Skittles wrote:

I'd start at winning the first game in the tourney. Winning it all for a team this inconsistent that has allowed multiple scoring streaks down the stretch is not just a reach but a hail mary. one thing at a time. Win a game. Then go from there

100%

Ralphie wrote:

I'm not sure I agree with the oft-heard casual assertion about the A-10 being weak this year, and destined for a single rep in the Tournament.   The fact that some erstwhile A-10 recent bottom feeders have had reasonably good years (Fordham, Duquesne, LaSalle, even GW) has, I believe, lifted the competitiveness level of the entire League by a significant margin.   It always seemed like there were at least 4-5 fairly easy pushovers in the League - not this year.   What we lacked in overall quality by having a truly runaway top team(s) (the usual Dayton,VCU,SLU roles....) has been MORE than made up for by the improvement at the bottom in my view.    While we may only get one NCAA Tournament rep (I think we get 2 with VCU already in), that does NOT mean our League is weak.

 
The league may be more balanced but it is certainly not having a good year. We have exactly ONE team (VCU) in the top 70 NCAA NET, and the entire conference had only 5 Quad 1 wins. There isn’t even a prayer of an at-large bid unless maybe - and it’s a real maybe - VCU were to lose in the final to SLU or Dayton.

Gwmayhem wrote:

The bottom has gotten much stronger and the top has gotten much weaker.  Not the ideal way to go if you're trying to send schools to the dance.

 
Totally agree. It’s the ideal way to go if you’re trying to become the MAAC, but not If you expect to be a multiple bid conference.

So we finish as the 7 seed, which means we will play the winner of the 10-15 pillow fight game.

Loyola is the 15 (seems to be being playing better now than the shell shock when they first entered the league)

The 10 seed comes down to:

If Davison beats URI, St Joe is the 10 seed. 
If URI beats Davidson, LaSalle is the 10 seed.

Both of those teams beat us handily this season (and we beat them both).   We can’t be looking past that first game, like I guess we did with UMASS last year.  Whoever we play will have a win under their belt and, most likely, the confidence they can beat us.  Better be ready for a battle game 1.

GW earns the bye and gets the winner of:

Saint Joe's vs Loyola-Chicago

 

Free Quebec wrote:

Gwmayhem wrote:

The bottom has gotten much stronger and the top has gotten much weaker.  Not the ideal way to go if you're trying to send schools to the dance.

Has the bottom gotten stronger? There’s 6 teams sub-200 in KenPom -in the entire KenPom era, going back to 2002, there’s never been more than 4 teams in the league sub200. And, fwiw, we are one of those sub-200 teams. League really struggled OOC - and it’s killed us all. I’m fact, despite the fun and relatively successful conference season, our efficiency rank has only climbed 7 spots in A10 (and a blowout tomorrow will drop it down) because we’ve won a ton of close games, but gotten thumped by the likes of Fordham, Duq, LaSalle, and St Joe.

Moreover the league is ranked 12th in KenPom (worst since 07, the year we got won the A10 tourney for Carl Elliott’s third straight NCAA appearance).

The league is in a once every two-decade drought (comparable to the period when we went to 3 straight dance - where the league only has 2 at large teams in 3 years, both because the top seed lost in the a10 tourney).

These things are cyclical, and the league will come back up, but I don’t think it’s accurate to say the bottom is up. Granted, it’s Loyola, UMASS and Rhody taking the place of Fordham, duke, and us the last few years. At the top of the league I think injuries have cost us bids - Dayton and VCU could be on the right side of the bubble without their injuries to their best guards earlier in the season (I. Dayton’s case their starting backcourt was out a while, in VCU’s case, they lost a couple high profile games when Baldwin was out, though they did beat PItt without him).

When we think back on who the dregs of this conference have historically been, we tend to think of programs like Fordham, Duquesne, La Salle and I'm afraid GW.  Not every year obviously but these programs have often served as the proverbial dead weight.  Within these seasons, it was not uncommon for these last place or near last place conference finishers to end up with 0, 1 or 2 conference wins.  A .500 overall record for these teams would have been out of the question.  By contrast, our last place finisher, Loyola, had 4 conference wins, followed by URI with 5 and UMASS with 6.  The Minutemen had an overall record of .500 as well as a NET of 183.  These teams performed substantially better than the typical poor seasons of the Fordhams and Duquesnes of the past.

I'll take your word that there have never been more than 4 sub-200 KenPom teams but allow me to pass along a few thoughts about that.  First, sub-200 today represents the bottom 45% of college basketball..  Should this really be the barometer used to identify the really bad teams?  If you're not in the top 55%, you're a bad team?   Using NET rankings, if we were to define the bottom 25% of college basketball, then all 15 A10 schools escape this distinction.  If we raise this to the bottom 33%, then only URI and Loyola would qualify.  What I'm reasonably certain of is that our worst teams in the past had computer rankings of at least 275 and sometimes even in the low 300's.  Loyloa is at 268, URI is at 252.  These are our worst.

My other point is just because we have sources like KenPom and others and that they are relied upon to some extent (far more so for seeding purposes than anything else) does not mean there aren't fairly troubling flaws.  The two that quickly come to mind deal with scheduling and margin of victory.  We've had the scheduling discussion here in one form or another for years.  One of the reasons why GW gets dinged has to do with its schedule.  If GW had been able to schedule a one-off at Kansas this season and lost by 20 points, this would likely have improved their rankings.  Instead, they went 0-0 in Q1 games and just 1-4 in Q2 games.  They finished 4 full games ahead of UMASS in the A10 standings, which included defeating the Minutemen in their sole head-to-head meeting, had the identical record overall against D1 opponents, and yet finished 25 spots below them.  UMASS was fortunate enough to go 0-2 in Q1 games, and their 2-3 mark in Q2 games was better than GW's 1-4 mark.  Simply put, GW's season or UMASS's season:  which one would you rather have had this year?

Related to scheduling of course is the squeeze that the A10 now finds itself in.  Getting fair opportunities to play Power 5 + Big East programs has always been challenging.  Today, it's even worse with more and more conferences increasing the number of games within their own conference schedules.  Aside from the holiday tournament model, tell me how many Power 5/BE teams are scheduling games at VCU, Dayton or St. Louis?  With fewer OOC games to schedule, it's reaching the point where these power programs won't even host these games.  If you're a Big 10 school, you play 20 conference games pus a Big 10/ACC game plus 3 more games at a holiday tournament.  You may also have a few local or regional gmaes that you'll host annually as well.  That doesn't leave a lot on the schedule for inviting A10 schools, home or away.

GW also gets hurt because it was able to beat teams in an unconvincing manner.  In games decised in overtime or by three points or less, GW went 5-1 this season.  Is the glass half full or half empty?  I see this as a team whose coaching staff kept the team together and instilled confidence in knowing how to pull out close games.  I see players who took pride in executiing well during tense situations, and whose senior leadership helped carry the day more often than not.  These are good things in my mind, not results worthy of demerits.  But in the eyes of the KenPoms of the world, you're not scoring on enough possessions, or defending well enough on enough possessions, or winning by a high enough margin, so in the end, you're "penalized" for this.  I do understand the predictive analysis that these stats are intended to produce.  A team that wins 90% of its games by double digits should be expected to beat a team with the same record against similar competition who only wins by double figures 10% of the time.  However, shouldn't there be something to be said for the teams, coaches, etc. who have a knack for pulling out the close games most of the time?  Is this really a coincidence and nothing more?  To my knowledge, the computer models not only offer no rewards for this level of knowhow, but tend to chalk it up to luck and like I said earlier, offer "negative points" for failing to win by considerable margins.

 

Gapare? Interesting.

Loyola has pulled it back and has made this an interesting game. Hoping it goes into OT and Loyola comes out with the W.

Lynn Greer having a ridiculous game:
22 points (7-11 FG and 4-4 from 3)
6 assists
10 rebounds
1 steal
Also has 5 TOs though

Those guards are quick and tough.  Our frontcourt needs to bring it tomorrow. Exorcize the bad taste of last year’s tourney.

Mentzinger wrote:

Ralphie wrote:

I'm not sure I agree with the oft-heard casual assertion about the A-10 being weak this year, and destined for a single rep in the Tournament.   The fact that some erstwhile A-10 recent bottom feeders have had reasonably good years (Fordham, Duquesne, LaSalle, even GW) has, I believe, lifted the competitiveness level of the entire League by a significant margin.   It always seemed like there were at least 4-5 fairly easy pushovers in the League - not this year.   What we lacked in overall quality by having a truly runaway top team(s) (the usual Dayton,VCU,SLU roles....) has been MORE than made up for by the improvement at the bottom in my view.    While we may only get one NCAA Tournament rep (I think we get 2 with VCU already in), that does NOT mean our League is weak.

No one has VCU as an at-large. No one. It's a one bid league. It would be a zero bid league this year if that were allowed. I'd take a mid-grade Patriot or MAAC against this year's edition of VCU.
Rule of thumb: If GW is on top, the league sucks. But if the league sucks, that doesn't mean GW is on top.
Also consider: We're a charter member, once playing the West Virginia, Rutgers, Virginia Tech and Penn States of the world in the Smith Center, when the A-10 was legit A and 10. Those teams all destroyed us. Now we watch Duquesne and Fordham destroy us. Your preference? 
We will always need a gimmick, a cunning hire, a stroke of luck: MJ on his way up, KH enrolling Philadelphia's best non-qualifiers, Florida ceding an NIT home game because of renovations, a contested Adam Mitola runner in the lane as time expires, Goldwire's phantom elbow. We simply reject the idea that an urban university in a 75% Black city should be any good at basketball because (apologies to US News) "we're an academic school," while Georgetown prances away with a national title clad in Kinte cloth. It's maddening.
When we self-destruct in all the various well-documented ways we have, it's not because of the league. "We have met the enemy, and it is us." 
Your choices are Blue Fog or Truth and guess which wins. 

This is a remarkably grim post for the day BEFORE the first conference tournament game in the best year for GW MBB in years. Are you okay, Mentzinger?

Also 38 points in a conference game is pathetic. At least we didn't do that