2017-2018 College Basketball Thread

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by SackAttack

I think there's a legit argument that you don't even need the word 'college' in there.

Like...as was mentioned, a lot of the time 'biggest ever' is hyperbolic, but a 16 beating the overall #1 by 20? I'm trying to think of an example even in pro sports of Goliath getting skunked like that.

Talking heads may have hit on one serious possibility: Buster Douglas over Tyson

[Brian Swartz]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

I think, bless his heart, Sir Charles raised a valid point: it may not be possible for a team with UVA's style to win a title in this day & age.

If this happens, honestly, how do you stick with this?

I don't think it makes sense to blame this kind of thing on style. If it was that easy to expose them then more than two of their 33 previous opponents would have done so. Games like this are a perfect storm -- which isn't to take anything away from the criticism VA deserves and the massive credit UMBC will and should get.

[Atocep]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

Talking heads may have hit on one serious possibility: Buster Douglas over Tyson

That's the first thing that came to mind for me, but I'm not sure that does this justice.

[NobodyHere]

When I think sports upsets, The Miracle on Ice and Michigan/Appalachian St come immediately to mind.

[SackAttack]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

Talking heads may have hit on one serious possibility: Buster Douglas over Tyson

Originally Posted by Atocep

That's the first thing that came to mind for me, but I'm not sure that does this justice.

Yeah I raised that example also in talking with a friend, but...not the same. That was a back-and-forth from which Douglas ultimately came out on top. Shocking, underdog tale for the ages, but he was in danger along the way.

UMBC never was.

[Atocep]

Originally Posted by NobodyHere

When I think sports upsets, The Miracle on Ice and Michigan/Appalachian St come immediately to mind.

This would have been like the Miracle on Ice team coming out and beating the Russians 5-0.

[MizzouRah]

Originally Posted by NobodyHere

Luckily no one will notice that tonight.

You have a point.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by Brian Swartz

I don't think it makes sense to blame this kind of thing on style. If it was that easy to expose them then more than two of their 33 previous opponents would have done so. Games like this are a perfect storm -- which isn't to take anything away from the criticism VA deserves and the massive credit UMBC will and should get.

I think this game calls the capabilities of their opponents into serious question to be completely honest. I'd be surprised to see an ACC team make a serious title run now after witnessing this game.

And I'd be a little surprised if Bennett was still in the same job, say, three years from now.

[Brian Swartz]

I'd say the problem with that is it was just what you say: 'a game'. Duke, North Carolina, and Clemson all won comfortably. Against teams the seeding system expects them to win comfortably against, sure. Miami lost as well but that loss was predicted by a lot of people as the most likely first-round upset, nearly a pick-em depending on who you ask. They haven't done anything special yet, but they did do what was expected in their first game. That's three games: the Virginia game was one. I don't think it's wise to take the smaller sample size over the larger.

Whether or not any ACC team makes a serious run at the title or not, it's pretty clear one team from that conference underperformed the others in the first outing. That's what is known as an 'outlier' .

[Umbrella]

I still think Chaminade over Virginia the biggest upset in college basketball history. We're talking about a NAIA team beating the #1 team in the country. At least UMBC played Division 1, and played decently.

But this is probably #2.

[RainMaker]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

I think, bless his heart, Sir Charles raised a valid point: it may not be possible for a team with UVA's style to win a title in this day & age.

If this happens, honestly, how do you stick with this?

They looked completely overmatched, lacking the necessary skills to even compete with their opponent.

It's an interesting question. I guess it comes down to whether you think Virginia can compete with the Duke and North Carolinas of the world. Recruit like them and run like them.

If Virginia is a 2nd tier school, maybe this is the best it gets. You won't win National Championships but you'll be a perennial tournament team and maybe get a run or two in every so often.

I guess I look on the downside. Virginia was a school that made 2 tournaments in the 12 years before Bennett got there. It was only a couple years ago that Virginia was a 2nd half choke job away from going to the Final Four.

[Abe Sargent]

Greetings from UMBC's campus!

[molson]

You could have gotten UMBC at +2000 in Vegas (and one guy did, he put $800 down on UMBC at the Venetian, for a payoff of about $16k, which is big, but, i would have thought the odds would be longer).

Buster Douglas was around +4200 against Tyson, and many sportsbooks weren't even taken bets on that fight.

Holly Holm was +635 against Ronda Rousey.

The biggest college football upset of the last 10-15 years appears to be New Mexico beating Boise St. in 2015 at +5500

There were at least 10 random college basketball upsets in the last 10 years or so that were bigger in terms of the money line - NJIT beat Michigan as a +7500 underdog in 2014. In the NCAA tournament, Norfolk State was a slightly bigger underdog (+2250) when they beat Missouri in 2012.

So I think the truly bizarre anomaly isn't so much this one game outcome, but that it took 33 years for a #16 team to pull it off. This level of upset does happen in college basketball, just not in the NCAA tournament in the 1/16 matchup. And there have been a bunch of 16 seeds who have come close - statistically, one of them should have pulled it off, but they all fell short until today.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by RainMaker

It's an interesting question. I guess it comes down to whether you think Virginia can compete with the Duke and North Carolinas of the world. Recruit like them and run like them.

If Ga Tech could get one & done types (for a while) then shouldn't it be possible at Virginia?

Or have a) times changed that much even in that relatively short time, or b) is Atlanta that much more of a draw than Charlottesville?

[BishopMVP]

Originally Posted by RainMaker

It's an interesting question. I guess it comes down to whether you think Virginia can compete with the Duke and North Carolinas of the world. Recruit like them and run like them.

UVa is 63-17 in the ACC the last 5 seasons. 8-7 vs those two schools. There might be a legitimate question about whether those schools with more 5*/NBA talent care less in the regular season or have a higher ceiling in March, but like you point out they're not able to compete with them on the recruiting front and historically have very little success. Nothing will ever erase this loss, but they made 2 tournaments in the dozen years before Bennett came, and finished in the top 25 twice since 1982! I don't understand the urge on JimGA's part to bury the program and fire the coach, or the implication by Barkley that a team with "this style" can't win. What style is that, good defense and a slower pace? Villanova, Florida, Michigan State all come to mind as title winning teams who largely fit that archetype, Wisconsin & Butler as two other's who nearly won while exemplifying it even further.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by BishopMVP

I don't understand the urge on JimGA's part to bury the program and fire the coach

They certainly provided the corpse and dug the hole to put it in.

[larrymcg421]

Originally Posted by SackAttack

Yeah I raised that example also in talking with a friend, but...not the same. That was a back-and-forth from which Douglas ultimately came out on top. Shocking, underdog tale for the ages, but he was in danger along the way.

UMBC never was.

Douglas-Tyson was not back and forth. Douglas was dominating that entire fight, except for the one big shot Tyson got in the 8th round and even then, Douglas was mostly mad that he got hit and waited the count before getting up.

[digamma]

not sure I get the hand waving freak outery. Maybe we just enjoy it for what it was, one team treeing out of its mind (54% from the field, plus 50% from 3), the other shooting 4-22 from 3 and looking generally miserable after looking pretty dominant last weekend. Weird things happen in one game situations, and it's actually kind of crazy we haven't had an upset by a 16 seed to this point. In 135 chances, they were due.

***To be clear, I meant the freak outery about Virginia needing to burn it all down. It's very cool to see the first men's 16-1 upset, and wasn't taking anything away from that moment.

[mauchow]

Originally Posted by Brian Swartz

I don't think it makes sense to blame this kind of thing on style. If it was that easy to expose them then more than two of their 33 previous opponents would have done so. Games like this are a perfect storm -- which isn't to take anything away from the criticism VA deserves and the massive credit UMBC will and should get.

Right, Wisconsin with a similar system just went back to back final fours.. but it's easy to knock down the slower pace teams while they're down. (1st time in 20 years for no tourney for WI).

[Young Drachma]

Well and the only other 1/16 upset was that Harvard over Stanford in the women's tournament but Stanford was a M.A.S.H. unit and Harvard was underseeded at 16.

This was a team that only got into the tournament by beating Vermont - a team they lost two twice in the regular season - on the road in the conference tournament. Virginia could never adapt and I think they expected UMBC to stop and they never did.

[miami_fan]

UMBC's Twitter account has been on fire.

[JonInMiddleGA]

No escape for Virginia after historic 'L' to UMBC

[NobodyHere]

Did Ohio State forget to turn their clocks forward or something? They forgot to show up for the game.

[hoopsguy]

Loyola is living well in this tournament.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Speaking of teams & ceilings ... if you think of Tennessee as the team that was supposed to be so poor that they might not even let them watch the tournament on television, it's hard to be disappointed by their exit.

If you think of them as the team that earned a #3 seed then it's hard to avoid thinking of Rick Barnes post-season track record.

Barring early exits, they're a team that should return their top 6 in minutes, and the entire roster aside from seventh in minutes. And yet it's hard to think that today isn't maybe the ceiling for the team :/

[MizzouRah]

Originally Posted by NobodyHere

Did Ohio State forget to turn their clocks forward or something? They forgot to show up for the game.

They finally showed up.

[JPhillips]

If Holtmann can recruit OSU will eventually be a power. He's done a great job coaching a team with very little athleticism.

[SackAttack]

So it occurs to me, Harvard having beaten Stanford as a 16 over a 1 in the women's tournament 20 years ago might actually be more impressive than UMBC over Virginia, if for no other reason than that the talent gap between a 1 and a 16 is much wider in the women's game than it is in the men's game.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by SackAttack

So it occurs to me, Harvard having beaten Stanford as a 16 over a 1 in the women's tournament 20 years ago might actually be more impressive than UMBC over Virginia, if for no other reason than that the talent gap between a 1 and a 16 is much wider in the women's game than it is in the men's game.

But, in that game, the talent gap really wasn't much.

Harvard had future 18 season pro Allison Feaster.
Stanford had three All-Americans on the roster ... but only one played in that game.

They lost Vanessa Nygaard in the final minute of the conference championship game. They then lost leading scorer & leading rebounder Kristin Folkl in practice.

An underseeded 16, against a team that wouldn't have been a 1 if the committee had known the extent of the first injury, much less could have forseen the second injury.

The gap, really, just wasn't there like any other "normal" 1/16 (or in the women's side, even maybe a 3/14) matchup

[hoopsguy]

What a shot to end the Michigan/Houston game. There has definitely been a good amount of drama so far this year, even with a couple of blowouts to start today.

[Galaril]

Originally Posted by hoopsguy

What a shot to end the Michigan/Houston game. There has definitely been a good amount of drama so far this year, even with a couple of blowouts to start today.

Geez when I saw Houston was not guarding the inbound passing player I knew that was going to be the outcome. You think after that Christian Laettner play years ago coaches would learn.

[EagleFan]

Gotta feel bad for the kid who missed the two free throws.

[Vince, Pt. II]

Originally Posted by EagleFan

Gotta feel bad for the kid who missed the two free throws.

My first thought too.

[Drake]

As an IU alum, I'm never sad to see Kelvin Sampson lose.

[MizzouRah]

Originally Posted by Galaril

Geez when I saw Houston was not guarding the inbound passing player I knew that was going to be the outcome. You think after that Christian Laettner play years ago coaches would learn.

Yeah I do not get that at all.

[britrock88]

Originally Posted by SackAttack

So it occurs to me, Harvard having beaten Stanford as a 16 over a 1 in the women's tournament 20 years ago might actually be more impressive than UMBC over Virginia, if for no other reason than that the talent gap between a 1 and a 16 is much wider in the women's game than it is in the men's game.

I think Norfolk State over Missouri, while a 15 over 2, was the bigger upset. That was back in the day (several years ago, heh) where the NCAA was treating the HBCU conferences pretty kindly... Norfolk was bad for a 16-seed.

[jbergey22]

The 1/16 spreads have been declining for awhile. 20 years ago it wasnt uncommon for a 1 seed to be a 30 point 1st round fav. This year we had Kansas as a 13 point favorite over Penn. Villanova, Virginia, and Xavier were all in the 20 point range.

[INDalltheway]

Originally Posted by Drake

As an IU alum, I'm never sad to see Kelvin Sampson lose.

With Devin Davis (former Hoosier) missing 3/4 free throws to close out the game..

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by jbergey22

The 1/16 spreads have been declining for awhile. 20 years ago it wasnt uncommon for a 1 seed to be a 30 point 1st round fav. This year we had Kansas as a 13 point favorite over Penn. Villanova, Virginia, and Xavier were all in the 20 point range.

But can we even look at that as a legitimate indicator of the gaps? I mean, the lines aren't meant to be predictive, they're meant to manipulate the placement of money.

Wouldn't predictive models -- pick one, pick several -- be more relevant? And I ask that without having the slightest clue what they do / don't say on the subject.

[Brian Swartz]

Good gameplan for Syracuse and Michigan State misses 14 consecutive shots to end the game. Last six minutes roughly without making one. That's rather stunning, they had some bad shots in there but a number of good ones that didn't go in.

[Buccaneer]

WOOOOHOOOO!!!!!! Orangemen upsets Spartans!!!

[tarcone]

And there goes all my brackets. Now I can just sit back and enjoy the games.

[digamma]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

But can we even look at that as a legitimate indicator of the gaps? I mean, the lines aren't meant to be predictive, they're meant to manipulate the placement of money.

Wouldn't predictive models -- pick one, pick several -- be more relevant? And I ask that without having the slightest clue what they do / don't say on the subject.

In all honesty, the lines and predictive models have converged, particularly over the last 3-4 seasons. Four seasons ago, I used to routinely find spread differences of 3-4 points between the models and the lines mostly in small or mid-major conference games. Those days are virtually gone.

[Abe Sargent]

Alright......let's go, home team at UMBC, where I live/work/play!


Abe

[hoopsguy]

Pretty amazing comeback by Nevada.

On a semi-related note, I've got some friends who invest heavily in a Calcutta pool. I'll be interested to hear about the total carnage that took place in that format over the first four days.

[Atocep]

So Auburn has 9 field goals nearly 30 minutes into their game.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by digamma

In all honesty, the lines and predictive models have converged, particularly over the last 3-4 seasons. Four seasons ago, I used to routinely find spread differences of 3-4 points between the models and the lines mostly in small or mid-major conference games. Those days are virtually gone.

Good enough. I literally didn't have any idea what that relationship was today.

[cartman]

If this year's tourney played out like this in a game of FBCB, we'd be telling HeavyReign he needs to tweak his code.

[Young Drachma]

UMBC ran out of juice at the end, but man...why didn't that coach call timeout at some point before they drained the clock from 2 minutes to 41 seconds?

[Young Drachma]

Originally Posted by cartman

If this year's tourney played out like this in a game of FBCB, we'd be telling HeavyReign he needs to tweak his code.

Nah, it happens! I've run soooo many seasons and I've seen years like this where I just have to scratch my head, so I'm glad to see it really happening.