MVCfans.com Arch Madness seeding probabilities

[Ricardo del Rio]

A mistake has been made.

I want Bradley to play on Thursday.

Please review and adjust your calculations accordingly.

Side note: I cannot imagine the Cats playing on Thursday. It is un-American.

[uniftw]

Side note: I cannot imagine the Cats playing on Thursday. It is un-American.

That it is.

Who is second in the longest streak of not playing on Drake night? WSU?

UNI hasn't done so since the 02/03 season

[Cdizzle]

Side note: I cannot imagine the Cats playing on Thursday. It is un-American.

That it is.

Who is second in the longest streak of not playing on Drake night? WSU?

UNI hasn't done so since the 02/03 season

This is going to come off wrong, but a serious question.

Is that good enough for UNI? How long does Jacobson get at this current level? Or is UNI paying what they can pay, getting what they are paying for, and ok with it?

[MissouriValleyUnite]

Jacobson's contract is a rolling 10-year deal that incrementally increases his salary annually. For UNI to even afford to buy him out would take a ridiculous influx of donations. While this season's underwhelmed, I would wager it would take Jacobson anchoring the program to Fat Ass Lowery proportions for Ben's seat to warm.

Ben's way more motivated than dean_siu's God. The odds of Jacobson getting pinkslipped in the foreseeable future are miniscule, IMO.

[uniftw]

Side note: I cannot imagine the Cats playing on Thursday. It is un-American.

That it is.

Who is second in the longest streak of not playing on Drake night? WSU?

UNI hasn't done so since the 02/03 season

This is going to come off wrong, but a serious question.

Is that good enough for UNI? How long does Jacobson get at this current level? Or is UNI paying what they can pay, getting what they are paying for, and ok with it?

This year is disappointing...no doubt about it, yet we still are in the drivers seat for 3rd

The depth is finally going to recover after this year. Remember Dougie's freshman year UNI was making a MASSIVE push for the conference title (and likely would have gotten it) before Lucas O'Rear broke his ankle and UNI lost 8 of the last 10 to end the season. When that injury happened UNI was 18-6 (9-3) having won 8 in a row and were rolling.

That season, and yes this is the last time I'll bring Doug up I promise, showed the lack of depth UNI had up front and showed how much having Doug would have completely changed the last 3 years for UNI. At that point UNI had to start 4 guards (well 3 guards and Jake Koch who is really a wing 4 on offense) and Austin Pehl....yeah....

UNI hadn't really recruited any other post players because Doug was locked up and signed very early. There wasn't a ton of need to bring a big guy in in that class with Doug. O'Rear, McDermott, Koch, and Pehl getting the minutes at the 4/5 spots would have been great that season. Then we would have had Doug, Koch, and Tuttle the last 2 years. UNI tried to bring in a prep school kid that flopped out in Oliveria (or however it is spelled as I've seen it 4 different ways from him). We had Buss at 6'9 during that time but he wasn't ready before last season and even then it was a stretch for him to play a ton. However, next year we will have Tuttle, Buss, Singleton (who I think we will see take on the O'Rear type role going forward), Koch the younger, and Carlson all at 6'7+. Most UNI fans said at the time (more so Doug's soph year) that to really recover from the recruiting loss of Doug and his skills it was going to take a full cycle of recruits and that is exactly what it's looking like it will be.

Is avoiding Thursday going to save his job? Honestly, probably. It's not so much "is UNI paying the most they can" it's "Who can UNI bring in that's really going to be better" - see Missouri State or Illinois State or Bradley or most defections from our league that have fired their coach or lost him elsewhere.


Seriously though...imagine what UNI basketball would look like right now (Even without Doug) if Lucas 7doesn't break his ankle. UNI probably goes into STL the 1 or 2 seed with a 23-7ish (14-4ish) record with possibly the 3rd straight regular season title, likely wins 2 (maybe 3 and a third straight tourney title) games in StL with a top 50 RPI with that kind of win total the year after the S16 run. There is a VERY VERY high chance UNI gets in to the NCAA's. What kind of recruiting boost that could have had, moral boost for the fan base, national recognition.


Sadly Lucas broke his ankle, Oliveria didn't work out, UNI had no depth behind Tuttle at the 5, and the fan base became apathetic...


For Jake to get fired it's going ot take losing every game the rest of this season, finishing in last next season, and Thursday in 2 years....

[rlh04d]

Side note: I cannot imagine the Cats playing on Thursday. It is un-American.

That it is.

Who is second in the longest streak of not playing on Drake night? WSU?

UNI hasn't done so since the 02/03 season

This is going to come off wrong, but a serious question.

Is that good enough for UNI? How long does Jacobson get at this current level? Or is UNI paying what they can pay, getting what they are paying for, and ok with it?

I think it's a bit early for "how long does Jacobson get at this current level" type of talk. One possibly bad season isn't going to put his job in jeopardy.

[PantherSigEp]

I'm not going to quote UNIFTW's post but while people can say what they want about Doug never actually coming to UNI that loss combined with O'Rear freak ankle fracture completely set the stage for these past few years.

Fans who don't understand how recruiting processes work have yelled "well just recruit another big!". Well first off you don't just find guys who hustle and make plays like O'Rear at this level, in every high school. Remember, the guy went on to play professional baseball. He may have had ugly (glorious, fantastic!) sideburns and a rough look to him but the guy was a great athlete. I don't need to get into the details about finding another McDermott do I? Okay good. If UNI doesn't lose O'Rear and (most likely) returns to the NCAA's perhaps that turns the tide in a couple recruiting battles with teams like Iowa, Iowa State and Creighton (amount others) to find adequate replacements for Doug in the next class with Tuttle and Mitchell.

Unfortunately we don't have the luxury of playing that game so Jacobson went and gave the open scholarship to what looked like a legit C prospect in Chris Oliveira. He sits for year (during which UNI only has one scholarship open up, which goes to Wes Washpun) doesn't pan out and leaves UNI. That leaves us looking at 3 recruiting years where we essentially only gained 1 true post player in Seth Tuttle because of unfortunate turns of events. If Oliveira leaves earlier then maybe we could have picked up another capable big, from a JUCO school like a Hogue at Iowa State (just a hypothetical example). This past year we recruited 3 true post players which should alleviate things next year. It will be a lot to ask of Ted, Bennett Koch and Klint Carlson in Just their 2nd year with the program but all three are tall, big-bodied and can give us additional size off the bench besides Tuttle and rail-thin Buss (who no one is mistaking for a true post player).

It's no coincidence that our 3 years without having the post dept (which we completely expected to have following the Sweet 16 run) have resulted in 3 "meh" seasons. I'd rather we'd never heard of the names Doug McDermott and Chris Oliveira because having another senior/RS-junior and RS-sophomore post player is exactly what this team is missing. Buss, Singleton and Rank have been done admirable jobs trying to cover up our lack of another 4/5 but Buss is not a post guy, anyone who has watched him knows that, and Rank and Singleton are 6'6 and much more comfortable in other roles. I can't believe I miss Austin Pehl but at 6'10/'11 he was good for a couple rebounds, could commit 4-5 hard fouls without hurting his team and might even get a couple uber-predictable hook shots to go.

Assuming Jacobson avoids early defections and continues to bring in the players he wants I strongly believe we'll see the Panthers return to the top ranks of the Valley. The guy has found talented players and is getting big contributions from them but it'd be a stretch to say that he has equal parts to work with. It's somewhat amazing they haven't fallen further than they have with only one real post guy. UNI leads the Valley in AST/TO ratio and 3 point shooting so you can't say that the guard play is weak. UNI's struggles are a direct result in an inability to stop teams in the post (which has forced them to stretch their guards thinner on defense) and out rebound decent competition.

Edit: didn't realize I basically made a v.2.0 of unitftw's post. Kinda got lost in the moment.

[MSUDuo]

I'm sure I could find this answer but I hate trying to navigate the MVC website.

What are the tie breakers if 3 teams finish at the same record? Just curious what would happen if ISUr, SIU, and MSU all finish 9-9.

[Wufan]

I'm sure I could find this answer but I hate trying to navigate the MVC website.

What are the tie breakers if 3 teams finish at the same record? Just curious what would happen if ISUr, SIU, and MSU all finish 9-9.

First tie breaker is record head-to-head, or in this case, round robin.

Second tie breaker is non-conference strength of schedule.

I believe that is correct, but I didn't look it up to confirm.

[MVCfans]

I'm sure I could find this answer but I hate trying to navigate the MVC website.

What are the tie breakers if 3 teams finish at the same record? Just curious what would happen if ISUr, SIU, and MSU all finish 9-9.

I checked - here it is:

Tournament Tiebreaker System
 Regular-season standings are the determining factor in setting first-round pairings for the Missouri Valley Conference Tournament. All ties will be broken starting at the top of the conference standings and working down. The tie-breaking system for seeding of the Missouri Valley Conference Tournament, regardless of whether a tie involves two or more teams, will utilize the following factors, in order, until all ties are broken.

 The 2011 tiebreaking procedure marks a departure from the league’s point-system tiebreaker, which had been utilized in the conference since the 1993 tournament.

Two-way Ties
 1. Records in head-to-head competition are compared, with the higher seed going to the team that has won the most games against the other.
 2. If head-to-head competition does not break the tie, the deadlock will be broken by non-conference schedule strength as calculated by The RPI Report on the day before the final day of conference games. The team with the better non-conference schedule strength will receive the higher seed.

Multiple Ties
 1. If three or more teams are tied, regular-season competition among the tied schools shall be pooled into a “mini round-robin.” Teams shall be ranked according to their position in such a round- robin.
 2. If head-to-head competition does not break the tie, the deadlock will be broken by non-conference schedule strength as calculated by The RPI Report on the day before the final day of conference games. The teams will be seeded in order of their non-conference schedule strength.