GAME THREAD: MBB at Houston

by **mustangxc** » Sun Feb 27, 2022 5:43 pm

I think we are as deserving as any bubble team. Look at Michigan, Rutgers, Notre Dame, Indiana, Wake Forest, Oklahoma, Memphis, San Diego State, BYU, Oregon, Virginia Tech, Florida, Dayton, etc. and I think we compare favorably to all. The issue is that we are SMU, a school with almost zero basketball tradition in the last 40 years and little fan support. We are a lock for the NIT, but didn't we compare ourselves to Kentucky, Kansas, Villanova, etc. when we did the re-seat? It's about time we drop donation requirements for all seats and compare our prices to our actual peers like Illinois State.

by **geezerdonk** » Sun Feb 27, 2022 6:36 pm

Nutall minutes are wasted minutes.

by **DC-Pony** » Sun Feb 27, 2022 7:23 pm

Terry Webster wrote:If we win the next two and then get to the finals of the tourney we will get a bid.

I hope you are right. But I’d bet a lot more money that won’t be enough to get us in. I think a lot of things would have to go our way, including virtually no upsets in other conference tournaments, and a lot of teams “ahead of us” on the bubble tanking over the last weak of the season.

by **JasonB** » Sun Feb 27, 2022 9:52 pm

The other way to look at this is that we played as poorly as we can play and only lost by 15 at a legit top 10 team in the country.

Home versus away
3pt%: 39% - 35%
fg%: 48% - 42%
steal: 7.6 - 4.6
BLK: 5 - 3.8

Those are the differences in statistics. We don't shoot as well on the road, and we aren't as active on defense.

The good news is that in the two neutral site losses, we actually shot the ball well from 3. Our defense just didn't show up at all.

Today was what I expected to happen to us in the first game.

We have 2 quad 3 games left. We have to win both of those, finish in second so that we get a bye, and hope that Cincy wins their first round game so that we play them in a Quad 2 game instead of Tulsa. We need one more Q2 win, we would be 2 games over .500 against Q2 at that point. The next round will most likely be Memphis, which will be a Q1 game. Another Q1 win will make us a lock. The tricky thing is that if we lost against Memphis, we would be 2-3 against Q1. So the win against Cincy in the tourney would push us to "in", but then a loss to Memphis would put us right back on the bubble.

by **mtrout** » Sun Feb 27, 2022 10:00 pm

The only lock is we win the AAC tournament

by **geezerdonk** » Mon Feb 28, 2022 11:05 am

The schedule is a killer. How many games did they play against a ranked opponent? How teams on the schedule were ranked at any time during the entire year?

by **ponyboy** » Mon Feb 28, 2022 12:09 pm

by **JasonB** » Mon Feb 28, 2022 12:24 pm

geezerdonk wrote:The schedule is a killer. How many games did they play against a ranked opponent? How teams on the schedule were ranked at any time during the entire year?

We played @Oregon, should have played against both Mizzou and Florida State, UNLV, Vandy, @New Mexico, Dayton, and had an Evansville game cancelled. There was an attempt.

The biggest issues we run into with Strength of Schedule are:
1) getting invited to decent tournaments
2) We need to generate revenue with home games, but nobody will play us here. So we get stuck with McNeese, NWS, SEL, Sam Houston, UL Monroe.

We need to sacrifice revenue and add one more difficult road game without demanding a home and home. If you swapped out a McNeese for an away game against a Big 12 team, I think our SOS would improve dramatically.

by **tristatecoog** » Mon Feb 28, 2022 1:26 pm

Seems like most of the top games are now played in special tournaments or possibly conference challenges, like Big 10/ACC. Baylor had a bunch of the no-name games as well, including Nicholls, UIW, Central Arkansas, UAPB, NW State and Alcorn State. The marquee out of conference game was versus Stanford which drew 400 more fans than Central Arkansas.

Last year, the U of Montana had four games that brought in a combined $255,000 to the men's basketball program -- $45,000 from USC, $50,000 from Washington, $70,000 from Arizona and $90,000 from Georgia. The Montana coach has buy games in his contract. First $86K goes to university while coach receives the next $120,000, his assistants get the next $30,000 following that, split as a bonus, and then the next $100,000 beyond that goes back to head coach.

https://406mtsports.com/college/big-sky ... 078b0.html