Patrick Marshall of Bluejay Basketball is the RTC correspondent for the Big 12 and Missouri Valley Conferences.
Current Records and my standings (Last Week)
This has been a slow week for the Big 12. Finals are upon us, so just a few games and updates this week.
Patrick Marshall of Bluejay Basketball is the RTC correspondent for the Big 12 and Missouri Valley Conferences.
Current Records and my standings (Last Week):
A light week for the Big 12 as most teams only played once and it was their game in the Big 12/Pac 10 Hardwood Series where the Big 12 dominated.
During the nonconference portion of the season we can use the cross-pollination among the BCS teams as well as their games against the mid-majors as an early warning system of sorts to determine which conferences are the strongest in a given year. Last year the Pac-10, for example, got off to a strong start, and by and large that conference was considered the best in the nation throughout most of the 2007-08 season.
Believe it or not, we’re already one-quarter of the way through the regular season (and halfway through the nonconference slate), so we have plenty of raw data to start making those determinations. From what we see thus far, it appears that there are three grades of power conferences, with the ACC & Big East at the top, the Big 10 and Big 12 in the middle, and the Pac-10 and SEC pulling up the rear. For confirmation, take a look at the table below.
Data Source: basketballstate.com
We delayed the start of the Blogpoll this year so we could get a better sense as to the first few weeks of the season, so here it is. The blogpoll is represented through Monday night’s games (although records are current).
Patrick Marshall of Bluejay Basketball is the RTC correspondent for the Missouri Valley and Big 12 Conferences.
Current Records and my standings:
TEAM OF THE WEEK
Oklahoma (2-0 this week)—Oklahoma won the NIT Tip Off defeating UAB and a pesky Purdue team as the Griffin brothers helped lead the team to victory. Although Purdue was able to somewhat contain Blake Griffin, he still came away with 18 points and 21 rebounds and averaged 25 points and 18 rebounds in the two games in New York.
Patrick Marshall of Bluejay Basketball is the RTC correspondent for the Missouri Valley and Big 12 Conferences.
Big 12 Conference Week in Review (Nov. 14-23)
Current Records and my standings:
TEAM OF THE WEEK
Oklahoma—Oklahoma has gotten off to a fast 4-0 start behind Blake Griffin and his supporting cast. They survived the Gardner-Webb bug that Kentucky suffered from last year. Griffin scored 35 points and pulled down 21 rebounds to lead Oklahoma to a win. Now they head to New York after holding off Stephen Curry and Davidson in their NIT regional. They get a somewhat favorable matchup against UAB instead of an expected Arizona team.
TEAMS DOING WELL
Nebraska—I actually like Nebraska just for the fact that they are one of the only Big 12 teams that already has a road game under their belt as they made the trip to TCU this week. Though they only had 21 free throws (most came towards the end) against TCU’s 38 free throws, Nebraska survived their first road test and will build some toughness as they continue a somewhat soft non-conference schedule. However, Nebraska won against Arkansas-Pine Bluff but according to Doc Sadler, the Huskers were “outworked.” Maybe next time after the morning shootaround you should keep the players there and let them prepare for the game instead of sending them home.
Missouri—Missouri started the season with a couple warmup games against Prairie View A&M and Chattanooga and then headed to San Juan, Puerto Rico, for a tournament – losing to Xavier, winning against Fairfield and getting a nice win against USC. The bench for Missouri is starting to feel a little comfortable. The Tigers’ high pressure defense caused 20 or more turnovers by their opponents the first three games of the season. Missouri gets a week off before hosting Summit Conference favorite Oral Roberts next Sunday.
Kansas St.-The Wildcats enjoyed a little cupcake city playing against a bad Florida A&M team, a troubled Southeast Missouri St. team and D2 Emporia State, but then took to the road to play against Horizon league favorite Cleveland St. and left with a win—their first true non-conference road win in nearly two years. Kansas St. is enjoying balanced scoring as they have six players averaging double figures in scoring.
Baylor—Baylor’s documented scoring machine has not disappointed as they are averaging almost 95 points a game. In addition to what they already had, Baylor got a new scoring threat in Quincy Acy. The freshman has yet to miss a shot, scoring 18 straight baskets over his 3-game career, breaking a Big 12 record. With an assist for every two baskets, that means the Bears are doing a good job of playing some team ball. They get a warm up with Jacksonville on Monday night before heading to Anaheim for the 76 Classic.
Texas—Texas, for being favored in the Big 12, has been relatively quiet to start the season. They won against Stetson and Tulane to open things up before heading to Maui for the ever popular Maui Invitational. AJ Abrams moving to point guard hasn’t affected his scoring too much as he leads Texas in scoring with 18 pts per game while expected point guard Dogus Balbay finally made his debut. Texas has also had the opportunity to build depth as they have 9 players playing more than 13 minutes a game so far.
Kansas—Kansas welcomed a whole new bunch of players to Allen Field House this week as they played their CBE Classic pod against in-state UMKC and Florida Gulf Coast. As expected, Sherron Collins and Cole Aldrich are leading the way for the Jayhawks in scoring.
Oklahoma St.—The cowboys hosted Texas-San Antonio and North Texas as well as Tulsa and Grambling St. with relatively easy wins. The 3-point shot has almost been non-existent as they have been playing a lot of pick and roll basketball. Five players are averaging double figures in scoring per game. Okie St. will have a challenging week ahead as a part of the Old Spice Classic in Orlando.
Texas Tech—The basketball team must have taken some notes from the football team as far as high paced scoring goes as the Red Raiders scored 167 points and opened the record book against East Central Oklahoma. But what is even worse is that they did not have any defense either as they gave up 115 points themselves. You have to kind of feel for Tyree Graham as he played 18 minutes and couldn’t score while everyone else did and mostly in double figures. With that scoring explosion, through 4 games the Red Raiders are averaging 108 points a game. Wow.
TEAMS THAT ARE STRUGGLING
Iowa St.—The Cyclones hosted their own multi-team tournament including UC Davis, Wisconsin-Milwaukee and Loyola Marymount. They didn’t look that great, but with so many new players that is probably expected. However that opening three games was last weekend. After 9 days off, the Cyclones headed to Hawaii for what appears to be a vacation and one game, it will be interesting to see how that works for them before turning around and hosting the SWAC’s Mississippi Valley St.
Texas A&M—Texas A&M struggled with Southland favorite Stephen F. Austin sandwiched in between SWAC opponents Arkansas-Pine Bluff and Jackson St. The game with SFA was tight the whole game and everyone in College Station was holding their breath hoping their basketball team isn’t going to be as bad as their football team was this year. A&M may be undefeated, but at this point looks like smoke and mirrors so they are considered “struggling.”
Colorado—Colorado opened up against Arkansas-Pine Bluff with a great win and everyone in Boulder was tricked into thinking that they had a basketball team this season. Then they hosted Big Sky Conference dweller Montana St. and lost. Whoops. Well maybe that is a good thing for the Buffalos.
GAME OF THE WEEK
Oklahoma vs. Davidson, NIT Tip Off—Davidson and Stephen Curry gave Oklahoma all they wanted in one of the more exciting games of the season so far. The Griffin brothers combined for 41 points and 27 rebounds. Though Oklahoma led by as many as 21 in the game, Davidson crept back in and made it a game to the end. Great foul shooting led to a win for Oklahoma.
PLAYER OF THE WEEK
Blake Griffin, Oklahoma—As advertised, Blake was just a beast in Oklahoma’s 4 games they have already played. He is averaging 25 points and 20 rebounds a game. That is just ridiculous.
WEEK AHEAD AND GAMES TO WATCH
The Big 12 has played as advertised so far winning the games they are expected to win. This week will be the “Week of Tournaments” where several Big 12 teams will stop playing the cupcakes and play some real competition in the annually known neutral holiday tournaments:
For those of your who haven’t been spending as much time on Rush the Court the past few months as you should (looking at myself in the mirror), we thought we would offer you a quick guide to what we have been working on over the past few months.
General Overview: Some top quality writing/prognosticating to get you in the spirit for the run from today until the early morning hours of April 7th, 2009.
– Finally, It’s Here: New RTC feature columnist John Stevens offers his thoughts about the upcoming season.
– A Little Preseason Bracketology: RTC co-editor (Do we even have titles?) rtmsf does his best Joe Lunardi impression and makes a surprising pick for his national champion. I’m smelling an attempt to make the RTC preseason bracketology championship the new Madden cover.
– Vegas Odds – Preseason Check-In: For the degenerate gamblers out there, RTC co-founder rtmsf offers an analysis of the Las Vegas odds for the 2009 NCAA champions for pure academic purposes. . .
– Preseason Polls Released: The surprisingly employed (I’m running out of titles here) rtmsf analyzes the AP and Coaches polls going into the season with a deeper look at unanimous #1 UNC’s early schedule.
– ESPN Full Court: 562 Games of Gooey, Delicious Goodness*: Once again, rtmsf comes through with the entire ESPN Full Court schedule with a Steve Nash-style assist from Patrick Marshall of Bluejay Basketball.
Big Early Season News: While there are several big stories going into this season, there were 2 major stories that have come out recently that you should know about before you start watching games.
– Tyler Hansbrough Out Indefinitely: Who? Oh yeah, that guy. Everybody’s favorite for national POY and NBA Draft Day snub (get ready for the annual Dick Vitale rant) Psycho T will be out for a while, but we think the Tar Heels will be ok by March.
– Jai Lucas Leaving Florida: In a story that isn’t getting nearly the attention that the Psycho T story has (for good reason), Billy Donovan has lost last season’s starting point guard on the eve of the new season. While it appears that Lucas was probably heading towards a role as a backup point guard on the Gators, the timing of this announcement is surprising. It will be interesting to see what the Gators will do if freshman guard Erving Walker struggles in adjusting to SEC basketball.
Conference Primers: As part of our attempt to make a new-and-improved RTC, we hired the finest journalists in America to make our site more all-inclusive of the little people in the college basketball landscape. To that end we put together 31 conference previews (31 automatic bids to the Big Dance means 31 previews from RTC) with the help of the aforementioned correspondents.
– ACC
– America East
– Atlantic 10
– Atlantic Sun
– Big 12
– Big East
– Big Sky
– Big South
– Big Ten
– Big West
– Colonial
– Conference USA
– Horizon
– Ivy League
– MAAC
– MAC
– MEAC
– Missouri Valley
– Mountain West
– Northeast
– Ohio Valley Conference
– Pac-10
– Patriot League
– SEC
– Southern
– Southland
– Summit
– Sun Belt
– SWAC
– WAC
– West Coast Conference
As the season progresses, we will have more features and content including updates from all 31 conferences. We hope all of you are looking forward to the new season as much as we are and even if your team looks like it will struggle to make it to the NIT, remember the words of Kevin Garnett, who incidentally didn’t play a minute of college basketball (that’s another post), “Anything is possible!”
Prediction: by the end of the first week of December, UNC will no longer be #1 in the major media polls.
No way, there’s too much pressure and they have too many good teams to handle before we even get our advent calendars. Oh, and did you hear, a small piece of their offense will be out for a while with a stress reaction? Even if this substantial piece never misses a game, which is extremely unlikely, he’s going to miss practice and be out of ‘game shape’ for a while. And no, we’re not talking about Marcus Ginyard, but his loss hurts too.
Here’s Carolina’s early schedule – you tell us how they’re going to come out of this unscathed…
There are at least three opportunities for the major upset here, and if Hansbrough and/or Ginyard are out for any of those games, go ahead and mark it down. UNC will not enter the second week of December #1 and unbeaten.
Now, on to the polls, where UNC was a unanimous #1 in the AP Poll for the first time EVER (nope, not even 1991 UNLV, 1992 Duke or 2007 Florida), and also unanimous in the Coach’s Poll. No pressure or anything… FYI – UNC has been preseason #1 six times in its history (incl. this year) – the results of those seasons are: 1982 (Natl. Champs), 1984 (S16), 1987 (E8), 1994 (R32), 2008 (F4) – all that’s missing is a first-round loss or a title game loss.
Here are the polls.
We plan on doing some broader-based analytics of preseason polls in a general sense next week, but for now, here are a few things that we noticed right away.
We’re barely over a week into practice and there’s already been some talk that this year’s version of the Big East, with as many as four legitimate F4 contenders (UConn, Pitt, Louisville & Notre Dame) and another five or six legitimate NCAA Tournament teams, could be the deepest, most competitive conference of all-time. When put in those terms, it’s difficult to disagree… but you know us, we don’t take kindly to sweeping claims of superiority without some measurable statistical basis to back it up.
(photo credit: Bob Eckstein)
The problem is figuring out how to measure such a thing. Take last year’s Pac-10, for example. The conference was widely considered by pundits to be the strongest, deepest conference in America. Computer ratings tended to agree. At various points during the season, as many as eight of its ten schools were touted as NCAA-caliber teams. Six ultimately were invited to the NCAA Tournament, but only three of those made it to the Sweet Sixteen, with UCLA the sole conference representative in the Final Four. Was the Pac-10 stronger than the Big East, who had six teams ranked in the final AP poll last year (vs. three for the Pac-10) and had two more teams invited to the Big Dance but only found itself with a pair standing on the second weekend (and zero in the F4)? Or was the Pac-10 superior to the Big 12, who had the strongest NCAA showing of the major conferences with a 6-0 first round ultimately resulting in Kansas cutting down the nets? It’s hard to say, because depending on how you set the parameters, you can make fair and defensible arguments for the strength of multiple conferences in any given year (our friends dealing with the BCS go through this every year).
Just thinking back to last season, we could break it down this way. AP poll? Big East. NCAA Tournament success? Big 12. Computer rankings? Pac-10. Pundits? Take your pick, but leaning Pac-10. Choosing which source to buy into is based on personal taste, but for the sake of this post, we’ll admit that there is no perfect measurement and focus exclusively on Jeff Sagarin’s computer ratings. Using his data, we like that we can take stock year over year in relative terms.
(photo credit: sportsbubbler.com)
So here’s our question: how good does the Big East need to be from top-to-bottom this year to be statistically considered the top conference of the last decade (Sagarin’s archive only goes back to the 1998-99 season – we requested data back to 1984-85, to no avail)? For the sake of comparison, here are the top ten conferences by Sagarin’s computer ratings of the last ten years.
As you can see, the 2008 version of the Big East wasn’t bad from top-to-bottom, but it was still a good distance away from the top ten conferences of the last decade. The problem is that when people talk about how strong conferences are, are they really talking about team #10 or team #12 or team #16 in the cellar? Of course not – they’re really talking about the NCAA-caliber teams, i.e., the top half of the conference. So how does this list change if we only consider the top half of the major conferences of the last ten years (also represented graphically)?
It’s interesting to imagine if the Big East were still an eight-team conference like the old days, as last year’s top half alone would have rated the league as the second-best conference of the last decade (2004 ACC at 87.31 would still be #1). As it stands, though, the Big East’s mammoth size probably ensures that from a statistical standpoint (Law of Large Numbers, much?), it will never be able to have enough great teams to overcome what some of the smaller conferences have been able to do.
Nothing is conclusive here, but we feel safe in saying that the 2008-09 Big East is unlikely to rise to the top of either of these lists, but it wouldn’t shock us if the conference ended up in the top ten (esp. the top-half list). Notwithstanding where the conference Sagarin ratings finish, there shouldn’t be any question using the eyes and ears test that the Big East will be the most competitive and interesting conference in America this season.
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2020-21 Rush the Court All-America Teams and Yearly AwardsEight Questions for the Final FourEight Key Questions for the Sweet Sixteen16 Questions For First Round Saturday of the NCAA Tournament16 Questions for First Round Friday of the NCAA Tournament
