I can’t overstate how wrong I was regarding the impact Micah Potter would have on Wisconsin’s team. 5-5 without him and 16-5 with.
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Who would he start over?
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And Dayton lost to Colorado, barely beat St. Louis twice, and what impressive win do they have, exactly? They won’t make the Elite Eight, and I’ll say probably not the S16.
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I don’t think ibi would start for us.
It’s possible he wouldn’t just because Franz and Livers are there and good. But hed be the best shooter on our team and would play 30 minutes a game probably.
More than he plays on Dayton? He doesn’t even start there and is only playing 22 mpg. Obviously he would eat into Eli’s minutes, but I’m not sure there are enough minutes to go around to get him up to 30
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Ok I’m sorry he’d play 22-25 mins a game haha. He would make our team a lot better is what I’m saying. He woulda helped a ton last year as well
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Last year? Among Mathews, Poole, Iggy and Livers, who would he have taken minutes from?
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I think he would help, sure. But I also think the level of competition is much lower. You look at highlights of guys like Jaron Simmons and Justin Pierce, and they look great against their conference opponents - and then they become grad transfers and they’re terrible at higher levels of competition. Same with that Hazard kid from UC Irvine to Arizona this year - barely plays and not a difference maker at all. Toppin is really good, but I think from 1-8 most teams in the Big Ten have more talent than Dayton. I mean, a guy like Brandon Johns probably starts there and scores 15-16 a game.
Agreed it would have been nice to have Ibi for solid depth.
Are you guys watching this Iowa Illinois contest? It’s so intense. Every possession is contested and fought for.
Looks like 2 teams that are playing desperately hard; we rarely look that locked in IMO.
He would be our first wing off the bench this year. Last year he wouldn’t have played at all.
This completely hypothetical debate is right up your alley but comparing the A10 to leagues like the MAC (Simmons) and the Colonial (Pierce) is a stretch. Comparing any individual transfer to make any sweeping assumption about the competitiveness in a league is a stretch.
I also don’t think that Johns would average 15 ppg in the A10…
Trying to evaluate Dayton based on Ibi Watson also just seems completely wrong. Dayton is a really good team that has dominated the A10 in a way that I think only a couple teams in the Big Ten could have done.
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Major tennis tournament coming up this week cancelled. Think this is the first major sporting event to get cancelled altogether?
In the latest Jerry Palm bracketology, the Big Ten has 10 teams in the field and the A10 has two - Dayton and Richmond (an 11th seed in a play-in game).
Recruiting rankings are not the end all and be all, but they’re important. I’d be willing to bet the ratio of top 150 players in the Big Ten compared to the A10 is probably 10:1, if not higher. I mean, if Dayton didn’t take Kansas to OT this year, is this really even a discussion at all? Dayton has had a nice year, but the Big Ten is the deepest conference in the country and winning road games is very difficult. I have a hard time seeing them finish any better than say 11-9 in Big Ten play.
If you’re going to base your evaluation of a team around how poor the teams are that they are constantly beating, it doesn’t make much since to write off or ignore their game against the #1 team in the country as a fluke.
They also absolutely demolished Georgia and Virginia Tech in Maui (MSU…did not…) They also beat a 25-7 St. Mary’s team on a neutral site (Wisconsin…did not…) They beat Richmond (again, Wisconsin did not). All they did was go 18-0 in that terrible conference, as they should have, and over half those games were complete blowouts.
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Well, obviously MSU had a poor start to the season. I think they would probably clobber Dayton right now. Their close loss to Colorado is what I think they probably are as a team. Of course I could be completely wrong, we’ll see how they do in the tourney. I’m just not overly sold.
I just always find Wisconsin to be a bad measuring stick.
Aside from their back-to-back Final Fours, where they had some really good talent (Kaminsky, Dekker), they are notorious for being much tougher in the conference than outside it - mainly (IMO) because they get away with a physical style of play that doesn’t carry over to non-conference games (in other words, they get called for fouls in those games).
Case in point, we were 0-2 against them in 2012/13, the year we went to the title game. They were 12-6 in conference that year (and all of MSU, UM, OSU and Indiana were elite), 11-6 in non-conference, and got bounced in the first round of the tourney by Ole Miss.
Bracket matrix is updated as of today. Michigan is slotted as the final 6 seed. Gotta think if we beat Rutgers we should be locked for a 7 seed at worst and probably a 6 seed. If we lose to Rutgers, I could see us dropping to an 8 at worst which will be less than ideal.
Pick up 2-3 wins and I think a 5 seed would be a possibility.
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