Ok Boys

[Justin Spencer]

Just saw on CBS that KU was the 5th and Mizzou was the 8th team in the tourney, because of non-conference strength of schedule which was 294th in the nation for Mizzou.

[Trout Commander]

Well no surprise. Missouri got left out of a 1 seed. Completely unfair.

If you look at schedule strength they nailed it. It's not in our favor, but it's as it should be.

[stlfisher]

Yep mizzou was the last # 2 seed and according to the selection commitee never discussed for a 1 seed. I can see that considering the strength of schedule hurt them. Villanova, cal, illinois, really hurt since they all had poor seasons... Compared to normal. What i think is total bs is mizzou was the last # 2 seed...no respect. They should have been 5 th and playing in stl.

[Al Agnew]

What I don't get about this is, if Kentucky was the overall number 1, Syracuse 2, North Carolina 3, and Michigan State 4, then since Missouri got put in the same bracket as Michigan State, that would mean they were number 5, not number 8. If number 8, they would have been put in Kentucky's bracket. (In any tournament the 1 seed plays the 8 seed, 4 seed plays 5 seed, etc.) So in reality, Kansas is in the number 8 position, Missouri in the number 5 position.

Michigan State as a 1 seed is really questionable, and I'd say that outside the 1 seeds, the West region is the toughest. Michigan State will be lucky to make it to the regional final, and Mizzou has pretty tough second and third round games. I think if Mizzou makes it to the regional final, they'll beat Michigan State. I can't say I'd be all that confident that they could beat Kentucky if they were in that region.

I was glad to see English able to play well yesterday. I think he was a step slow on defense. Bobby Knight kept saying he was at a huge disadvantage on defense, but usually he anticipates and beats his man to the spots. He wasn't as good at that at usual yesterday.

But I'm more concerned about Denmon. He's battling a bad ankle that he hurt early in the Texas game, and I think that's why he's been off on his threes the last two games. We need him to be his usual deadly self shooting threes, especially from the second round on (assuming we win the first round game...don't want to jinx anything!).

Kansas has a much easier road to their regional final, but then look who they have to play...and of course they've been known to blow it in early round games. I look for them to lose in the second round

[stlfisher]

My understanding is the last number one seed and the last number two seed both got put out west because thre are no teams in the west that are good this year. Ku, duke, and ohio state received regional preferance because theyvwere considered higher two seeds than mizzou. Still seems ridiculous that mizzou was ranked low, but the regions kinda make sense following that logic as silly as it seems.

[snap]

What gets me about strength of schedule in Mizzou's case is that when they beat Illinois, Villanova, Cal and Notre Dame, it was very early in the year and they were all very good teams at the time!!! Any one who knows sports knows that teams get better or worse, they do not stay the same......IMO, SOS is a bit over rated since the committee only looks at the final product!!! and I do not see how any team in the big 12 this year could have such a low SOS ......that conference was tough this year......I mean, did anyone on this selection committee even see the tigers play??? if so, then look what they did to Cal, ND, Baylor, and Texas in the champ game.....for that matter thru the whole big 12 tournament...they embarrassed teams!!!!

[Al Agnew]

I think the way they supposedly evaluate teams leaves a lot to be desired. Apparently this year it was mostly based on RPI, strength of schedule, and whether or not they won their conference. And they apparently "punished" teams for having low strength of schedule. But when you only look at that stuff, you're overlooking a lot. Mizzou came within a half second and a bad call of beating Kansas twice and winning the conference. Within the top four teams in the conference, Mizzou was 6-1, Kansas was 4-3. What really killed Mizzou was losing to OK State (rpi of 120). That, however, was their only bad loss, and was almost but not quite matched by Kansas losing (at Kansas!) to Davidson (rpi of 64). Of course, it would have been nice if they had been able to figure out Kansas State, though.

As far as strength of schedule, apparently the committee frowns upon playing schools ranked worse than 200, whether you beat them like a drum or not. But when you think about it, an NCAA tournament team should beat any team ranked worse than 100, so there really shouldn't be any difference between worse than 200 teams and worse than 100 teams. But it seems a team gets a lot more "credit" for playing and beating the teams ranked between 100 and 200 than the worse than 200 teams. The way I see it, beating a team you SHOULD beat shouldn't give you any credit, while losing to such a team should really hurt. So Mizzou losing to OK St. probably should have seriously hurt their chances at a number 1 seed, but the cupcake teams they played out of conference should not have made any difference in my opinion. Just as Kansas winning the conference and having a stronger schedule should have been offset by their performance against the other top teams in the conference. If you take it down to teams in the conference that made the tournament, their comparative records were Mizzou 9-3, Kansas 8-3. So while Mizzou doesn't have a clear edge over Kansas, Kansas shouldn't be any higher rated than Mizzou.

Which is a long way of saying that the more I think about it, the more I think both teams were placed about where they deserved to be.

[soggyfeet]

Filled my bracket out the way I wanted it to end. MU vs. KU. MU win 84-80 Thats the way MU should say good by the the Big 12

[stlfisher]

Ku/mu 3 would be unbelievable.

Another point about rpi is you dont have complete control over your ranking. The teams that should normally be good may have sn off year and your kinda out of luck...so it can make scheduling difficult