Winning friends and influencing people.

Quote:

---

Sixteen sweet thoughts before we call it a season:

12. If you're going to make a stink about the selection committee -- talking about you, again, Texas A&M -- it helps to back up the words with decent play.

Sure, the Aggies might have been underseeded by a line or even two, but I can give athletic director Ross Bjork all the data he needs for the 2023 tournament: A&M made only 10 of 25 2-point shots (40%) in its lopsided loss to Penn State, a double-digit seed, and was even worse from 3-point range (10-for-34, 29.4%). Conversely, the Aggies allowed Penn State to shoot 59.1% from downtown and 48.2% overall. No team, regardless of seeding, is overcoming numbers like that in a single-elimination event.

---

https://www.espn.com/mens-college-basketball/insider/story/_/id/35908020/16-reasons-pay-attention-next-couple-weeks-ncaa-tournament-march-madness

Brutal takedown and well deserved.

We always talk about what we "deserve" without ever actually earning anything. Regardless of sport.

Might be time to just STFU and win........

It's a stupid point. So Purdue shouldn't have been a one seed? STFU Lunardummi.

Method Man said:

---

It's a stupid point. So Purdue shouldn't have been a one seed? STFU Lunardummi.

---

His point is, if you want to make a stink about seeding you might not want to follow that up by getting your ass handed to you by 30, to a lower seed.

The old, put your money where your mouth is.

Purdue was a 1 seed who lost, they were not raising Cain about their seeding not being what it should have been. These two scenarios are not the same.

They were a damn one seed. Of course they weren't complaining. I feel like I'm in crazy town. The seeding is based on your resume. Not on your results. Name me a team that was seeded two lines below where anyone else had them and matched up with the hottest team they could possibly play? I'm not going to defend how awful we were but I will defend our questioning the seeding which many non Ags who had no skin in the game did as well…including Lunardi.

Apparently, Hop, they were ok because they didn't complain about their appropriate seeding.

Gap said:

---

Winning friends and influencing people.

Quote:

---

Sixteen sweet thoughts before we call it a season:

12. If you're going to make a stink about the selection committee -- talking about you, again, Texas A&M -- it helps to back up the words with decent play.

Sure, the Aggies might have been underseeded by a line or even two, but I can give athletic director Ross Bjork all the data he needs for the 2023 tournament: A&M made only 10 of 25 2-point shots (40%) in its lopsided loss to Penn State, a double-digit seed, and was even worse from 3-point range (10-for-34, 29.4%). Conversely, the Aggies allowed Penn State to shoot 59.1% from downtown and 48.2% overall. No team, regardless of seeding, is overcoming numbers like that in a single-elimination event.

---

https://www.espn.com/mens-college-basketball/insider/story/_/id/35908020/16-reasons-pay-attention-next-couple-weeks-ncaa-tournament-march-madness

---

Thats a pretty idiotic take from a supposed expert.
The break down of stats on the game is fine, but the conenction between that and if we were underseeded or not is bad.

You know both can be true. Poor seeding and poor play, plus a very hot opponent that launched bricks the next game.

It's almost like you work hard to get a higher seeding so you don't have to play as good of teams in the first game. You get to play them later in the tournament.
tu played same State Penn team later in the tournament and didn't have to find the same rested team that couldn't miss.
That's why seeding matters. It just gives you a slightly larger margin of error in the first game.

PatAg said:

---

Thats a pretty idiotic take from a supposed expert.

---

Well, if you think you are good enough to be a five seed, you sure should be able to handle a 9th place team from the B10 as a 10 seed.
There is no doubt we should have been a 5 or 6 seed but if you follow the tournament, there was a ton of hot teams.
When you play like we did, you will get beat. Just shouldn't be an excuse that we got beat because of our draw.
Next game, Texas played better and kept pressure on them. Score more than 59 points and won the game.
I feel we had a very good shot to beat Texas but just did not perform when needed.
It was also a great season and lots to look forward to.

Yall have to understand that Lunardi's poking at Buzz Williams has nothing to do with whether we got robbed last year or that we complained about our seed this year. He probably also had us seeded higher.

The reason he goes after Buzz Williams is because what Buzz Williams advocates for threatens his pathetic little job. What Buzz actually says he wants to know exactly what it takes, what the criteria is. If everyone knows and can tell who's in or who's out or what they need to do and can tell who will be seeded above who, then theres no reason to ask Joe Lunardi for any of that information.

This is basic, basic politics. Buzz is lobbying the powers that be for reform and Joe is the guy currently making a living in the current system. He's going to feel the need to belittle those arguments, or even better, discredit the messenger.

Leaving the seeding discussion aside, we played our worst game of 2023 when the stage was the biggest and attention was the most intense nationally.

The brutal disappointment of that inability to respond and rise to the moment leaves a stain on an otherwise great turnaround story and conference run.

In the end, postseason March matters most in NCAA Basketball.

Lunardi is making it personal and protecting the selection committee. That makes him precisely a hack.

The last two games of the season were brutal for A&M. Most of that team is back next year and we'll see how it affected them. Time to move on and recruit some high level players.

We played right into the easy narrative. Complain last year about not getting a bid, complain this year about being under-seeded, then get blown out in the first round by a 10 seed.

We were under seeded, but got the crap kicked out of us. Move on. Story over

JJxvi said:

---

Yall have to understand that Lunardi's poking at Buzz Williams has nothing to do with whether we got robbed last year or that we complained about our seed this year. He probably also had us seeded higher.

The reason he goes after Buzz Williams is because what Buzz Williams advocates for threatens his pathetic little job. What Buzz actually says he wants to know exactly what it takes, what the criteria is. If everyone knows and can tell who's in or who's out or what they need to do and can tell who will be seeded above who, then theres no reason to ask Joe Lunardi for any of that information.

This is basic, basic politics. Buzz is lobbying the powers that be for reform and Joe is the guy currently making a living in the current system. He's going to feel the need to belittle those arguments, or even better, discredit the messenger.

---

yep.

at this point, the field selectiuon and seeding should be done by a program not a committee.

there's more than enough data that feeds into tings like NET, kenpom, Quads etc...to determine the field and the seeding without a committee having to injects its biases

time for dinosaur methods (like a selection committee) and dinosaur bracketologists like lunardi to get pushed aside in the name of fairness

We should start a scholarship fund and any time someone types Lunardi or links to one of his articles they have to put a dollar in. At the end of the year the money goes to whichever current student attended the most basketball games.

Proposition Joe said:

---

We played right into the easy narrative. Complain last year about not getting a bid, complain this year about being under-seeded, then get blown out in the first round by a 10 seed.

---

Did Buzz or players or staff openly complain that much this year? Fan bases complain all the time about everything so WGAF if we were complaining.

Pumpkinhead said:

---

Proposition Joe said:

---

We played right into the easy narrative. Complain last year about not getting a bid, complain this year about being under-seeded, then get blown out in the first round by a 10 seed.

---

Did Buzz or players or staff openly complain that much this year? Fan bases complain all the time about everything so WGAF if we were complaining.

---

Bjork was said to have "reached out" to the NCAA about data on the seeding/selection.

And I've certainly got no problem with him doing so, someone needs to figure out exactly what they were thinking.

But you guys knew what the narrative would be -- hell, you had posters basically saying as much before the Penn State game that we need to win this to shove it in the committee's face that we were under-seeded. Instead, we got blown out by a team that then lost the next round.

Are we deserving of getting ***** No -- it's the tournament and all of the teams in it are good enough to beat their opponent.

But we shouldn't be surprised that it's commented on after the fact.

Z Team said:

---

It's almost like you work hard to get a higher seeding so you don't have to play as good of teams in the first game. You get to play them later in the tournament.
tu played same State Penn team later in the tournament and didn't have to find the same rested team that couldn't miss.
That's why seeding matters. It just gives you a slightly larger margin of error in the first game.

---

This x1000

Back in the Dean Smith days at UNC, they had a run of 12 or more years in a row of making the Sweet 16. Of course, the press made a huge deal about it but UNC was very good and always a 1 or 2 seed so at worst they had to beat a 7 seed to advance.

Really, their biggest achievement in that string was managing not to **** the bed anywhere along the way unlike teams like Purdue and Arizona this year.

That's really a stupid take from Lunardi and he's really just trying to stay relevant before he goes into hibernation before next year's bubble talk.

GrayMatter said:

---

That's really a stupid take from Lunardi and he's really just trying to stay relevant before he goes into hibernation before next year's bubble talk.

---

or maybe he's trying to generate click bait to the most gullible fan base in the country

We were right to complain, and we're still right.

But arguing with Lunardi is like arguing with you wife. You may be right, but even if you win, you don't get anything for it.