pretty tough schedule this season especially for a young team. Twelve games and ONLY four of them were played in Ypsilanti, where we are 2-2. I also think at season's end, we will realize that a lot of the teams we played like Bradley and FAU were very, very good. I honestly think this was EMU's toughest pre-conference schedule in many years. Yes, I realize Murph played Duke, Rutgers, TCU and Kansas in 2018-19, but he also played Rochester, Drexel, Goshen, Boston, Central State and Sienna Hts at home that same year.

I remember Kentucky's Calipari admitting in 2020-21 that his pre-season schedule was too difficult when he started 1-6. He claimed his guys did not learn "how to win" and that season was clearly the worst of his career.

This conference season will be a fabulous test on how to "schedule for success".

(12-29-2022 06:55 PM)Jerry Weaver Wrote:  

(12-29-2022 05:39 AM)emu steve Wrote:  Transitioning to round ball...

If I had posted November 1 that one of our teams would be 3 - 9 and the other 8 - 3, would anyone had picked the right record for the right team?

Lest I forget, some thought Castro would be gone by now and MBB would be hoping to contend for a MAC championship and a NCAA bd.

Steve, I whined for years about Murphy's weak OOC schedule. Coach Heath, while not playing many P6 teams, assembled a pretty tough schedule this season especially for a young team. Twelve games and ONLY four of them were played in Ypsilanti, where we are 2-2. I also think at season's end, we will realize that a lot of the teams we played like Bradley and FAU were very, very good. I honestly think this was EMU's toughest pre-conference schedule in many years. Yes, I realize Murph played Duke, Rutgers, TCU and Kansas in 2018-19, but he also played Rochester, Drexel, Goshen, Boston, Central State and Sienna Hts at home that same year.

I remember Kentucky's Calipari admitting in 2020-21 that his pre-season schedule was too difficult when he started 1-6. He claimed his guys did not learn "how to win" and that season was clearly the worst of his career.

This conference season will be a fabulous test on how to "schedule for success".

Good point only playing 4 games at home.