Was a nice win, from a compete standpoint…don’t love that so many points had to come from Lairy, but when you look at it…it was a “quiet” 30 points in some regards as 14 maybe came from FT line (meaning it did not seem like all the O was flowing entirely through Mekhi). Some clutch shots by others as well.
D was better, but hard to love that last four teams or so have shot near 60% (including Bellarmine). Improvement nonetheless. Mabrey feeling more comfortable, Safford leader…Kamari is an important piece of the puzzle.
Wright State is ranked in the upper 100’s. They’re higher than Bellarmine in every computer ranking I could find except RPI, because RPI is garbage. Sagarin, Massey, kenpom, teamrankings, NET
And again, you keep using this work need. It was nice to beat Bellarmine. It’ll be nice to beat a team ranked even higher than them.
For sure. Marshall has been sitting around 80 all year and Indiana St was 120 going into our game and now sits around 110. There’s definitely a separation of talent right around the 130-140 mark. Would love to get there soon.
“I don’t keep using”, I just used it here and qualified it above, you are coming at me as if they are my rankings…it’s still out there, right, CBS said so, LOL.
Define “upper hundreds”…come on Sagarin has them @ 191 (pushing 200)…Bellarmine 228, RPI 260…the point is not significantly ranked higher. Also, Bellarmine just lost to Miami which brought their ranking down, which will hopefully happen to Wright St too.
Just look at the performances versus Louisville, I think Bellarmine and Wright State are pretty close any way you cut it.
Which is the very definition of upper 100’s. Compared to Indiana State, which is in the lower 100’s. They’re anywhere from 7-30 spots better than Bellarmine on anything except RPI. And there’s a reason nobody looks at RPI. I never said you made up the rankings, I said you went for the only one nobody cares about. It’s cherry picking while ignoring all the other data. Wright State is a noticeably better team and the computers say that.
What does concern me is our defense over the last 5 games is worse than our defense in the first 6. That might be because giving up 103 to Cincy and 88 to Indiana State is worse than the Marshall and IU losses, but I’d love to see some real improvement. I thought we did ok against Bellarmine in spite of their shooting percentage. They made some deep and contested shots and we turned them over enough where they didn’t get a chance to take a shot. Wright State doesn’t have a lot of outside shooters, so I’m hoping that helps us to some extent.
What’s strange about this team is we have play better defense after misses than we do against makes. I would think it would be harder to play defense against a miss because you’re matching up on the fly. (percentile rankings in the colored squares)
This site is actually really neat. You can sign up for a free account and see player shooting charts, interesting team analysis, and more. I was actually just looking and they show the difference in stats between when an individual player is on the court or off.
Jive…good gosh, come…cherry pick’n is trying to make “upper 100s” (190+) look like it’s miles apart from mid-200s…it’s not.
I just grabbed a ranking with no objective, as regardless if RPI is a bit off these days, the rankings are all +/- 30 spots from each other…and with 350? teams these days…not that big of delta or variation.
As I noted, Bellarmine’s composite ranking, using only those you accept, includes losing to Miami (who probably had a 275 to 300 composite ranking) prior to beating the Knights.
Anyone who looks at the rankings, schedules, and understands basketball would objectively say that beating Bellarmine on the ROAD, is at least equivalent to beating Wright St at home…your own analytical analysis of 7-30 spot also is the definition of “not significant.”
All I’ve said is Wright State isn’t in the 260’s and we don’t NEED to beat them. Home or away. Would be nice. Would be a solid win, and like @Hawkattack06 mentioned, would give us an idea of how close we are to that second tier of MAC teams.
Missed those shot charts you posted while I was at the bowl game, but I always love the insight they show.
On that related note, it would be really nice to be in that second tier with only 8 teams qualifying for the tournament. I think “do-or-die” games are great experience for freshmen and will only make us more competitive with the experience.
Jackson State lost by 20 to #9 Alabama. They are not a great team but…by EOY, they might have more wins than you expect. Game wasn’t a total blowout. College basketball is deeper than people realize.
