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I'm sure people will want to ignore this after the Oakland game, but Kyletology has us as a 14 seed vs. Duke in Greenville. Let me just state that this is the least favorable match up by location we've had this season. Let's win out, hope a couple single bid leagues put in a low RPI team and then we can move up to a 13 seed. No one on the 4 line scares me. (SMU, Purdue, Florida St. and Cincinnati). That said I don't want a Big 12 team. West Virginia looks super dangerous, especially against a turnover prone team like us


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I don't wish ill on anyone. But I hope Mark Emmerts steak is cooked incorrectly tonight.

I hope it's made with mad cow meat. And by that he I hope eats some brain.

UT Arlington as a 12 seed and we feel back to a 14 seed... 

Their Strength of Schedule is ranked at 145 and ours is 193.
Their RPI is at 41 and ours is at 70.
Their KenPom is at 70 and ours is at 96.
Hell the Sun Belt is ranked the 13th conference and HL is ranked 17th.

The only thing I can find them where they are ranked ahead of us is WarrenNolan (36 vs. 48)

We don't need to go undefeated in Michigan in February.  We need to go undefeated in Michigan in March.  This would be a great game to go out, lay the proverbial egg, get trounced and rest the starters.

I'd prefer we trounce them, rest the starters and then go to Detroit.

You guys want a rematch? How about #14 seed Valpo vs. #3 seed Florida St. in Orlando.

Also I'll reveal my top 16 seeds. Guess what, my bracket is literally 1 vs 16 and 2 vs 15 so on etc. I have no idea what the NCAA is thinking about basing theirs off location or whatever. I've included where their first round location would be, something the NCAA would never do.

1.   Villanova, Buffalo, N.Y.
2.   Gonzaga, Sacramento, Calif.
3.   Baylor, Tulsa, Okla.
4.   Kansas, Tulsa, Okla.
5.   Louisville, Indianapolis
6.   Florida, Orlando, Fla.
7.   Kentucky, Indianapolis
8.   North Carolina, Greenville, S.C.
9.   Virginia, Greenville, S.C.
10.   Oregon, Sacramento, Calif.
11.   Arizona, Salt Lake City
12.   Florida St., Orlando, Fla.
13.   SMU, Salt Lake City
14.   Duke, Buffalo, N.Y.
15.   Purdue, Milwaukee
16.   Cincinnati, Milwaukee

Years down the road we will get the answers from an episode of Union Street Hoops.

Only 4 more episodes until we get to the Jubril episode.

One of the things I'm tracking is our magic number to clinching the #1 seed for the HL Tourney. That number is currently 4, but if we win on Friday it'll be down to 2 and we'll have essentially clinched a top 2 seed.

[won't be naked.]

Anyone have word on Jubril's status for tomorrow?  Hoping to see him back in action.  I think that could be a huge motivating factor for the team going into the final stretch of the season. 

I heard great news. Jubril will be dressed and ready to play. Whether that includes a Valpo uniform or the warm up gear is not known. I do know he won't be naked.

Oh, did you think I meant Jubril was going to play-----maybe YES, maybe no.

Excellent news, if true. Even a rusty Jubril will have to be defended.  So completely sick of gimmick defenses by crap teams that we would blow out if they had to play honest defense - box-and-1, or 5 defenders guarding 4 players with J/D's man free ranging all over the place.

Someone doesn't understand jokes...

"In the "Take this for what it's worth" category: Peters was wearing Adekoya's jersey today and Adekoya was wearing Peters' jersey. #HLMBB"

I mean I guess that's a way to get Jubril back into the flow of things and Alec some rest, let Jubril come back and play disguised as Alec.

Here's the current look at the standings. Interesting factoid: We lost on the road to the best home team in the conference and we lost at home to the best road team in the conference. The rest of our road schedule is 10-10 at home and NKU is 3-1. The rest of our home schedule is 4-13. It's not an easy schedule, but it's by no means a murder's row.

Do any have us losing and put Green Bay in the bracket?  Saturday really soured me on looking ahead.   

I'm wondering if our players have been looking at those brackets. I got caught up in it myself.

No, but usually it's based on the regular season regular, so we're still in place to be the autobid. Rarely do they predict the conference tourneys

Lunardi has us as a 13 seed vs. Purdue up in Milwaukee
Jerry Palm has us as a 13 seed vs. Wisconsin up in Milwaukee

Kyletology has us as a 14 seed vs. Arizona playing in Sacramento.
Other side of the bracket is 6. Xavier vs. 11. UNC-Wilmington.

Question? We signed up for a OOC Tournament which gave us Alabama and BYU on a neutral court but in the fine print we had to host 2 of the worst teams in college basketball. Net, net was this worth it 

Ok, who do we schedule instead of those 4 games? Could we actually get 4 D-1 schools?

Well that's good that it's "Juame" Sorolla, our guy is Jaume Sorolla

We need to move up about 15 more spots in RPI for us to really start moving up the seed lines. Right now Vermont is #52 in my rankings and Valpo is #66. Granted once we get to Vermont's spot we're talking boarderline at-large bid.

Looking at Bracketology  RPI, Sagarin, KenPom, Kyletology  BPI and their projections leaves me totally clueless as to our destiny. So I will just act like I am an expert and wing out some personal thoughts based on past NCAA and NIT observations.

Path #1-- No chance that this (or paths 2 or 3) happens but winning out and a HL Tournament championship would give us an 8 seed.
Path #2--One more road loss (GB, WSU, NKU or Oakland) and a Tournament championship gives us an 11 seed (slight chance for a 10).
Path #3-- Win out then lose HL championship game would put us in last 4 in or first one or two teams out.
Path #4--Tournament loss plus 1 more regular season loss. NIT 1 or 2 seed.
Path #5-- Tournament loss plus 2 more regular season losses. NIT 3 or 4 seed
Path #5--Tournament loss plus 3 more regular season losses.  As the HL automatic qualifier we would likely be a NIT #5 seed. Without being the automatic qualifier we would maintain only a slight chance for NIT at-large inclusion.
Path #6-- Anything worse has us waiting till next year!

Fire Away!

Ok so I'll say that Path 1 would actually lead us to the conclusion of path 2.
Path 2 would probably get us an 11-12 seed.
Path 6 seems highly unlikely but injuries, suspensions, Oakland like slumps, etc are known to happen.

Here's what I'm thinking our likely outcomes are:

Win Out, Including Tournament: 11 Seed (5% likelihood)
Lose 1 road game, win tournament: 12-13 seed (depends on the opponent) (25% likelihood)
Lose 2-4 road games, win tournament: 14 seed (33% likelihood)
Win the HL Regular season, lose tournament: 2 seed in the NIT (33% likelihood)
Lose the HL Regular season, lose tournament: We're sitting at home. This team isn't taking a CIT or CBI invite. (<1% likelihood)

Everyone is complaining about attendance.  This week's podcast spoke about it for 20 minutes and referenced the last 4 years a lot.   The problem is simple.  LACK OF SATURDAY NIGHT GAMES.     

I usually go to 5 or 6 games a year.   I have been to 1 this year.

ESPN3 is killing attendance with these stupid Friday/Sunday games.   We have not had a Saturday night conference home game yet.  What the hell is that about??! 

This leads to a domino effect.  Once you start making it hard for people to make it to a game, they eventually stop even considering it. 

I have to ask, if you're able to go to Saturday night games, how does that make it different from Sunday matinee games? Also how hard is it to get to a game on a Friday night? I kind of like the Friday night games

I'm thinking about the game Blackridge played for SC when he had all of those family members from Illinois in the ARC... just sayin'.

Please explain. Not familiar with the whole situation.

The only reason we played Santa Clara was because their star player, Jared Brownridge, is from Aurora, IL.

I think YSU is 2-3 at home.

You're right. The formula screwed up YSU, CSU and UIC's home records for the schedule. But it's was good for the standings.

How can we improve our rankings?  The HL offers zero opportunities.  All HL RPI's are extremely weak. 

Win. Don't stop winning. Teams in front of us will lose which will cause them to drop. All we can do is control what's in front of us and that's to win the games we have.

LiveRPI currently has us at 40 if we win out in the regular season. I'd say a move of 16 spots despite our weak conference schedule is damn good.

Right now Kyletology has us in Buffalo, N.Y.

#5 UCLA vs. #12 VERMONT
#4 CINCINNATI vs. #13 VALPARAISO


We need to move up about 15 more spots in RPI for us to really start moving up the seed lines. Right now Vermont is #52 in my rankings and Valpo is #66. Granted once we get to Vermont's spot we're talking boarderline at-large bid.

The Ken Pom numbers don't include non-d1 games. If you include our full schedule, we're still #2 behind ND.

I also don't include non-d1 games in my brain. So we're #1.

After this weekend's performance we're #1!

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A little shake up in the standings with a fun weekend of HL games.

9-0. No let down at this point in the season, we got our bad loss out of the way.