We'll need to pull off some big road wins, but I think we get a 4/5 seed! Our defense is gonna be insane!

Is there where I post "lets just wait and see how the season plays out" ?

bobinator said:

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Gonna be honest, I think I'll be a little disappointed if we're a six seed this year. I'd like to think we'll be in the mix for a 3-4 or so.

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Is this a fair set of expectations? Seems like a pretty big leap, which does happen all the time, just didn't know that's what we're in store for this year.

I don't think it's that big of a leap from where we ended last season. At the end of the year we were playing like a solid tournament team. Given how relatively little we lost compared to the average team, who we brought in, etc. I don't think it's an unreasonable hope.

But maybe "a little disappointed" isn't the right wording. It's probably more like six is my minimum expectation. But I wouldn't be surprised if we start the season inside or around the top 20, and your six seeds are teams ranked 21-24.

I'm hopeful that we can be even better than that.

Making the tournament is a fair expectation. Everything past that is gravy.

Three times, we were a #5 in 2010.

bobinator said:

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Il. But I wouldn't be surprised if we start the season inside or around the top 20, and your six seeds are teams ranked 21-24.

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Top 25 seems more achievable than a top 6 seed. We'd probably need a gaudy W/L record because I don't think the metrics will love our schedule when it comes seed time.

Our schedule will be fine.

We just need to beat some good teams in league play. Last year we didn't beat anyone good, when they were good, until the absolute very end of the season.

But this should be a really good season, especially by our standards. Torvik's projections have us #18, for example.

I might be drinking the kool-aid a little too much hoping we could be a 3-4 seed type team, but the minimum expectation people should have for this team is one that easily makes the field. If we're having to fight our way in then something went wrong.

Final Four or bust.

I personally don't care about the seeding just as long as we're in the NCAAT instead of the NIT..

I think Coach Buzz really gets in the groove at the end of the season which is when you want to be playing your best.

bobinator said:

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Our schedule will be fine.

We just need to beat some good teams in league play. Last year we didn't beat anyone good, when they were good, until the absolute very end of the season.

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Fine as in "make the tournament" fine. But for teams competing for the top 3-6 seeds, I would bet it's on the weaker end.

It would have been okay overall last year and next year's is probably going to be similar. The thing that killed us last year wasn't our strength of schedule, it was that we didn't beat anybody. (We can argue about whether the committee should have counted our SECT wins more, but they didn't, they basically had the brackets locked in before the tournaments started.)

Our non-con SOS was horrible, no question, but so was Tech's, Duke's, Texas' just to name a few. The SEC is going to be pretty strong next year so our overall SOS will be fine, but we need to capitalize on chances to win a big game or two (or more.)

The body of work eye test seems to be mainly a tickets sold metric disguised as elitist snobbery.

bobinator said:

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Our non-con SOS was horrible, no question, but so was Tech's, Duke's, Texas' just to name a few. The SEC is going to be pretty strong next year so our overall SOS will be fine, but we need to capitalize on chances to win a big game or two (or more.)

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Duke had a weaker schedule but was 28-6 on Selection Sunday. That's the type of gaudy W/L record I was talking about.

And Tech and Texas had 2 of the hardest overall schedules in the nation. I don't think our upcoming schedule will even compare to those 2. Both played multiple Top 10 teams in nonconf, who do we play that's comparable?

I don't see it, right now, but I hope you're right

bobinator said:

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A TexAgs mod linking a 247 article that's a breakdown of something created at CBS. Hop trying to open some kind of hole in the multiverse.

Gonna be honest, I think I'll be a little disappointed if we're a six seed this year. I'd like to think we'll be in the mix for a 3-4 or so.

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pretty sure 3 is the highest seed we've ever drawn, and those were top 10 caliber teams (Law/Kirk/Carter/Antanas/JoJones/Sloan/Roland/BDavis/Elonu | Caruso/House/JaJones/Gilder/Hogg/TDavis)

a bit early to expect this roster to size up with those, though not saying we couldn't draw a 3 from this years field, I do feel we were under-seeded both those seasons

I actually think the 2016 team is a decent comp. You've got a lot coming back from an NIT team and you're adding some good pieces, you'll need new guys to contribute but they won't be absolutely relied on early on because you have some established players. And the roster is deep, if someone is having a bad game, you have options.

Now that team is one that had some bad luck with the schedule. We actually put together a pretty solid non-conference slate and then the SEC absolutely sucked. I think only three teams made the field and one of them was in the play-in game.

This is the year! Buzz takes us dancing!