Someone took the time and employed some thoughtfulness in expressing the vast majority of the sentiment Utah State men's basketball fans have for their head coach. From the Utah State Scout site, comes this on the Basketball Forum message board. It's by NIrishAg and titled "I have a friend who has a wife" and has already generated 19 responses. Most agree with the sentiments expressed in it but there is also an opposing piece, another fable in the responses.
Hopefully, this link will take you directly to it. If it doesn't, use the link in the opening paragraph above, go to the Basketball Forum and scroll down.
Monday, March 2, 2009
We loved this
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2 comments:
The "I have a donkey" story is comic gold.
This whole brouhaha over Stew is based on false premises. Those that are criticizing him have bought into the sports media's ridiculous arguments about SOS.
The way the Tournament Committee selects the at-large teams is almost as much of a racket as the BCS in college football. Take it from me (Mathematics degree, summa cum laude), it is clearly more difficult from a pure probability standpoint to go 25-4 against a .5100 SOS (USU) than to go 18-10 against a .6100 SOS (Tenneseee). Yet, most of the talking heads say Tennessee has "done enough" to get in. Why? Because the media (and the Selection Committee) focus primarily on one thing - who have you beaten?
They care much less about where you won those games, who's beaten you and how often, or how consistent you have been. If you have a slightly better than mediocre record and can list three or more wins over the traditional powerhouses in the Big 6 conferences, you get respect. Even if you've lost half a dozen games to the lower half of the RPI.
The NCAA has conducted some mock selection events over the past couple of years. If you paid any attention to the blogs on these, you'd clearly see how the process they follow stacks the odds in the Big 6's favor.
The Big 6 conference schools know how to play this game. Play a couple of big-time games on national TV, then load the rest of your schedule with home games against sucker fair-to-middling mid-major schools. If everyone in the conference does this, then voila, you own the non-conference RPI averages.
Since, the rest of the season is made up of intraconference play, your league's top half consolidate their stranglehold on high RPIs and on "big wins". When two Big 6 schools play each other, one of them has to win whether either of them play well or not.
The only mid-major school I can name that has actually broken through this iron curtain without switching conferences is Gonzaga. They had just enough success over a long enough period of time to capture the sports media's fancy. Butler may do this also - time will tell.
Otherwise, the mids get caught in this vice every year. It doesn't really matter if you play a good nonconference schedule, you still can't build a "quality resume" because you don't get enough chances against top RPI teams. Consider Siena and Davidson - they played the good nonconference schedule that some Utah State fans want for the Aggies, and they are now considered less likely at-large candidates than USU.
So, I say stop aiming our dissatisfaction at Stew and prepare to show it to the NCAA. Only through changes in the selection process (such as refusing to select teams that are below .500 in their conferences) will we begin to see a reasonable number of slots open up for deserving mid-majors.
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