THE BIG EAST CONFERENCE

[bluehenbillk]

Put it this way - the 76ers & Lakers game the other night got 20,510. You should know better than to pull a Wikipedia page as fact, "cmon man". 19,500? The Flyers draw more than that & you can fill more seats for basketball than hockey so that # is just plain wrong. SRO tickets - the Center doesn't sell SRO tickets technically, but if you are a suite holder (not a club box ticket holder) you can buy more tickets than seats. Typically most suites come with 12 tickets but they can get up to 50% extra (18 total in a 12 seats suite) if they want. All those tickets count in the # you hear. In reality, the # announced is ALWAYS more than the real #, which can be defined as the turnstyle count or more accurately as the industry calls it - the drop (not everyone with a ticket goes through a turnstyle or has their tix scanned).

I don't disagree, but it still puts the real capacity closer to the 21k range.

Yes - for basketball the real capacity is high 20's, say 20,500-20,800.

[vutomcat]

Well that was a sunny article. I think we'll need clenz's perspective since he can speak for the Creighton side of things since the article says Creighton is "... pretty underrated across the board". As great as last season was, the Big East was 5-6 in the NCAA tournament, with no team advancing to the Elite Eight, despite getting 6 teams in and getting very favorable seeds. So two years in a row the Big East has had awful (2013-14 season) and bad (2014-15 season) NCAA tournaments. That's where the true measure comes into play and the conference is coming up woefully short. The article says the new Big East is capable of producing "Final Four-quality teams". I think they'd settle for getting even one team into the Elite Eight. Baby steps.

Creighton sucks.

Will lose to MVC replacement Loyola (IL) this year...

The BIG game approaches...

[vutomcat]

Uh, they were "soft" because they weren't "hardened" through the rigors of a tough regular season. I'm not sure why you have such a hard time understanding that as I've said it over and over. Again, reading comprehension on your part is strangely lacking. Uber-talented team that doesn't get tested enough and then bombs out early in the tourney when they face less-talented teams who have had to scrape all year. That's been nova's MO now since they got left behind in the Big East. That's what makes Brunson so indispensable for them this year - he stays tough no matter the softness of the schedule (and once again, the OOC schedule isn't helping nova out as well - Oklahoma and UVA might be the only good, tough teams they see until they see someone in March.

Now I know you're trolling. Seriously, go watch Xavier, Providence, and Butler and get back to me on that statement.

Funny that you say Brunson is the difference-maker when they had someone better than him last year (Hilliard). Granted, Brunson has the higher ceiling, but at this point, Hilliard was and still is the better player.

Hilliard put up 31 in his last game for the Pistons.

[clenz]

Creighton sucks.

Will lose to MVC replacement Loyola (IL) this year...

The BIG game approaches...

AAAAANNNND....How'd that turn out?

sCUM fans think they are struggling because they are in a "better" league. It's pretty fucking clear to anyone not wearing that dumbass bird logo that Creighton would be a bottom 3 or 4 MVC program as well.

McDermott can't coach. He can't recruit. The sCUm president fucked their athletic teams over by leaving every single rival they had to chase some mythical catholic league and try to force rivalries with Marquette and a couple teams a couple thousand miles away.


Creighton's last lead of the game was 4-2, which came with 17:10 left in the first half. 9 seconds later Loyola hit a 3 to take the lead for good. Creighton had the lead for a total of 52 seconds in the game....against Loyola....who MVC fans hated as an attempt to replace Creighton.

Loyola has blown past Creighton and continues to climb, sCUm is in free fall. Once again, Mc$$$$'s record without UNI's HC Ben Jacobson on his bench or his son, the traitor, on the court is about 20-25 games under .500

The money chasing douche and sCUM deserve each other.

[vutomcat]

Thanks for not disappointing.

[clenz]

Thanks for not disappointing.

im not the big east come March

[vutomcat]

Thanks for not disappointing.

im not the big east come March

This year will be different than the last two.

[clenz]

[GannonFan]

Now I know you're trolling. Seriously, go watch Xavier, Providence, and Butler and get back to me on that statement.

Funny that you say Brunson is the difference-maker when they had someone better than him last year (Hilliard). Granted, Brunson has the higher ceiling, but at this point, Hilliard was and still is the better player.

Hilliard put up 31 in his last game for the Pistons.

Uh, dude, you do realize that the 31 points Hilliard scored for the "Pistons" was actually for the Grand Rapids Drive while playing in the NBA "D" League? They had to send him and another guy down there for a game because they were struggling to find minutes for either of them with the NBA team. Seriously, epic fail man.

http://www.mlive.com/drive/2015/12/pist ... cores.html

[tribe_pride]

Ouch

[Seahawks08]

Ouch

You can say that again.

[vutomcat]

I felt like I was watching the NC State game from last year. How does THIS team go 4-32 for three pointers? Wide open shots.

[GannonFan]

Life can be tough when venturing out of the relative safety of the Big East. On the bright side, it's only early December, we're still 3 months out from when things really matter.

[bluehenbillk]

Nova looked in mid-March form last night.

[vutomcat]

Villanova’s deceptive 3-point percentage

by Ken Pomeroy on Wednesday, December 9, 2015


Villanova has made just 28.4% of its 3-point attempts to date. They’ve also taken over half of their shots from beyond the arc. It’s a situation that was made more famous by its lopsided loss to Oklahoma, in which the Wildcats took a whopping 32 3-point attempts, making four.

If you didn’t know any better, you’d say that the Wildcats are a bad 3-point shooting team. But it’s only accurate to say they have been a poor 3-point shooting team. Based on what we know about the Wildcats’ personnel, they have at least a few good shooters who just haven’t shot well through the first eight games of the season.

Josh Hart has made 31% of his 3’s after hitting 40% over his first two seasons. Kris Jenkins has made 29% after hitting 37% prior to this season. Phil Booth is at 28% after a freshman season that saw him hit nearly half of his limited attempts.

We don’t have prior data for the freshman trio of Jalen Brunson, Donte DiVincenzo, and Mikal Bridges, who have combined to make just 22% of their shots. They could truly be poor shooters, and I’d imagine that as freshmen, they are a step down from the returning group. But there’s no way their true ability is to make 22% of their 3’s.

So based on what we know about the Villanova roster, the Wildcats will shoot better going forward. But even if we didn’t know anything about the roster, there’s enough information through eight games to suggest not only that Villanova will improve, but future opponents should assume they are a very good 3-point shooting team.

Looking back at mid-December stats from previous seasons, the following things predict a team’s 3-point shooting going forward, in order of importance:

T1. 3-point percentage
T1. 2-point percentage
3. FT percentage
4. 3-point attempt rate
5. Turnovers

Villanova has been really bad at one of these things (actual 3-point shooting), but the Wildcats have been downright dominant at the other four. They’ve been killing it on 2-pointers, ranking sixth-nationally at 58.3%. And at this point in the season 2-point percentage is just as important as 3-point percentage in predicting future 3-point percentage. Their free throw percentage ranks 85th. They have the third-highest 3-point rate and their turnover rate is third-best in the country.

In using these stats to predict future 3-point percentage this season, Villanova has the 36th-best projection going forward at 36.3%. Oddly, this is exactly the same projection for Oklahoma, who made 14-of-26 long-range attempts against Villanova, raising its season total to an incredible 46.5%.

Keep in mind, this is just a dumb regression that doesn’t directly consider personnel. Given what we know about Villanova’s most frequent shooters, one can reasonably have more confidence that the Wildcats are just going through a phase. Any future opponents would be unwise to assume that Villanova has been afflicted with some sort of permanent shooting disease or that Jay Wright is thinking about abandoning his 4-out approach.

Three-point shooting is prone to a lot of variation from game to game. And in order to predict future 3-point shooting this early in the season, we need more information than a team’s actual 3-point percentage to date. Three-point attempt percentage is more stable at this point, and teams that take a lot of 3’s are probably decent at 3-point shooting. And it’s a particularly bold statement to take a bunch of 3’s while being a very good 2-point shooting team. That team is expecting to make its 3’s at a very high rate.

Well, that describes Villanova. And while it’s unusual for a good shooting team to go through an eight-game slump, it’s not impossible. I’ll take the Wildcats as an above-average 3-point shooting team going forward. And there’s a decent chance they shoot it better than an Oklahoma team that just burned up the nets in their presence.

[GannonFan]

Don't worry, the conference schedule starts soon and nova will start lighting it up once they get to play exclusively Big East teams.

[vutomcat]

Life can be tough when venturing out of the relative safety of the Big East. On the bright side, it's only early December, we're still 3 months out from when things really matter.

7-1 outside the big east.

Wow! epic mistake dude.

[GannonFan]

Life can be tough when venturing out of the relative safety of the Big East. On the bright side, it's only early December, we're still 3 months out from when things really matter.

7-1 outside the big east.

Wow! epic mistake dude.

Hey, fine, have it your way - not only does nova play in a bubble in the Big East, their OOC schedule isn't very tough either. Before Oklahoma, the best team they played was Akron. Not surprisingly they weren't very well prepared for the rigors of playing Oklahoma then. I was trying to be kind to nova, but apparently we both agree, the schedule in and out of the conference is weak.

Oh, speaking of epic failures, how did Darrun Hilliard do last night? Still lighting up the scoreboard for the Pistons? You seem to have the pulse of it, so let's hear it.

[clenz]

Mostly....

Fuck Creighton

[Seahawks08]

7-1 outside the big east.

Wow! epic mistake dude.

Hey, fine, have it your way - not only does nova play in a bubble in the Big East, their OOC schedule isn't very tough either. Before Oklahoma, the best team they played was Akron. Not surprisingly they weren't very well prepared for the rigors of playing Oklahoma then. I was trying to be kind to nova, but apparently we both agree, the schedule in and out of the conference is weak.

Oh, speaking of epic failures, how did Darrun Hilliard do last night? Still lighting up the scoreboard for the Pistons? You seem to have the pulse of it, so let's hear it.

Nova has a better SOS than UK, KU, UVA, OU, ISU, MSU, UM (maryland), and UL just to name a few. But yea, they have a weak OOC schedule.

[tribe_pride]

SoS is a tricky thing. Nova doesn't play a lot of bad teams which helps their SoS. OOC for bad teams they only play FDU, ETSU, LaSalle, Delaware and Penn for bad teams (worse than Expected 180 RPI). Therefore, SoS will be good.

The problem is they only play UVA and Oklahoma OOC that are very strong teams and over the past few years, the BE teams have not been up to snuff to be able to prepare them for the Tourney once they get to the Tourney. Can Xavier be that team this year and can other teams step up?

[vutomcat]

SoS is a tricky thing. Nova doesn't play a lot of bad teams which helps their SoS. OOC for bad teams they only play FDU, ETSU, LaSalle, Delaware and Penn for bad teams (worse than Expected 180 RPI). Therefore, SoS will be good.

The problem is they only play UVA and Oklahoma OOC that are very strong teams and over the past few years, the BE teams have not been up to snuff to be able to prepare them for the Tourney once they get to the Tourney. Can Xavier be that team this year and can other teams step up?

I can understand that theory and maybe it has merit. But, the only surprise in the last two years was the NC State game. The year before they lost to UCONN who won the whole tourney. I'm not sure you can draw this conclusion based on one game where they shot poorly and still had a chance to win the game at the end.

Sadly, Ennis probably would have stayed at Nova had the shot gone in. From everything I have heard he took it very hard.

[vutomcat]

AP Poll

1 Michigan State Spartans (64) 11-0 1,621
2 Kansas Jayhawks (1) 8-1 1,499
3 Oklahoma Sooners 7-0 1,409
4 Kentucky Wildcats 9-1 1,385
5 Iowa State Cyclones 9-0 1,370
6 Maryland Terrapins 9-1 1,353
7 Duke Blue Devils 8-1 1,271
8 Virginia Cavaliers 8-1 1,132
9 Purdue Boilermakers 11-0 1,082
10 Xavier Musketeers 10-0 1,062
11 North Carolina Tar Heels 7-2 1,023
12 Villanova Wildcats 8-1 865
13 Arizona Wildcats 9-1 860
14 Providence Friars 10-1 724
15 Miami-Florida Hurricanes 8-1 622
16 Baylor Bears 7-1 605
17 Butler Bulldogs 8-1 562

[dbackjon]

AP Poll

1 Michigan State Spartans (64) 11-0 1,621
2 Kansas Jayhawks (1) 8-1 1,499
3 Oklahoma Sooners 7-0 1,409
4 Kentucky Wildcats 9-1 1,385
5 Iowa State Cyclones 9-0 1,370
6 Maryland Terrapins 9-1 1,353
7 Duke Blue Devils 8-1 1,271
8 Virginia Cavaliers 8-1 1,132
9 Purdue Boilermakers 11-0 1,082
10 Xavier Musketeers 10-0 1,062
11 North Carolina Tar Heels 7-2 1,023
12 Villanova Wildcats 8-1 865
13 Arizona Wildcats 9-1 860
14 Providence Friars 10-1 724
15 Miami-Florida Hurricanes 8-1 622
16 Baylor Bears 7-1 605
17 Butler Bulldogs 8-1 562

Three in top 10 now.

None of them are the bluebloods of the Big East.

[clenz]

How about UNC-Ashville?