Players Era expands to 24, moves Rutgers into eight-team bracket
The Players Era field will expand in 2026, with Rutgers Basketball moving into the eight-team bracket a week before Thanksgiving.
Basketball Players Era expands to 24, moves Rutgers into eight-team bracket
- Thread starter Alec Crouthamel
- Start date
I wonder how the bracket will be structured. Figure we’re almost certain to draw Kansas, Florida or Houston first. I’d expect Auburn to be slotted against WVU in the 4/5 game.
We ll play ND and UNLV once again when teams slide down by losing and as someone said above - I’m sure we ll play Florida or Kansas or Houston in game 1.
My money is on Houston !
Surprised that 3 big 12 schools are slotted in our group but that’s conference consolidation for you !
My money is on Houston !
Surprised that 3 big 12 schools are slotted in our group but that’s conference consolidation for you !
Not necessarily. If the games go as expected, one of ND, UNLV and RU would presumably draw the loser of WVU and Auburn for the second game. And then in game 3 - one of the two other teams would also play them.
Based on the competition, you'd have to be satisfied with another 1 win, 2 loss result.
I don’t know the exact algorithm, but I can’t see how ND lands ahead of us from a paper roster perspective. Simply not seeing it.
Even if we roll with our current backcourt, their PGs are not better than ours. Just because Smith wore a Gonzaga jersey last year which props him up in the rating system, does not make him a better PG than Lino. All Smith’s good games were against crappy teams. Lino’s early struggles bring down his paper efficiency but by the end of the season he was the better of the 2 by a wide margin. Logan Imes isn’t better than J Mike either.
Shooting guard spot isn’t close either. Shrewsberry isn’t better than Tariq (and plays 33 mpg), and their back ups aren’t better than Powers anyway - they stink.
At the 3 - Ethan Roberts is as much of a question mark against high majors as Darren Smith Jr. Their transfer from Davidson nothing special either. They don’t have a guy proven at the high major level like Buchanan who can play 3 or 4.
At the 4 - they are projected to roll with Bryce Dortch and their returning utility forward Koehler who had a decent frosh season playing 16 mpg for them on a bad team. Not seeing why that’s better than Sydnor and Buchanan either.
And finally at the 5 - I think the Winthrop transfer could be pretty goodfor them, but they have absolutely nothing behind him. Their returning back up averaged 4.8 mpg in 9 games (similar to Ware). We should have enough there to neutralize with our combination at center.
I was responding to the post referring to a metric saying ND is 69th best and RU 81st. Meaning ND is within pre-season reach of the new bubble and RU miles from it.
Taking a comprehensive look at the roster, there is no position 1-5 where I would trade what we currently have on our roster as options to what they have. Obviously neither are fully done with roster construction but the metric was based on current rosters.
Yes irrelevant. The point I was trying to make is that these pre-season aggregation metrics don’t take into account roster needs at all. A roster with 13 talented 6-2 PGs wouldn’t produce a good team.
Not sure how the algorithms take into account a player like Lino Mark whose shooting was horrendous at the beginning of the season, but quite good at the end. On average it’s not that great, but if we were seeing real improvement, the stats from the end of year probably are a better barometer for his future performance. Of course, his performance could drop again like Grant’s.
Bad analogy now that we have the K State transfer.
