MVC Games Week 14 2024-25

[TylerDurden]

Maybe Indiana State should have found the money like other Valley schools have or should have vetted the hire a little better. Indiana State had the choice to try and make the money work and they couldn't get it done.

You're living in a world that died 40 years ago, which I guess is completely understandable if you are an Evansville basketball fan.

The league is OBJECTIVELY better than last year. Efficiency and player rankings are up, only one team worse than 250 in the NET, a better shot at two bids.

Just because your feelings don't like it doesn't make it true.

We're clearly talking about two different things.

You're arguing relative position in the college basketball world, pointing to a metric and saying, "See, we're better," and acting as if that's not open for discussion.

I won't speak for anyone else, but my position isn't that the numbers look worse, it's that the players and teams are worse, despite the fact that the relative rank looks about the same or better in some instances as the previous year. You can be more efficient, for instance, against worse talent.

None of this happened in a vacuum. The rich got richer and the talent distribution is now skewed even more toward to the top. The MVC was almost completely raided. That's a fact. You can argue there are instances of addition by subtraction, but the talent level is down significantly.

There's still a pecking order and the MVC is still better than the majority of DI leagues, but we aren't better than last year on the court in an absolute sense and we are a league that's going to get farmed by the big guys for our best talent every year.

That doesn't mean the league isn't entertaining and we shouldn't enjoy the season. It's definitely entertaining, but we aren't better.

[AcesAces]

I didn't say it was equal. There is more pecking today than at any point in the past. The entire all conference teams of last year were pecked. When has that happened before?

Heck, Indiana State lost its coach and a couple of its stars to St. Louis! That's a big smack in the face of the MVC.

And next year, the P6 schools can pay 15 players per team.

But yes, the MVC is weaker this year because of the pecking. When we peck, most of it is from lower divisions and lower conferences not from the P6, and what does come down from the P6 is nothing like a Mary Simmons or a Scott Haffner as it was before.

Maybe Indiana State should have found the money like other Valley schools have or should have vetted the hire a little better. Indiana State had the choice to try and make the money work and they couldn't get it done.

You're living in a world that died 40 years ago, which I guess is completely understandable if you are an Evansville basketball fan.

The league is OBJECTIVELY better than last year. Efficiency and player rankings are up, only one team worse than 250 in the NET, a better shot at two bids.

Just because your feelings don't like it doesn't make it untrue.

Finding the Money is one of the big problems. If ISU can't compete with SLU with money then neither can most MVC teams.

I'm not living in the world 40 years ago, I am in the here and now seeing exactly what is happening in CBB. Most people see it. I know the coaches do.

The MVC is not in any way better than last year. NET doesn't mean sh%t. Our eyes can see the inconsistent play, the terrible shooting, and on and on.

The feelings part and living in the past is all you. I am open to seeing what is in front of my face whether I like it or not. Not you. You either don't know what you are seeing or can't see.

[MissouriValleyUnite]

Look at most of the talking heads saying Drake needs to win Arch Madness this year despite freakin' running the table in the non-conference, including some decent meat on the bone with Vandy and K-State.

The margin of error for MVC-type schools to get an at-large has gotten ludicrously thin. Go run the table in non-conference (with shrinking opportunities on neutral floors) and then go 18-2 in a good conference and then get to your championship game and lose by 4 points or less, and then you have a fighting chance to get in. Cool.

There is zero evidence Drake “only has a fighting chance” at 30-3. (In fact, all precedent indicates Drake would be cleanly in.)

This is just you taking a hypothetical and passing off your worst case scenario speculation as fact. You don’t know whether Drake “only has a fighting chance” in that hypothetical. It hasn’t even played out.

Talking heads are not evidence. They’re irrelevant.

[RiverCityBrave]

Bradley turnovers for the last 3 losses
Belmont - 17 (led to 17 Belmont points)
UNI, 14 (led to 8 UNI points)
UIC, 15 (led to 19 UIC points)
Tough to win that way. The alarming thing is that this is a veteran team.
They actually shot the ball well in the last game against Belmont but the turnovers did them in.
Also - they're not defending the 3 very well, so there's that.

[siudawgs]

The margin of error for MVC-type schools to get an at-large has gotten ludicrously thin. Go run the table in non-conference (with shrinking opportunities on neutral floors) and then go 18-2 in a good conference and then get to your championship game and lose by 4 points or less, and then you have a fighting chance to get in. Cool.

There is zero evidence Drake “only has a fighting chance” at 30-3. (In fact, all precedent indicates Drake would be cleanly in.)

This is just you taking a hypothetical and passing off your worst case scenario speculation as fact. You don’t know whether Drake “only has a fighting chance” in that hypothetical. It hasn’t even played out.

I think they would get in at 30-3, but that is an absurd bar to have to reach. One more league loss and … ?

If the whole “We’re still a top 10 league” argument meant anything, then winning it would be valued much more. Didn’t work for Indiana State last year. Will it for Drake this year? TBD, but lord knows the power conference and TV cabal will be ready to write them off first chance they get.

[FunchessonPopcorn]

We definitely are arguing about a few different things.

In terms of conference average ratings, there isn’t a ton of meaningful differences in the analytic sense. Not only in terms of where conferences stack rank but also where the average B10 team ranks vs the average MVC team. This is pretty much the framework within which money lines and spreads get set, so imo that cuts through a lot of bs when you look at it from that lens.

I do think there is less variance within conferences than there used to be, between that haves and have nots, and more clustering around those averages, which can explain the differences in bids vs the past to some degree. Northwestern is better than ever in their history even if they are still lower half in B10. Rutgers has 2 top 10 picks, and I am struggling to recall who they had as NBA level in their past. Beyond that, I also believe the committee has shifted incentives towards the power schools and the scheduling is much more siloed to enrich the power schools from those incentives too. Rutgers conference games to LA aren’t gonna pay for themselves, and they get less than ever from playing us so they don’t schedule us.

Yeah there is absolutely a difference in NCAA tournament bids, and that is no small thing, but that’s a little different argument than the true talent itself.

[Bulldog4life24]

The margin of error for MVC-type schools to get an at-large has gotten ludicrously thin. Go run the table in non-conference (with shrinking opportunities on neutral floors) and then go 18-2 in a good conference and then get to your championship game and lose by 4 points or less, and then you have a fighting chance to get in. Cool.

There is zero evidence Drake “only has a fighting chance” at 30-3. (In fact, all precedent indicates Drake would be cleanly in.)

This is just you taking a hypothetical and passing off your worst case scenario speculation as fact. You don’t know whether Drake “only has a fighting chance” in that hypothetical. It hasn’t even played out.

I think they would get in at 30-3, but that is an absurd bar to have to reach. One more league loss and … ?

If the whole “We’re still a top 10 league” argument meant anything, then winning it would be valued much more. Didn’t work for Indiana State last year. Will it for Drake this year? TBD, but lord knows the power conference and TV cabal will be ready to write them off first chance they get.

Drake's resume predictives are much better than ISUb's were last year, and the bubble is shaping up to be much less historical, shall we say, than last year.

https://bracketmatrix.com/ is your friend if you want to actually talk about march madness chances. Talking heads are not

[FunchessonPopcorn]

I might want to be careful in isolating the B10 as my example this season, because they are as strong as they’ve been this year, but let’s just say the average of the remaining power conferences. Used to be the ACC was king, but we’re closer analytically to them then ever, and that would be the stronger example. I will also acknowledge there is probably a new tier between l SEC and B10 vs B12, Big East, and ACC emerging too.

[tribecalledquest]

Bradley turnovers for the last 3 losses
Belmont - 17 (led to 17 Belmont points)
UNI, 14 (led to 8 UNI points)
UIC, 15 (led to 19 UIC points)
Tough to win that way. The alarming thing is that this is a veteran team.
They actually shot the ball well in the last game against Belmont but the turnovers did them in.
Also - they're not defending the 3 very well, so there's that.

The three point defense was going to normalize. The opponent three point % was incredibly low for a long time. No matter what coaches tell you - that's not a stat that you can really control a whole heck of a lot.

[IllinoisState]

The margin of error for MVC-type schools to get an at-large has gotten ludicrously thin. Go run the table in non-conference (with shrinking opportunities on neutral floors) and then go 18-2 in a good conference and then get to your championship game and lose by 4 points or less, and then you have a fighting chance to get in. Cool.

There is zero evidence Drake “only has a fighting chance” at 30-3. (In fact, all precedent indicates Drake would be cleanly in.)

This is just you taking a hypothetical and passing off your worst case scenario speculation as fact. You don’t know whether Drake “only has a fighting chance” in that hypothetical. It hasn’t even played out.

I think they would get in at 30-3, but that is an absurd bar to have to reach. One more league loss and … ?

If the whole “We’re still a top 10 league” argument meant anything, then winning it would be valued much more. Didn’t work for Indiana State last year. Will it for Drake this year? TBD, but lord knows the power conference and TV cabal will be ready to write them off first chance they get.

They are raising the bar every year for non power teams. It is a bit insane its like this, but sounds realistic.