I took it as a joke–hyperbole.
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If you’re really a top 5 team, games like Maryland and Northwestern are the types you shouldn’t be losing. Bloomington in a rivalry game is one thing, but great teams need to win road games.
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(whistling idly, pretending to not be thinking of anything controversial or hot-takey)
Literally every team in the B1G is worse than they were last year.
(runs away)
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The Big Ten is so much better than the other big conferences supposedly because our 2nd worst team (Ohio State) is so much better than the 2nd worst teams everywhere else.
The problem is the 2nd worst teams aren’t what decides what conferences win in the NCAAT, it’s if you have any great to elite teams.
I mean, I would say that teams like Maryland and Northwestern should be beating a team like Purdue at home. That’s how you make the NCAA Tournament.
Top 25 at home should basically be a coin flip against top 5 at home.
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A coin flip implies that you win 50% of the time. Purdue is losing all of them.
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I guess? They won at MSU, lost at NW, lost at IU, lost at MD. Probably 1-1.5 games behind the curve?
Rutgers at home was a bad loss.
They also have one loss by double digits. So I don’t think they are that far off.
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I just think Purdue is probably more likely a top 15 team than a top 5 team. I know I won’t be picking them to go deep in the tournament
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I agree with this in theory until you pull up the KenPom page for all of the other top 15 teams.
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In the midst of a 7-35 streak from deep.
Jahmir Young: All Big Ten First Team?
- yes
- no
0 voters
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I was literally just tweeting about this same thing yesterday…
Why do media covering different sports do a poor job of understanding the mechanics of a title race or who the best team is?
EPL title races are always declared over when they aren’t. CBB overreacts to home “upsets” and assumes a team can’t be No. 1 the week after it lost.
I guess it is just that the narrative is more exciting than reality?
https://twitter.com/umhoops/status/1625939867463974913
https://twitter.com/umhoops/status/1625940819856224256
This game was a 1-point spread and it will be billed as an absolutely shocking result for 24 hours.
Purdue is a top 5, top 10 team. They’ll win their last four (3 of 4 at home) and we’ll pretend everything is fixed!
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At first I said no but then I saw that almost all of his numbers are better in league play (especially scoring) and I changed it to yes.
It’s close between him and Boo for 5th guy, but I went with Young on the highly scientific rationale of: he just seems better.
You are right in the sense that KenPom ranks conferences by “AdjEM of team that’s expected to go .500 in conference play” and that doesn’t correlate to the NCAA Tournament (which involves single teams in random matchups).
But the ranking of the conference tells us about how to understand what’s happening during the conference season.
It is important to understand that ASU going 9-6 in the P12 is very different than Iowa being 8-6 in the Big Ten.
Boo! for All-Big Ten. Wowza.
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Juicy first round opportunity starting to brew for Whoever Plays Maryland in R1 on the Moneyline though.
Kevin 1-5 in the NCAA Tournament Willard is gunning for that 5 seed.
Kevin Willard Defender stopping by to mention his best team never got to play in the NCAA tournament. They lost one 6-11 game (to 11 seed Gonzaga) and a bunch of coinflip 8-9 or 7-10 games.
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Definitely. It’s just very misleading at this point to categorize the Big Ten as significantly better than conferences with multiple teams that can win it all when it’s one elite team isn’t even looking elite anymore. The second best team in this league is built entirely around Boo Buie and Chase Audige shooting a combined 30 shots a game.
It’s great that there’s no historically awful teams. Having like 7 bubble teams works for creating separation in lists like that that sort by “strength of conference” but it’s incredibly misleading when you extrapolate that out to success outside of the conference.
There’s four conferences that have multiple great teams. Characterizing the Big Ten as significantly better than any of these because the 8th-13th teams are better just bothers me so much:
Pac 12: Arizona & UCLA
Everyone in the Big 12
Big East: UConn, Creighton, Xavier
SEC: Tennessee & Alabama
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That is fair that most of his NCAA Tournament (lack of) success stem from not having great teams. This is now his best rated team on KenPom, so maybe it is the one.
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