As of this morning, Hoyas have dropped a slot to # 8 in ESPN.com poll and have become a 3 seed (with negative trend) in most recent bracketology. I'm not so much troubled by the drop to a 3 seed given that it is clear that improvement is needed. What perplexes me is that Duke moved up to 7 with is victory over Cornell. While Rutger's win was ugly, it's a win and a Conference win at that, nonetheless. That should be enough to maintain the status quo absent a compelling victory by a lower ranked team.
Bracket prediction should contemplate the effect of current levels of play projected into the future. However, aren't the rankings a snapshot of current conditions? Not that I put much credibility in either analysis (do we really believe that Butler is the #14 team in the land?). I am just curious about these things.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Duke should absolutely not have passed Georgetown. At least the AP rankings have it straight. Whatever. Pitt showed them who's boss.
Here's my take on things:
Georgetown's looking strong. Memphis basically played insane the
second half compared with previously in the season to win it. A couple things have bothered me though.
There have been some games where Hibbert has been getting like 6
points. He needs to become more confident and attack the basket.
Sometimes he gets the ball near the basket, hesitates, and then shoots
and misses. He should just dunk it right away. He doesn't even need
to jump! I think I've seen way more Ewing dunks than Hibbert. Also,
freethrow shooting has been horrid. There was a game where we shot
better from 3-point range than freethrows! They need to drill
freethrows bigtime. Maybe they can step back from the line further
and one of our guys can wave his arms in their face so they'll shoot
better. Our team freethrow percentage is 59%! Wallace shoots better
from 3P% than Hibbert from freethrows! Macklin is at a ridiculous 21%
FT. I can freakin make 1 in 5 from the charity stripe! Ewing's at
60% FT. He'd probably have a better shot jumping from the stripe and
trying to dunk it. Also, our rebounding has been weak. I understand
on the offensive boards with the Princeton system, but defensively we
need to step it up especially with Hibbert there. Hibbert almost
looks worse than last year. --Actually, I just checked and he is. He
shot 67% FG last year compared to 60% this year so far. He also shot
68% FT last year compared to 50% this year. 6.9 rebounds per game
last year compared to 6.0 / game this year. 12.9 points / game last
year compared to 11.6 this year. And this year so far it's been all
joke teams except Memphis. Hopefully he'll be turning it on soon.
On the many good sides, Freeman is looking awesome for so early on. I
think he'll become a serious force. Our 3 point shooting has been
insane. There have been a number of games where it's Wallace bam!
3-pointer! Sapp bam! 3-pointer! Wallace again 3-pointer! Until
Ewing gets all hot and bothered and decides to throw up a brick! But
then we're suddenly up 12 points. Besides the rebounding, our defense
has otherwise been on fire. You also can't help but be excited about
Nikita Mescheriakov, the Belorusian guy who has to wait 10 games
because he played in a quasi-pro league in Europe during the summer.
Post a Comment