Around the CAA

[Tiger93 299]

First, I want to acknowledge that this is stupid exercise and it is way too early to do this. However, in the same breath I like to constantly monitor the RPI and NET to see what the trends are saying, and since I don't see the NET out yet here is what we have in the RPI area so far.

https://www.cbssports.com/college-basketball/rankings/rpi/

Obviously these will fluctuate wildly, but I think it is important to keep our eye on, and we clearly have two and probably four more good out of conference RPI opportunities left (I have to believe Clemson and UNI will shoot up later if for no other reason their conference quality). 

Towson sits at a very respectable 67 as of November 28. Our out of conference opponents RPI so far are:
30 - Bryant, 51 - Navy, 59 - UMass (win), 73 - Coppin State (win), 139 - South Alabama (win), 142 - Penn (win), 187 - UNC-G (win), 203 - Clemson, 244 - Fairfield (loss), 275 - Mercer (win), 301 - Northern Iowa, 319 - Albany (win), 350 - Long Island  

Here is the rest of our conference, and I think some on here are not respecting the top enough. However, the bottom is pretty bad so far. I expect Delaware and Drexel to move up somewhat, and maybe Northeastern, but the rest might be a lost cause. 

Rank   Team
2        Charleston
9        Hofstra
43      UNC-Wilmington
222    Delaware
226    William & Mary
240    Drexel
298    Monmouth
304    Northeastern
320    Hampton
339    NC A&T
351    Elon
363    Stony Brook

 

Edited November 28, 2022 by Tiger93

[TuTigers2012 1,061]

1 hour ago, Tiger93 said:

First, I want to acknowledge that this is stupid exercise and it is way too early to do this. However, in the same breath I like to constantly monitor the RPI and NET to see what the trends are saying, and since I don't see the NET out yet here is what we have in the RPI area so far.

https://www.cbssports.com/college-basketball/rankings/rpi/

Obviously these will fluctuate wildly, but I think it is important to keep our eye on, and we clearly have two and probably four more good out of conference RPI opportunities left (I have to believe Clemson and UNI will shoot up later if for no other reason their conference quality). 

Towson sits at a very respectable 67 as of November 28. Our out of conference opponents RPI so far are:
30 - Bryant, 51 - Navy, 59 - UMass (win), 73 - Coppin State (win), 139 - South Alabama (win), 142 - Penn (win), 187 - UNC-G (win), 203 - Clemson, 244 - Fairfield (loss), 275 - Mercer (win), 301 - Northern Iowa, 319 - Albany (win), 350 - Long Island  

Here is the rest of our conference, and I think some on here are not respecting the top enough. However, the bottom is pretty bad so far. I expect Delaware and Drexel to move up somewhat, and maybe Northeastern, but the rest might be a lost cause. 

Rank   Team
2        Charleston
9        Hofstra
43      UNC-Wilmington
222    Delaware
226    William & Mary
240    Drexel
298    Monmouth
304    Northeastern
320    Hampton
339    NC A&T
351    Elon
363    Stony Brook

 

The first NET rankings usually comes out mid December.  
Good RPI and NET rankings are nice but doesn’t really mean anything for us or the caa. No one is getting an at large.  The only thing that matters is being the best team in the CAAT. Playing and winning road and neutral sites helps your ranking and we have done well in those settings the last two years.

The league is super top heavy. Delaware will rise too. They had a worse stinker Early on than we did. The bottom is BAD. you can’t have half the conference in the bottom 60 teams. 

[Tiger93 299]

12 minutes ago, TuTigers2012 said:

The first NET rankings usually comes out mid December.  
Good RPI and NET rankings are nice but doesn’t really mean anything for us or the caa. No one is getting an at large.  The only thing that matters is being the best team in the CAAT. Playing and winning road and neutral sites helps your ranking and we have done well in those settings the last two years.

The league is super top heavy. Delaware will rise too. They had a worse stinker Early on than we did. The bottom is BAD. you can’t have half the conference in the bottom 60 teams. 

I can't disagree more. I know an at-large big is a pretty remote shot, but the purpose of the first part of the season when you have a good team no matter what is to stack up the resume to try to at least give yourself a shot. I don't think we have a shot, but if you look at Charleston's resume and their current rating they are in that spot and that is really what we should all aspire to do as well if we can.

I agree that our conference is so mediocre that putting together a resume like Charleston's requires that you only lose two or less conference games to hope for an at-large. They also need to hope teams like Richmond, Colorado State, Virginia Tech and Davidson do some heavy-lifting for them and play well in their respective conferences. Heck, Kent State was very close to beating Houston a few days after they lost to Charleston. That would have been a huge help to their NET/RPI. 

My point being is this stuff is not irrelevant to our conference, but until somewhat does it again like the VCU/George Mason days it seems like a reach. It really takes the perfect storm of all the positive factors coming together and very little margin of error. Hofstra and Charleston have put themselves in good position so far to take a crack it. Our loss to Fairfield pretty much made it impossible (if it ever was possible, which it probably wasn't) for us to do it, but it is still worth building up a good resume. The other part of it is whoever makes the NCAA Tournament from the automatic bid is not condemned to a 15 or 16 seed because they come from the CAA. Our resume last year would have gotten us a 13 or a 12. These games are all very relevant to the entire puzzle of our season.

I do agree that the bottom of this conference is such crap this year, that it makes it really hard to keep an RPI/Net ranking high, and it allows for zero slip up. However, the top of this conference is getting better and I do predict Monmouth and Stony Brook will put their weight and be good additions in 2-3 years. 

[TuTigers2012 1,061]

46 minutes ago, Tiger93 said:

I can't disagree more. I know an at-large big is a pretty remote shot, but the purpose of the first part of the season when you have a good team no matter what is to stack up the resume to try to at least give yourself a shot. I don't think we have a shot, but if you look at Charleston's resume and their current rating they are in that spot and that is really what we should all aspire to do as well if we can.

I agree that our conference is so mediocre that putting together a resume like Charleston's requires that you only lose two or less conference games to hope for an at-large. They also need to hope teams like Richmond, Colorado State, Virginia Tech and Davidson do some heavy-lifting for them and play well in their respective conferences. Heck, Kent State was very close to beating Houston a few days after they lost to Charleston. That would have been a huge help to their NET/RPI. 

My point being is this stuff is not irrelevant to our conference, but until somewhat does it again like the VCU/George Mason days it seems like a reach. It really takes the perfect storm of all the positive factors coming together and very little margin of error. Hofstra and Charleston have put themselves in good position so far to take a crack it. Our loss to Fairfield pretty much made it impossible (if it ever was possible, which it probably wasn't) for us to do it, but it is still worth building up a good resume. The other part of it is whoever makes the NCAA Tournament from the automatic bid is not condemned to a 15 or 16 seed because they come from the CAA. Our resume last year would have gotten us a 13 or a 12. These games are all very relevant to the entire puzzle of our season.

I do agree that the bottom of this conference is such crap this year, that it makes it really hard to keep an RPI/Net ranking high, and it allows for zero slip up. However, the top of this conference is getting better and I do predict Monmouth and Stony Brook will put their weight and be good additions in 2-3 years. 

I’m not saying these games and results don’t matter in ooc. A lot of wins is nice but a lot of wins as a caa team doesn’t give you anything at the end of the year unless you handle business is march.  19-15 works for me if it means we go to the tournament. 
 

Charleston is an interesting case but 8-9 games against wm Elon Hampton A &T and stony Brook are gonna crush whatever rating they had. Win or lose. NET takes into account how much you win by and where the games are played.  Charleston leaves the Carolina’s one time from their first game through January 19th, with that one coincidentally enough, against us 

[Tiger93 299]

2 hours ago, TuTigers2012 said:

I’m not saying these games and results don’t matter in ooc. A lot of wins is nice but a lot of wins as a caa team doesn’t give you anything at the end of the year unless you handle business is march.  19-15 works for me if it means we go to the tournament. 
 

Charleston is an interesting case but 8-9 games against wm Elon Hampton A &T and stony Brook are gonna crush whatever rating they had. Win or lose. NET takes into account how much you win by and where the games are played.  Charleston leaves the Carolina’s one time from their first game through January 19th, with that one coincidentally enough, against us 

I am not talking about a lot of wins, I am talking about quality wins. I agree ultimately the tournament is the main goal, but to me the three days in March thing is a limited conversation. If we have a good team and we show we can beat teams like Bryant, Northern Iowa, UMass, Navy and Clemson (I know we won't beat all of them and we have to play a lot better to beat the ones we haven't played yet). The conference holds you back in some ways, but there are a lot of things we can do out of conference to be ranked higher (which can lead to being seeded better if you make it) and that is just as much part of the conversation of holding this program to higher standard as the just win three games in March is I believe. 

I will stop beating a dead horse, because I know even though in a lot of ways we are saying he same things we will never agree on the principle that if a team wins the right games out of conference and takes care of business in a dominant way in this conference it puts you in better position to be a team that can have NCAA Tournament success.

Of course, I realize just getting there is the goal first, but it would be a lot more fun with the type of resume we had last year if we could actually have a shot to win the first game. It also would help us built up our overall reputation in a way that just making it once as a 15 or 16 seed will not do. I want to hold our program to that standard, and will continue to do so. 

First thing is first on all of our minds, and that is can this team get back to the high level that we were playing at last year. The way May and Conway played yesterday offered some encouragement, but I just haven't seen the high level we reached last year when Nolan Jr. and Cam were playing at a high level. It just made things so much easier for Charles Thompson and Nick Timberlake.

As I said last year, this team is a lot better when we don't need those guys to put up big numbers, but they can do so as complements to other options. Cam did his part this past weekend, but we need others to step up to make this a more well-rounded team. I think we can get there, but we aren't really close at this point. We are still good though, and it will be fun to see where this team goes this year. I am already planning trips to ChiTown for the Northern Iowa game and possibly Rhode Island for the Bryant game. It is fun to actually want to go see this team play. It hasn't always been easy to have that pride, despite all our deep commitment to rooting for this program. 

Edited November 29, 2022 by Tiger93

[TuTigers2012 1,061]

1-1 night. Wm gets blown out by nc state and Charleston blows out ODU. Looks like the cougars will be coming to Tiger town on New Year’s Eve 12-1 with their only loss at unc opening night 

[Tiger93 299]

I know this is dumb to talk about this early, but the CAA has 4 teams (Charleston 3, Hofstra 9, UNC-W 44 and Towson 66) in the top 70 of the RPI right now. Only the ACC (8), SEC (7), Big 12 (6), WCC (5), Big Ten (5) and Mountain West (4) have more or the same at this point. This will obviously change, especially with the awful bottom of our conference, but just worth noting early on in the season. 

I could probably do a similarly pessimistic stat about the bottom of the conference, but I will keep it positive for now. Feels like we are rough a little more than halfway or halfway through the non-conference schedules, and so far it is good to see that the top teams in our conference have scheduled well and done a solid job of taking care of business. Still, a lot more to go and has been pointed out Towson has some really tough games coming up and is still trying to round into form. 

[TTiger2024 63]

13 hours ago, TuTigers2012 said:

1-1 night. Wm gets blown out by nc state and Charleston blows out ODU. Looks like the cougars will be coming to Tiger town on New Year’s Eve 12-1 with their only loss at unc opening night 

And they played UNC very close for a bit in that one.....ugg

[TuTigers2012 1,061]

34 minutes ago, TTiger2024 said:

And they played UNC very close for a bit in that one.....ugg

Yes. They are a deep and balanced. 9 guys average 6 points or more and 14 plus minutes a game. 
thankfully them not playing on the road much and a sleepy small secu crowd will put them to sleep 

[TuTigers2012 1,061]

NC A&T gets their first win of the year, against common opponent uncg. Now stony brook, Elon, Monmouth and Hampton are the winless teams. 
Hofstra loses to mason and two players in the process. 
Uncw can play some D. 

3-4 night.

our ooc so far has been brutally bad besides umass and penn