I have two tickets available in section 106, row a, if anyone would like

Welcome to the life of mid-major basketball. I think hes doing just fine with player retention relative to what you could hope for. I would've loved to have Isiaha Mike this past season, who might just get drafted after declaring early. I wish Eric Williams was still here, but it's hard to pass up a big Pac 12 opportunity plus half this board treats him like a pariah or Judas or something. I wish we would've kept Miller or Buckley but our recruiting next year is very strong and neither of those 2 were cracking the starting lineup with the remaining players anyway. Idk what Tydus Verhoeven is up to but he was pretty fun to watch but again, is he starting over anybody here? He would've gotten a ton of minutes with Rotroff and Kelly injured but hes not as gifted offensively as any of the 3 big men that played.

I wish we werent such a stepping stone or I dont know why some promising players flamed out or left after only a year. But if the top 6 from last year arent leaving, this program is going to be very dangerous in 2021 and what more could you ask for given where we came from when KD was signed?

The NCAAs will be played behind essentially closed doors.

I imagine the NIT will follow suit and the Atlantic 10 will announce shortly after the Fordham GW game concludes

The NIT is run by the NCAA whereas the CBI is not. So far the NCAA itself hasnt made a move on anything

I wanted to compile a list of teams who will qualify as an NIT AQ after they lose as a #1 seed in their tournaments.

This list is meaningless, I think, if Duquesne does not beat Rhody - certainly so if they lose on Thursday - based on my guess as to where they sit on the bubble right now.

Radford (Big South)
Wright State (Horizon)
Northern Iowa (MVC) (on NCAA bubble)


#1 seeds in the finals tonight
Hofstra (CAA)
Colgate (Patriot)
North Dakota St. (Summit)

Note that since NEC regular season champ Merrimack is postseason ineligible, the NEC does not have an NIT AQ. Feel free to root against #1 seed Robert Morris tonight if your heart desires

That I will agree with.

Am I to understand then that if they're so great at defensive rebounding and terrible at offensive rebounding that their transition is non-existent?

Edit: their pace of play is above average so it's not like they grind to a halt. Do the guards just force a lot of backcourt steals? Admittedly I havent watched UR in conference play.

indygjm wrote:

I know RPI doesn't carry the weight it used to ... but still -

As of today, the Dukes have an RPI of 58.  Is it possible we could still make the NCAA with a weak OOC and some bad losses?  Thoughts?

No.

I'm going to use Torvik as a proxy for Kenpom because there is no subscription to access every team's stats.

Duquesne is ranked 90th. Amongst their losses are 9 point loss to 188, a 22! point loss to 153, loss to 187, and a home loss to 214.

VCU has a loss to the same 187 team and a home loss to 175. We have double their terrible losses and dont have a win against 44 (LSU) or 47 (yet, that's Richmond)  either.

Davidson is peculiar because they have a habit of beating the #@/! Out of bad teams, like 76, 187, 174, 121. They have more large margin losses than us but they are generally to much better teams and/or on the road. Our top 4 wins are basically a wash with theirs. Their worst losses are to 150 on the road, 159 on the road, 214 on the road, 242 on the road. They would be close to a wash on our worst 4 losses but theirs are all on the road and 3 of them were close. They're ranked 74

I will preface Minnesota by saying that despite their lofty metrics ranking, they dont belong in the NCAAs as they will be below .500. But their worst loss of the season is a lone Q3 loss to 86 or a road loss to 113 on the road. They've got wins against 8 (twice),11,14,19,66,67. They're in the Big 10 so it's really hard for us to compete with that and they get a multitude of chances but...that's a ton of great wins

With about 10 minutes left, Weathers got a charge called against him down 10, and Macro had this look on his face with his hands on his knees like "nothing is going our way. Were not getting bounces. Were not getting shots. Were not getting calls"

And I imagine that's not the only time in the 2nd half body language from a duke looked like that.

But they just. Kept. Fighting. They just kept digging.

It was like pulling teeth I'm sure. But they got it done. They got it done in 2 of the most hostile environments in the A10 in back to back weeks where we hadn't won in a combined 14 tries.

Unbelievable effort

Round 1 is tonight. Hope many of you make the trip up north for this. Go Dukes

townsonkid wrote:

Is VCU on spring break?

No. Purposefully or not, VCU's break is the week of the A10 tournament.

Idk why Duquesne always picks this week to be on Spring break and if they're considering other events that arent athletic-oriented, but if they dont have a specific reason, I really *really* wished they moved it to the A10 tourney week

Itll be senior day for VCU so it's already going to be kind of nuts in that building.

However as noted in the other thread VCU has some bad injury/personal luck this season and it will not be the same team that took down LSU.

VCU hasn't seen Carry yet - he sat out last year's game

No Dukes has played at the Siegel Center yet either.

Weve started off well the last 2 games against VCU - we had a 13 point lead in the first half the last time we played in Richmond and a 9 point lead in the first half in Palumbo last season.

Got to figure out how to keep that success for 40 minutes. We will quite possibly see some dueling press from both teams