Pop..

[dore74]

Truth be told we lost to some cupcakes and were so not-so-good early on that many of us were beginning to look for a new coach. We then lost by a million points to 'bama. And then we became a different team--but we won a number of those games by the skin of our nose (clutch or not).
The NET and committee clearly gave weight to fundamentals in a sabermetrics sort of way and much less to results and momentum and, as Dickie V say how we looked. I'd also agree with him that had VU been a blue blood this might not have mattered, but we are not.
I don't think we need to schedule a bunch of lesser ranked teams, we simply need to beat those that we schedule (by a lot) and as they say take care of our business. We also need to look at ourselves and figure out how not to start off so slowly in order to win these games. Momentum at the end is clearly not enough.
None of this is to minimize the fact that we were totally screwed over this year.

[Dore2Dore]

Bummed! Definitely not the best teams. FWIW - Ladies selection chair said ut women got 4 seed (play 2 home games) due to how finished season despite early season struggles, but mens selection used pure analytics with NET against our guys! They just use whatever convenient to support their selections. We just need to play their analytics game next year!

[buffy]

We had to build a different kind of team from the one we had with Scottie. That took longer than we would have liked. That's why the whole 'body of work' crap gets to me. It's BS. The season is about what you built through the season. It's subjective. As much as that sucks to some people, it's real. What kind of team are you at the end.

[Dsdore]

We had to build a different kind of team from the one we had with Scottie. That took longer than we would have liked. That's why the whole 'body of work' crap gets to me. It's BS. The season is about what you built through the season. It's subjective. As much as that sucks to some people, it's real. What kind of team are you at the end.

Amen.

[Obvious]

We had to build a different kind of team from the one we had with Scottie. That took longer than we would have liked. That's why the whole 'body of work' crap gets to me. It's BS. The season is about what you built through the season. It's subjective. As much as that sucks to some people, it's real. What kind of team are you at the end.

This is a great post.

[GoheenFan88]

We had to build a different kind of team from the one we had with Scottie. That took longer than we would have liked. That's why the whole 'body of work' crap gets to me. It's BS. The season is about what you built through the season. It's subjective. As much as that sucks to some people, it's real. What kind of team are you at the end.

Nailed it

[underdog74]

BS!

[cjdore]

I release that the NCAA can make a sane man a bit crazy but I would argue a very different argument. Corbs schedules elite teams to start the season and mixes in a few local cupcakes before SEC starts. If VU Basketball does what many on here are proposing the we would schedule 15 cupcakes to start the season. I will start with these points:

1) How many fans would show up to watch these cupcake games?.....not I
2) How would a bunch of cupcake games prepare us for the rigors of SEC play?
3) I would further argue that we were good at the end of the season because we were challenged early in the season.

[GoheenFan88]

I release that the NCAA can make a sane man a bit crazy but I would argue a very different argument. Corbs schedules elite teams to start the season and mixes in a few local cupcakes before SEC starts. If VU Basketball does what many on here are proposing the we would schedule 15 cupcakes to start the season. I will start with these points:

1) How many fans would show up to watch these cupcake games?.....not I
2) How would a bunch of cupcake games prepare us for the rigors of SEC play?
3) I would further argue that we were good at the end of the season because we were challenged early in the season.

I agree with 1-3 under the old way to get a ncaa bid but the precedent they just set blowing out cupcakes is more important than being prepared for the rigors of SEC play as we just saw 3 teams with losing or worse records in conference all got bids over us.

Don’t get me wrong I prefer the way you laid out but it is what it is now.

[mathguy]

In previous years this is a NCAA team hands down regardless those early season losses. My point is if they are going to put so much on early season now then where is the incentive to schedule anyone decent at all?

I get your point, but it is a poor one, as we lost to two bad teams, in Southern Miss and Grambling state, and if you play bad teams you need to go undefeated.

Well, addendum. If you play teams that everyone thinks are bad you need to go undefeated. UK's Q4 loss at home to South Carolina didn't seem to hurt them ... but then, S. Carolina isn't a "bad" team, they're a "bad SEC team", so that's OK. Even though it is really debatable whether a bad S. Carolina team is actually better than a 1st place in their conference bad Grambling team.

I'm still bitter.

I'm sorry, but the logic does not compute for me. We were punished because on January 1st the committee already "knew" we were not a tournament team. Where as Arkansas/Auburn/Miss St were teams the committee already "knew" we tournament teams (or at least tournament contenders).

There is nothing that has been said to convince me that the "body of work" of Miss St is better than ours.

All I got is that the committee chose to punish bad losses more than reward good wins (which sorta explains Kansas at #3 overall). But that's just stupid.

For years it's been who did you play. Who did you beat.

And now it's no who did you beat, but who did you not lose to.

Stupid.

[VU1970]

I would hope (and it's a faint hope) that after what happened to Vanderbilt this season, the NCAA will take a new look at the selection process.

But the team doesn't have the luxury of time off to sulk. Here's hoping they make the best of the situation and come out Tuesday ready to play winning basketball.

Yale lost by 10 to Kentucky at Rupp.

[bornadore57]

So, I'm wondering what minimum change in our results would have gotten us in the NCAA. If we had simply beaten Grambling and lost to Alabama by just 10, would we have been in?

I also wonder how Liam's injury may have entered into the decision. (At the same time, I'm amazed at how the loss of Liam did not impact the team more. How did we adjust to losing him at Kentucky on-the-fly? Then we bounced back immediately to beat Mississippi State, LSU, and Kentucky without him. Pretty amazing, to me.)

[OldDude]

The whole philosophy of the NET is grotesque. Say my kid starts school and has a C average in 1st through 5th grade (easy work). Then matures and begins to understand how to study and perform in the classroom. In 6th through 12th, he averages a 3.85 / 4 in a very tough private school. Using the NET approach, the kid doesn't deserve to be admitted to the VUs, Dukes or Stanfords of the world because his early learning phase was rocky. Conversely, if he is A+ year 1 through 5, but a C student 6 through 12, he should be Ivy league material ? This is a degree of stupid hard to comprehend.

Jason, I really enjoy your posts and read them carefully, learning a lot. In this conversation, I think the disagreement is that you are explaining (and it seems very well) the NET system. However, the majority of us seem of the opinion that the system seems to have been designed by that low achieving 5th grader.


















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[fldore]

I release that the NCAA can make a sane man a bit crazy but I would argue a very different argument. Corbs schedules elite teams to start the season and mixes in a few local cupcakes before SEC starts. If VU Basketball does what many on here are proposing the we would schedule 15 cupcakes to start the season. I will start with these points:

1) How many fans would show up to watch these cupcake games?.....not I
2) How would a bunch of cupcake games prepare us for the rigors of SEC play?
3) I would further argue that we were good at the end of the season because we were challenged early in the season.

I agree with 1-3 under the old way to get a ncaa bid but the precedent they just set blowing out cupcakes is more important than being prepared for the rigors of SEC play as we just saw 3 teams with losing or worse records in conference all got bids over us.

Don’t get me wrong I prefer the way you laid out but it is what it is now.

The assumption of course is that we would have blown out the cupcakes on our schedule. With the way we were playing early on the reality is we might have actually lost another game or two to a bad team and our out of conference could have hurt us more. The NET calculations seem to measure the performance of each individual game based on opponent, point difference, location, etc... A one point loss to the top ranked team on the road is likely worth more than a 30 point win over a nobody at home. And it clearly looks at the whole body of work and doesnt favor end of season.

So yes more cupcakes would have led to more wins, but playing poorly against cupcakes wouldn't have helped. At the end of the day we just needed to play better earlier.

[Obvious]

Has anyone heard any comments from Stack or the team about not being selected? I’m interested in what they have to say about it.

[GoheenFan88]

So if you have a young team or the team needs time to gell and figure out lineups that work you are basically screwed unless you play someone you are vastly superior than.

Unless I’m missing something that’s why it’s too much of a risk to not play teams in nonconference that you could have a off night and still win by 20.

[dcdore]

Has anyone heard any comments from Stack or the team about not being selected? I’m interested in what they have to say about it.

Ty tweeted a broken heart emoji.

[VirginiaDore]

Stack blamed it on the margin of the loss to Alabama in an interview with ESPN. Said it’s hard to get a bid with a loss of that degree.

[docdore]

Stack blamed it on the margin of the loss to Alabama in an interview with ESPN. Said it’s hard to get a bid with a loss of that degree.

that's not all it was, of course, but that makes some sense. i'm with those who think our loss of our best player shortly before selections was likely also a factor in our verdict. those issues combined with a sub-meh pre-conference record apparently created a perfect storm of negativity in selectors' (and their computers') minds.....in spite of our fantastic late run and the opinions of us wearing gold-tinted spectacles. now...beat yale (and michigan and clemson)!!

[Obvious]

Stack blamed it on the margin of the loss to Alabama in an interview with ESPN. Said it’s hard to get a bid with a loss of that degree.

that's not all it was, of course, but that makes some sense. i'm with those who think our loss of our best player shortly before selections was likely also a factor in our verdict. those issues combined with a sub-meh pre-conference record apparently created a perfect storm of negativity in selectors' (and their computers') minds.....in spite of our fantastic late run and the opinions of us wearing gold-tinted spectacles. now...beat yale (and michigan and clemson)!!

If it was the margin then it’s a double edged sword. Had Lawrence played that game and we had a closer loss then Lawrence would not have got the message. He was arguably our best player for the final 12 games. There is no 10-2 run without the Alabama embarrassment imho. It probably did us in but was it necessary for the future, yes. Beat Yale.