We are at the point of this dance where the Powers that be are going to be as transparent about their money grab as possible.

There are no signs of resistance from anymore, therefore they will take the space that is being yielded by everyone..

It’s open season.

(03-20-2024 03:19 PM)JSchmack Wrote:  

(03-20-2024 02:52 PM)bryanw1995 Wrote:  It's interesting to me how a lot of us (including yours truly) get worked up every year about rankings and seeding choices,

a handful of somewhat-deserving but highly flawed teams for those last few spots,
they overall slide by with less criticism.

But the CFP committee gets a heaping dose of criticism b/c the decisions they make can and sometimes do determine the champion.

I'm curious to see if all the frustration and angst is mitigated when we go to a 12+ team format for the CFP. I suspect that there will be a lot more of "they should have won more games" comments for the first team out in the CFP in the future.

I think a lot of that is nature of the beast: In basketball, EVERYONE in the top 100 is talented enough to be an NCAA team. It's all just consistency, because it's a much larger sample size than football.

Yeah, in football, it's "coulda shoulda woulda" I can point to three plays that would have made Tulane undefeated -- and they still wouldn't get in. It's just a ridiculously smaller sample size in terms of both season length (31+ vs 12) and in-game (75 possessions vs 15).



Another thing I want to point out is that when we see stories like this Izzo one coming from the sports world, we frequently forget THAT THEY'RE ASKED. These are NOT cases of someone grabbing a bullhorn and asking for everyone's attention because they have something to say.

No one asked Tom Izzo to prepare a presentation on the topic. He doesn't know what he's getting at a press conference. He sits down and some guy asks what he thinks about Pitino's suggestion for a coaches committee instead of ADs. So you get an answer like that (and the reports don't even tell you who asked and what the question was).

Every thread on this site, we get to decide if we want to reply. We can take as much time as we want to research and write and edit. He's just on the spot. So you kind of have to take comments like these with a massive grain of salt.

https://www.theodorerooseveltcenter.org/...Arena.aspx

Izzo is The Man in the Arena, quite literally.

(03-20-2024 03:45 PM)Bear Catlett Wrote:  

(03-20-2024 02:39 PM)bryanw1995 Wrote:  

(03-20-2024 12:27 PM)Bear Catlett Wrote:  Overrated.

He has one title that he walked into only because Kenyon Martin broke his leg. We'd have beaten MSU by 25 points.

Yikes, what brought that on?

Izzo is 55-23 in the NCAAT, with one championship and 7 other final 4s, 10 B1G regular season championships and 6 B1G Tournament Championships. His 8 total final 4's is the same total as INDIANA has in their entire history. Izzo has more Final 4s and Conference championships than all but a handful of schools in their entire history. Your school is one of the very few in the country with more of any of those stats, though your 2 titles were more than 60 years ago. Since then, you've made 1 final 4 and won about 30 total NCAAT games, a .5 per year average, which is GREAT by the standards of the vast majority of programs. Izzo wins more like 2 NCAAT games per year, and he's done it for nearly 30 years now.

Is he old? Yes. Is he pushing an agenda that favors Michigan St and other Big programs (like Cincinnati and A&M btw)? Yes. Is he correct? I think not. But I'm not going to trash a 69 year old expert in all things MBB-related because I disagree with his opinion on a much-discussed and little-agreed-upon topic like this one, and I don't think you should, either.

Over...rated.

How many times has he been gifted a bid? How many years has he been overseeded?

Maybe UC could have done some damage in this year's tournament if you just... get... in.

But we'll never know because their 19-14 was better than our 20-14. Allegedly.

1 Final 4 or one really good season? Ok, that might be luck. But 8? Come on. I've spent a lot of words on Michigan St over the past year, much of them insulting, but I can't find anything bad at all to say about Izzo. He has almost as many NCAAT victories all by himself as the #10 team of all time (Louisville has 61, Izzo has 55). He's 55-23 in the Tourney. He's made the Final 4 as a #4 seed, twice as a #5 seed, and once as a #7 seed. Has any coach in history done so much with such low seeds? Maybe, but I doubt it. The others with a bunch of Final 4s always seemed to do it as 1 or 2 seeds. Cincinnati was a 2 seed and lost in the 2nd round in 2000. I understand that Martin was hurt, and I have a ton of respect for Huggins as a basketball coach, but if my best player got hurt and I needed someone to figure out a way for us to win, I think I'd pick Izzo over any other active coach today to get the most out of our team with the talent we had left.

No arguments about this particular season, however. The entire Big 12 was brutal as usual.

Izzo picking up his 56th NCAA Tournament win today, once again as the lower seed.

(03-21-2024 01:29 PM)Hokie4Skins Wrote:  Izzo picking up his 56th NCAA Tournament win today, once again as the lower seed.

Does it really count that much when 9 seeds beat 8 seed? I've always considered those ones to be basically coin flips.

Izzo is obviously a good coach, but to the point of the topic, I don't respect the opinion he made about the non power conferences.

(03-21-2024 01:41 PM)e-parade Wrote:  

(03-21-2024 01:29 PM)Hokie4Skins Wrote:  Izzo picking up his 56th NCAA Tournament win today, once again as the lower seed.

Does it really count that much when 9 seeds beat 8 seed? I've always considered those ones to be basically coin flips.

Izzo is obviously a good coach, but to the point of the topic, I don't respect the opinion he made about the non power conferences.

I don’t AGREE with his opinion about the non power conferences, and he has a clear bias in this matter, but I RESPECT his knowledge and love of the game so much that I can’t just dismiss his comments out of hand.

Tom Izzo is one of the all-time college basketball coaching greats (70.6 percent winning percentage, which is strong).

A big plus: He plays the accordion. And for those on the board, like me, who enjoy hard-driving Celtic music (a genre highlighted, in part, by its frequent use of the accordion) ... full props to T.M Izzo.

If you have no idea how the accordion can be incorporated into intense music (and if you are a fan of The Walking Dead), this is worth checking:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9b5pR6t7IE

(03-21-2024 01:41 PM)e-parade Wrote:  

(03-21-2024 01:29 PM)Hokie4Skins Wrote:  Izzo picking up his 56th NCAA Tournament win today, once again as the lower seed.

Does it really count that much when 9 seeds beat 8 seed? I've always considered those ones to be basically coin flips.

Izzo is obviously a good coach, but to the point of the topic, I don't respect the opinion he made about the non power conferences.

No. Just like they gift bids, they gift seeds. They can pick any matchup and give any seeding they want to give their pets the best chance to advance. And it they won one game, they feel like that should shut everyone up and “justify” their decisions. And all they have to do is game the seeding a bit. It’s not a guaranteed system, but there are a lot of strings they can pull to get the results they want.

(03-21-2024 01:41 PM)e-parade Wrote:  

(03-21-2024 01:29 PM)Hokie4Skins Wrote:  Izzo picking up his 56th NCAA Tournament win today, once again as the lower seed.

Does it really count that much when 9 seeds beat 8 seed? I've always considered those ones to be basically coin flips.

Izzo is obviously a good coach, but to the point of the topic, I don't respect the opinion he made about the non power conferences.

What if it's not his opinion, but rather being the elder statesmen tasked with delivering the bad news?

Kill off the smaller schools and conferences, and you may not like what you end up getting.

Take NIL or the transfer portal. Schools like Central Michigan or Buffalo or Toledo may be good for developing players out of high school that might have otherwise crashed and burned right off the bat or been a glorified bench warmer at a major program. They also give opportunities for a lot of otherwise good players that you might simply not have had enough spots available for, or simply not had enough time to scout due to looking at a dozen other players. You get 1 open spot and 5 different 4 star rated players that are essentially equal in terms of skills and experience, no matter how you cut it, at the end of the day 4 of those guys are gonna have to go elsewhere or just not bother playing basketball anymore. They're also good places for new coaches and staff to develop their careers, or maybe for coaches that flop at a larger program to have a shot at rebuilding their careers.

Take those away so it's nothing but Michigan State against Michigan, or Michigan State vs Ohio, less players and coaches are gonna be willing to make a lateral move, especially if they're already comfortable where they are, and the price may be a lot higher. Or Michigan State does snag a Buckeye or Wolverine player, I'd be wondering if this is such a good pick if the player was already on a power conference team.

what excatly do they want
P6 got 34 bids that's half the tourn
2 had losing conf records, 5 with 500% records

all of them got NIT bids, 1 school with losing record & everybody in Pac declining
6 of them throwing temper tatrums because they didn't get bid

act like a man, Indiana St missed NCAAT, P6 should feel they took to many bids

Fewest P6 bids since the Big East split and...

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1771613818025546102


Maybe it's not so bad for business after all, Tom.

i read article about SEC commish complaining Automatic bids during Auburn & Kentucky game

why do we let them in?

(03-21-2024 07:53 PM)Todor Wrote:  

(03-21-2024 01:41 PM)e-parade Wrote:  

(03-21-2024 01:29 PM)Hokie4Skins Wrote:  Izzo picking up his 56th NCAA Tournament win today, once again as the lower seed.

Does it really count that much when 9 seeds beat 8 seed? I've always considered those ones to be basically coin flips.

Izzo is obviously a good coach, but to the point of the topic, I don't respect the opinion he made about the non power conferences.

No. Just like they gift bids, they gift seeds. They can pick any matchup and give any seeding they want to give their pets the best chance to advance. And it they won one game, they feel like that should shut everyone up and “justify” their decisions. And all they have to do is game the seeding a bit. It’s not a guaranteed system, but there are a lot of strings they can pull to get the results they want.

How many different selection committees are doing this "gifting" of bids and seeds? And who do they answer to? A lot of different people have been making these selections over the past quarter century, so I can't imagine they are all in on some giant conspiracy to favor Michigan State or Tom Izzo.

Let's see what happens when all the extra older players from the COVID 5th year are out of the system. Committee did a terrible job this year, they will be instructed to do better next year. P5 conferences should have 50% of membership in the tourney for it to work.

Bottom line there should be no more than 200 D1 basketball teams, 150 would be better, but we have 360+ which is just stupid. A-10 & MWC can be the Cinderellas no problem we don't need schools that draw under 1,000 people to their games in D1. Duquense & Dayton type teams make great feel good stories.