FAM wrote:

Added;
Dayton won, George Mason Won, St Joseph lost n
Loyola is playing at 11:00 PM. All NIT games.

Dayton almost blew it near the end of the game. A couple timely 3's helped them avoid a last second lose. They couldn't play on their home court even though they were the number one because they are hosting the NCAA this year. 

Gee, remarkable that the #2, #3 and #4 seeds in the A10 tourney all won their NIT games, while the 5,6 and 8 seeds all lost. It has nothing to do with talent, but whether they played uptempo.

Repeating myself for at least the 10th time, I really wish that this board had an ignore feature. That wish might be higher on my list than getting a quality point guard.

PhoenixRising2 wrote:

Gee, remarkable that the #2, #3 and #4 seeds in the A10 tourney all won their NIT games, while the 5,6 and 8 seeds all lost. It has nothing to do with talent, but whether they played uptempo.

Repeating myself for at least the 10th time, I really wish that this board had an ignore feature. That wish might be higher on my list than getting a quality point guard.

I guess I didn't get my point across, too wordy on that RE comparison, But you just pointed out two of my points. Does Kent State really have more talent than DU? No. We lost at St.B. at their court  Yet, Kent State ran right over them on St.B.'s court? Uptempo did win that game.  And yes, get a quality point guard, but it's  likely will not mean that much if the Dukes don't play more aggressive on offense. Am I the only one that notice that several teams we did beat are in post season and we are not because of our over-all record.  We didn't lose because of defense, we lost because of little offense.   

NapaDuke wrote:

PhoenixRising2 wrote:

Gee, remarkable that the #2, #3 and #4 seeds in the A10 tourney all won their NIT games, while the 5,6 and 8 seeds all lost. It has nothing to do with talent, but whether they played uptempo.

Repeating myself for at least the 10th time, I really wish that this board had an ignore feature. That wish might be higher on my list than getting a quality point guard.

I guess I didn't get my point across, too wordy on that RE comparison, But you just pointed out two of my points. Does Kent State really have more talent than DU? No. We lost at St.B. at their court  Yet, Kent State ran right over them on St.B.'s court? Uptempo did win that game.  And yes, get a quality point guard, but it's  likely will not mean that much if the Dukes don't play more aggressive on offense. Am I the only one that notice that several teams we did beat are in post season and we are not because of our over-all record.  We didn't lose because of defense, we lost because of little offense.   

In conference, the teams with the fastest tempo were Rhode Island, UMass, Fordham and La Salle; that worked out well for those teams.

Are you really sure that the Dukes had superior talent than Kent State?  It’s much, much closer than you think. Many of us greatly overvalue the talent on this year’s team (and undervalued the immense loss of talent from last year’s team).

Agreed, the Dukes didn’t lose because of defense. They lost because they didn’t have good enough players. There was not one player on this team that you could consistently count on to get a bucket at the end of a tight game. They need to get better players, especially at guard.

Well said Phil!  I’ve been trying to point this out on the Board all season.  This team did not have the offensive shot makers and finishers to try and run, run,run as some have suggested.  That strategy would have been disastrous.  The Dukes were offensively challenged and played a style that gave them a chance to win almost every game.  Failure to close out games turned the season from a winner to a loser.  Without DAE DAE and Tre Clark the offense and big-play potential was lacking.  Trying to run with opponents would not have been the answer. 
VCU is going down right now, really due to a lack of offensive playmakers.  In this Tournament you need guys who can score!  That’s why Duquesne last year was a more dangerous team than VCU in 2025!  So The Dukes and Dayton made bonus money for the A-10 by winning in the Tourney!  A-10 darling VCU fails again!

VCU lost in the first round to BYU. NCAA
80-71

That’s true, but the zone will bother teams that can’t shoot!

levon1975 wrote:

Drake plays beautiful offense and beats Missouri, despite shooting Free Throws like Duquesne!

First year in D-1, Ben McCollum certainly has some coaching chops. All that success in D-2 certainly translated well; the man can coach and recruit. Hope Drake can keep him for another year (their previous coach, DeVries, did well moving onto WVU for a year and then onto Indiana).

What a showing for Bobby Mo.

UCONN let it slip away in the last 2 plus minutes. Just a couple of rim-outs and some lucky threes got Florida the last minute win. All game it looked like UCONN was about to pull away. Just didn't happen.

Loyola and Kent State both won and face each other next in the NIT. With Kent State beating Stanford, only Duke remains in post season for the ACC. How many times did that ever happen before. 

https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/college/columnist/dan-wolken/2025/03/30/mens-ncaa-tournament-final-four-ken-pomeroy/82734840007/

That’s really a done deal at this point.  The plan to allow P-4 to rob the talent from Mid-Majors prevents the smaller programs from building a program with their own players for four years.  These veteran teams were sometimes capable of beating p-4 schools whose best players often left early for the NBA.  So they ended up with younger inexperienced players that could be beaten by a veteran mid -major team. P-4 didn’t like that so they dismantled the system.