The "BracketProject" is a great website to see the summary of all the bracket prognosticators.
I was looking at it today, and thinking about who MU has played, their seed, and what our result with them was .. They currently have us as a #5 seed, but many of the bracketologists haven't updated their numbers since we lost to Syracuse.
The below seeds are just an average guess from all the brackets .. one can assume those seeds are correct, plus or minus a seed or two.
MU:
Lost to #1 UConn
Lost to #1 Pitt
Lost to #2 UL
Split with #3 Nova W/L (Hopefully play them again Thursday)
Lost to #6 Syracuse
Lost to #9 Dayton
Lost to #8 Tenn.
Beat #7 WVU
Beat #8 Wisconsin
Beat #12 - Northern Iowa (auto bid)
2009 Record vs. NCAA teams: 4-7
http://bracketproject.50webs.com/nit.html
Beat NIT - UProv
Beat NIT - GTown twice
Beat NIT - Cincy
Beat NIT - NC State
Beat NIT - Notre Dame
Beat Bubble NIT - Seton Hall, St. Johns
2009 Record vs. NIT Teams: 8-0
Draw your own conclusions.
If we get a win in the BEast tourney, we get a 6. If we win twice, we'll get a 5. Our ceiling is a 4 I think.
ReplyDeleteWe lose our first game, we are a 7 and possibly an 8 depending on how many 9-9 Big Ten teams get in.
Objectively, the conclusion is that MU is a good team, one worthy of a ranking in the 20-25 range and a seed in the 6-7 range, but not a great team. James injury obviously didn't help the last 4 games, but MU's performance against teams like Dayton, Tennessee, and (ugh) USF when he was playing suggests that they weren't going to win many, if any, of those games anyway. Syracuse is the one I think they would have won. MU is going to have trouble winning even one game in the NCAA unless they are fortunate enough to draw a team without much inside presence.
ReplyDeleteI don't think that's the case anymore.
ReplyDeleteMU showed it can play vs. teams with dominant guys down low (UConn, N.Dame). Unfortunately, now the team we have to worry about is one that has a dominant PG running the show. Someone who's very fast and can shoot/penetrate.
Kind of like the player we no longer have. Kind of like the player that lit us up Saturday (Flynn).
Obviously, if MU gets someone with two guys dominating down low (Pitt-like), then yeah. we are finished.
My point is, that now...the draw becomes even more important for us as our margin for error has slimmed.