SportsRatings: College Basketball

SportsRatings College Basketball Top 25 - week 3

Last week's losses prompt a slew of teams to bum rush the top 10, chief among them Texas, who pounded former #7 Tennessee 97-78, and Duke, who defeated Marquette. Washington State, Pitt, and Texas A&M make large jumps essentially for not losing, but all have been impressive so far this year. The top five stays the same as it started the year, with #1 North Carolina beating new #17 BYU, and #2 UCLA handling ex-#8 Michigan State.

The SportsRatings College Basketball Top 25 for Week 3 (games through 11/25/2007)

lw    #  Team           rec losses; wins vs. top 25
1     1. N. Carolina    5-0 w=BYU+10
2     2. UCLA           6-0 w=MichSt+5
3     3. Memphis        5-0 w=UConn+9,w=Oklahoma+10
4     4. Kansas         5-0
5     5. Georgetown     3-0
15    6. Texas          5-0 w=Tenn+19
13    7. Duke           6-0 w=Marq+4
10    8. Wash. State    6-0
16    9. Texas A&M      6-0
17   10. Pittsburgh     5-0
8    11. Michigan St.   4-1 L=UCLA-5
     12. St. Mary's     5-0 wOregon+12
11   13. Marquette      4-1 L=Duke-4
     14. Seton Hall     5-0 w=Virg+14
19   15. New Orleans    3-0
21   16. Boston College 4-0
     17. BYU            5-1 L=UNC-10;w=Lou+2
7    18. Tennessee      5-1 L=Tex-19
24t  19. Connecticut    3-1 L=Memphis-9
24t  20. Oklahoma       4-1 L=Memphis-10
6    21. Louisville     4-1 L=BYU-2
     22. USC            5-1 L Mercer-15;wMiamiOH+4,wSIll+25
     23. Miami OH       3-1 L@USC-4;wXav+2
     24. Xavier         4-1 L@MiamiOH-2;w=Ind+15
9    25t Indiana        4-1 L=Xav-15
12   25t Oregon         5-1 L@St.Mary's-12

out:
14       Gonzaga        5-1 L=TexTech-10
18       Virginia       5-1 L=Seton-14
20       Alabama        3-1 L Belmont-2
22       S. Illinois    3-1 L@USC-25
23       Kansas State   5-1 L=GMason-10

key: Loss to ranked team
     Loss to unranked team
     Loss to team with losing record
     Win over ranked team
     Win over ranked team who falls out this week

Several new teams jump in after upsetting ranked opponents: Undefeated St. Mary's replaces Oregona at #12; #14 Seton Hall knocks Virginia out of the picture; BYU stunned former #6 Louisville before themselves falling to #1 North Carolina, landing at #17; and USC re-enters the rankings after a one week absence. Although they lost to 1-5 Mercer, the Trojans beat Southern Illinois last week, and also beat Miami of Ohio, which entered the rankings ahead of Xavier which beat former top ten Indiana.

Michigan State and Marquette slide just a bit for their losses to top 25 foes, while Tennessee, Louisville, Indiana, and Oregon all plunge double digits, the latter two barely holding on in a tie at #25. Not as fortunate are Gonzaga, Virginia, and Southern Illinois, who drop out along with Alabama, loser to Belmont, and Kansas State, who lost to George Mason.

SportsRatings College Basketball Top 25 - week 2

Better late than never: the SportsRatings College Basketball Top 25 for Week 2 (games through 11/18/2007)

lw    #  Team           rec losses; wins vs. top 25
1     1. N. Carolina    2-0
2     2. UCLA           3-0
3     3. Memphis        4-0 w=UConn+9,w=Oklahoma+10
4     4. Kansas         4-0
5     5. Georgetown     2-0
6     6. Louisville     2-0
7     7. Tennessee      3-0
8     8. Michigan St.   2-0
9     9. Indiana        2-0
10   10. Wash. State    3-0
11   11. Marquette      2-0
12   12. Oregon         4-0
13   13. Duke           2-0
14   14. Gonzaga        3-0
15   15. Texas          3-0
16   16. Texas A&M      4-0
19   17. Pittsburgh     4-0
     18. Virginia       3-0 w@Arizona+3
     19. New Orleans    2-0 w@NCState+2
     20. Alabama        2-0 w@Mercer+7
     21. Boston College 3-0 wMercer+17
24   22. S. Illinois    1-0
25   23. Kansas State   3-0
     24t Connecticut    3-1 L=Memphis-9;w=GardnerWebb+12
     24t Oklahoma       4-1 L=Memphis-10;w=GardnerWebb+14

out:
17       Arizona        1-1 L Virginia-3
20       Stanford       4-1 L@Siena-12
18       Arkansas       3-1 L=Providence-16
21       N.C. State     1-1 L NewOrleans-2
22       Gardner-Webb   4-2 L=UConn-12,L=Oklahoma-14
23       Mercer         1-3 L Alabama-7,L@Harvard-18,L@BC-17


key: Loss to ranked team
     Loss to unranked team
     Loss to team with losing record
     Win over ranked team
     Win over ranked team who falls out this week

Once again the top 16 teams are unchanged. After that, a bunch of upsets clears out the chaff from the lower ten. Virginia and New Orleans knock out #17 and #20 Arizona and North Carolina State respectively. Alabama and Boston College both defeat Mercer, who entered the ranks last week due to their upset of USC but finds their top 25 reign short lived, suffering three losses in the week.

Gardner-Webb also exits the week after their stunning upset of Kentucky. They lose to both Connecticut and Oklahoma, who in turn both lost to Memphis in the 2K Sports College Hoop Classic.

Also falling out were Stanford, loser to Siena, and Arkansas, who lost to Providence. Providence missed its chance at a ranking by losing to Miami. The Hurricanes inherited the right to be rated, but there were too many other teams crowding in for them to make it this week.

SportsRatings BBall Top 25: week 1

Catching up on the season already underway, here is the SportsRatings College Basketball Top 25 for Week 1 (games through 11/11/2007)

lw    #  Team          rec losses; wins vs. top 25
1     1. N. Carolina   0-0
2     2. UCLA          1-0
3     3. Memphis       2-0
4     4. Kansas        2-0
5     5. Georgetown    1-0
6     6. Louisville    0-0
7     7. Tennessee     1-0
8     8. Michigan St.  0-0
9     9. Indiana       0-0
10   10. Wash. State   1-0
11   11. Marquette     1-0
12   12. Oregon        2-0
13   13. Duke          1-0
14   14. Gonzaga       1-0
15   15. Texas         0-0
16   16. Texas A&M     1-0
17   17. Arizona       0-0
19   18. Arkansas      1-0
22   19. Pittsburgh    3-0
23   20. Stanford      3-0
21   21. N.C. State    0-0
     22. Gardner-Webb  2-0 W@Kentucky+16
     23. Mercer        1-0 W@USC+15
24   24. S. Illinois   0-0
25   25. Kansas State  2-0

out:
18       USC           0-1 L Mercer-15
20       Kentucky      1-1 L GardnerWebb-16

key: Loss to ranked team
     Loss to unranked team
     Loss to team with losing record
     Win over ranked team
     Win over ranked team who falls out this week

Not much change in the first week of action, except for the couple of upsets by the Atlantic Sun conference teams. If you beat a top 25 team and are undefeated, why shouldn't you be rewarded with a top 25 spot yourself? Pitt and Stanford jump a few spots for starting 3-0, moving ahead of idle North Carolina State. Other than that, it stays pretty much the same as the initial AP poll, which I used as a starting point.

As I mentioned, the AP only gave a few votes to Mercer and Gardner-Webb in week one. Also, I declined to drop Michigan State for losing an exhibition game; exhibition = does not count. If I were projecting the future, maybe I'd take that game into consideration. But the SportsRatings Top 25 isn't forward-looking; I'm just grading teams on how they've done so far—in their official schedule.

When will we see the "Total Tournament"?

With 64 + 1 teams playing in the NCAA tournament, 32 teams in the post-season NIT, and another 16 in the newly-announces College Basketball Invitational (CBI) tournament, that makes 113 teams eligible for post-season play.

Only 63 teams feel good about their selection, though. Two bear the ignomity of having to "play in" to the big dance, only to face certain death from a #1 seed. Another 32 think they should have made the big dance. No word yet on how the other 16 feel about it. Probably that they should have made the NIT.

The truth is that some of the teams that make the NCAA are worse than the teams that will make the CBI. Some are below average teams, meaning they'd rank lower than 170th in the nation.

If we're going to go though all this, why not just seed everyone and include all 341 teams in the tournament? A bracket of 256 is only 2 games removed from a bracket of 64. Throw in the necessary play-in round of 85 games (teams seeded #172 through #341 would play to cull the field to 256) and that's just a total of one more week of action: two days to go from 341 to 256, two days to 128, and two more days to 64.

That would be a LOT of basketball. But it would be a hell of an interesting mess. Can you imagine trying to fill out brackets for that?

College Basketball Invitational. CBI - Rhymes with...why??

A third post-season college basketball tournament was announced today. The CBI—College Basketball Invitational—complements the NCAA tourney and the NIT in March and will invite 16 team to participate.

Ok, that's all I can stand to write before saying, WTF?

Was there a demand for this? Is there a market for it? Does the NIT even make money?

"There's only a certain amount of spots in the NCAA Tournament, and only a certain amount of spots in the NIT," said the Gazelle Group's Evan Olesh. "We want to give more schools an opportunity."

Why scrape the barrel for 16 more teams? Is it because there are 64 (ok, 65) teams in the NCAA, and now just 32 in the NIT, so by the commutative parallel divisor theorem (or whatever) the next tournament down has to have 16 teams? Ok, let me introduce my tournament, the CBI II, with 8 teams. And the NIT's Little Brother, with 4. A single game Mini-NCAA will have 2 teams. And last but not least, the tournament to end all tournaments, the Uni-tourn, will have just one team.

But I digress. This bizarre idea was launched by the Gazelle Group, apparently a bunch of easily-frightened, jumpy people that run through the savannah. No seriously, I don't know what they are but I can Google. Watch:

The Gazelle Group creates, represents and consults across sports, entertainment and cultural activities. Gazelle has the expertise and is committed to developing prioritized business plans that achieve its clients' marketing and financial goals.

Well, bravo. I admire their committment to developing prioritized business plans. The prioritizing is the hard part, you know. Most "groups" would just put them in some random order and give up. But not Gazelle.

It looks like another of Gazelle's functions is as a Sports Agent. Think Jerry McGuire. They also do marketing and design. The link to their portfolio doesn't seem to work, though. My loss.

They did sponsor the Coaches vs. Cancer Challenge a few years back, and the Black Coaches Association preseason classic football game from the same time period. I heard of those events, and the reception to them seemed generally favorable.

But where are those classics now? They went the same way as the CBI will in a few years. This idea has XFL written all over it, but at least the XFL gave us that cam-on-a-wire and He Hate Me.

Gazelle Group runs a few other pre-conference-season tournaments; why not make the CBI the big daddy of pre-season tourneys, rather than the mutt of the post-season? Apparently the thought is that every team wants to play post-season. But is this true? How lame does it already feel having to settle for the NIT? Can you take another step down and not just feel like skipping it altogether?

I like this idea every bit as much as I like the 65th NCAA team. Judging by that, the CBI will suck but it will endure. Might as well get used to it.