Rutgers #33
- Thread starter bac2therac
- Start date
Games where our opponent scores 70 points or more are generally not going to end well for us. We need to defend those guys just like anyone else. We are not going to out score many teams in the conference.
If RU doesn’t wise up in defending the perimeter it could get ugly in Evanston
Unfortunately people don’t look at box scores. Iowa hit 12 3 pointers. No one does that. And shot 44% doing so! That is rare air. Sucks.
If only the team was perfect, like you.
Problem is we’re going to be getting into games now with guys who can knock down a perfectly defended 3 (short of a block) with ease. Need to come up with some O which we have shown we can. We have very evenly distributed scoring this year, we don’t need someone to drop 25+ like in years past to beat some of these teams.
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anon_xekqhstck0ygt
Guest
care more about where RU finishes...early January polls have hurt RU before, remember being #11 a couple years ago? How did that end?
With us making the tournament for the first time in like 100 years.
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anon_xekqhstck0ygt
Guest
well ya of course that's not what I meant
For what it’s worth, that #11 ranking was in December (and it was the COVID season that started a couple weeks late). The team came out red hot with RHJ shooting like 50% from three. They were never really the 11th best team and they reverted to their true ability. I don’t think the ranking caused it.
Doesn't matter and I don't mind the team being disrespected a bit (we play better with that chip on the shoulder), but I agree with your assessment. We're definitely a top 25 team.
Although that team was one Myles Johnson flubbed dunk away from the Sweet 16...
I went to their board to check their schedule, then clicked on a link that provided their offense’s rankings by category. I was shocked by the numbers (on mobile now so can’t provide a link). But when watching them the other night they had a couple of guards who could slash, which might give us some cause of concern. But for them to be IIRC 12-3 with one of the worst offenses in the country means their defense is tough. If they give us a similar zone look as Iowa, this will be an ugly game for which I hope we get the win.
We are #131/#3 offense/defense and NW is #162/#9. They are #40 in luck and we are #346. They are basically a worse version of us.. however they have home court advantage.
No. We're definitely not a top 25 team.
We're a top 25 team when we're ranked in the top 25 by the AP and coaches polls. And I'd even go so far as to say we're only a top 25 team when we end our season in the top 25 of those polls.
We might be a top 25 team by the end of the season. But we're gonna have to get better on offense to keep winning games, and cannot have defensive games like we just did against Iowa.
As much as I hate to say it (which is not very much at all): YOU'RE WRONG!
I think Pike will have used the Iowa game to get the players playing better against a zone. We did better in the second half, which I'm guessing had to do with halftime coaching for the zone. I expect the team to do better against that sort of zone going forward.
At least I sure hope so or it might be a long season.
They played a bunch of lower closer games vs like Brown. They were decimated by a good but not great Pitt team. Dispatched of Illinois easily but no match for Ohio State and ghey seem to have Spartys number of late.
Would not be surprised at all if they beat us comfortably if we can't make shots
Not the most hostile of road environments. I think we need to find a way to win this one.
We have been an elite defensive team so far this season. That's absolutely true. And people complaining about stuff is almost always, at some level, laughable given how complaining on an internet forum almost always a pointless activity.
But we did not play good defense for many stretches of the Iowa game. That's also true.
I did not expect us to play defense as badly as we did against Iowa. Did you? And if our expectations were proven wrong in that game, logic dictates that our expectations for the entire season could also be proven wrong.
My current expectation, despite the Iowa game, is that we'll be just fine on defense for the majority of games this season. I think this team will be proven to be an elite defensive team all the way through to the end of the season.
But I'm not laughing at anybody who allows for the possibility that we may struggle defensively in more than just the Iowa game, possibly lots more. It's just being logical to understand that expectation doesn't dictate outcome.
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Exactly. There was literally zero chance of being in the Top 25 after that loss. If we had lost by 1 to Purdue then beaten both Maryland and Iowa, I think we'd be higher than 33, but we had to win all 3 to be ranked.
If we're good enough to keep winning games, we'll eventually be ranked (and will have earned it). But even then, it can go away after a couple bad games.
Just win and we'll see where we're at come NCAA selection time. For me, that's what matters. Not mid-season ranking nonsense or any notions of national "respect".
Who GAF what anybody else thinks. Just win because it's way more fun than losing.
This is sort of spurious, I think. Obviously anything is possible, but you should expect to have bad defensive performances even if you don't expect it in any specific game. If you have a 15 game sample of great defense (and a coach with a track record of great defense) and a 1 game sample of bad defense, logic and probability is much more on the side of the 1 being an aberration and not the 15.
Going at least 2-1 in this next group of coin-flippy type games would help get our luck rating (and WAB) out of the abyss.
You miss the entire point. Rankings on 1/9/2023 mean crap. No one should obsess over it . However, national perception from the media that doesn’t get to watch us regularly and just the casual fan, even a sports fan, the rankings are important. ESPN the gold standard for anyone age 16-40 to find out what happened in sports specifically does highlights of the top 25 ranked teams. If you are ranked , you are seen on ESPN every time you play. You are talked about every time you play. Your team is on the mind of the college basketball fan , expert , media member , as a good team. That carries tremendous cache and attention to our great basketball program. We are not a Blue Blood so that recognition is worth a ton. Duke , a Blue Blood is bad and somehow they are still ranked and their highlights shown every time they play. It makes a difference , not sure how big or how small but it makes a difference.
So your opinion that mid season rankings and notions of national respect are nonsense is just that , a ****** stupid opinion . Rutgers is top 20 in every metric , NET , Kenpom , Sagarin , Torvik , etc. We are deserving to be ranked 20-25 despite what your ****** opinion is.
All of these metrics are designed to be predictive (maybe not NET, but it basically tracks Kenpom so it might as well be). The top 25 polls have always been more about which teams are deserving based on wins and losses than about predicting which teams will be best going forward. Based on that, Rutgers at #33 really does not seem wrong at all.
When you have us below Indiana, Maryland , Ohio State coming off a 0-2 week to our 2-1 week , Illinois , Northwestern and Michigan State it is not right. But that was not the point of my reply above. You say 33 is fair and I say 20-25 is fair also. We are a whisker apart. But from a perception standpoint , miles away.
The way the votes are counted it starts to break down when you get outside of the actual top 25.. every single voter could think RU was #26 and we get no votes, meanwhile some homer puts Maryland at #23 and voila they are "ahead" of us even though the vast majority of voters would agree RU > Maryland.
No, it's not spurious at all. If I made some sort of statement of certainty about the future, or based my logic on unrealistic expectations, then sure, that would be spurious.
But I didn't do that. I never said I didn't expect variance in the level of play on D. There's always variance, we're not talking about robots here. It was the sheer degree of variance I didn't expect.
In the first half against Iowa, we had players constantly confused about who was marking whom, too many wide open 3s, players picking each other off their mark, super slow reactions to the ball, failures to box out, uncoordinated fouls, etc. In all our earlier games this season, including the losses, those sorts of things ranged from rare to very rare. But they were pretty common in that half. And it wasn't really until the second half that we regained our usual level of D, albeit still not as good as we can be.
Give credit to Iowa, they were on fire from 3 point range, and their movement on offense was great. They are a really good offensive team who also played good defense against us.
Anyway, while I think it was most likely an aberration, I can't possibly know that. And since I have no way of knowing the reason(s) it happened, it's only logical to slightly adjust my expectations to allow for more variance in defensive performance than I had previously thought likely.
I tend to not allow wishful thinking to impact my predictions. I still think we have a very good shot at ending the season with elite defensive stats. But almost nothing is certain when it comes to the future.
Thinking otherwise would be textbook spuriousness.
even though everyone knows the results and we did beat #1 Purdue.....it was totally overshadowed by the Bills player going down. We got brief mentions on the sportscasts and shows but the win was clearly muted in terms of national attention than it might normally be
College basketball teams lose -- even the best defensive teams. Tennessee, Houston and Rutgers all have losses (granted we have a few more but that was when we were not at full strength except for Seton Hall when we played an elite defensive game). Pick on our offense if you want but complaining about defensive effort, close outs, etc., when Iowa was clearly an outlier makes no sense. If we see some of the same issues against NW or OSU it will be fair at that point to raise a concern. But, at this time, it's premature.
I don't see the value of complaining about either the O or the D on an internet forum. But people love to complain. So I think you're probably fighting a losing battle trying to get them to stop.
no uNo, it's not spurious at all. If I made some sort of statement of certainty about the future, or based my logic on unrealistic expectations, then sure, that would be spurious.
But I didn't do that. I never said I didn't expect variance in the level of play on D. There's always variance, we're not talking about robots here. It was the sheer degree of variance I didn't expect.
In the first half against Iowa, we had players constantly confused about who was marking whom, too many wide open 3s, players picking each other off their mark, super slow reactions to the ball, failures to box out, uncoordinated fouls, etc. In all our earlier games this season, including the losses, those sorts of things ranged from rare to very rare. But they were pretty common in that half. And it wasn't really until the second half that we regained our usual level of D, albeit still not as good as we can be.
Give credit to Iowa, they were on fire from 3 point range, and their movement on offense was great. They are a really good offensive team who also played good defense against us.
Anyway, while I think it was most likely an aberration, I can't possibly know that. And since I have no way of knowing the reason(s) it happened, it's only logical to slightly adjust my expectations to allow for more variance in defensive performance than I had previously thought likely.
I tend to not allow wishful thinking to impact my predictions. I still think we have a very good shot at ending the season with elite defensive stats. But almost nothing is certain when it comes to the future.
Thinking otherwise would be textbook spuriousness.
Rutgers now has two home losses one of which was a bad loss to Seton Hall.They can't afford home losses knowing the difficulty winning on the road.
Sorry, we're a top 25 team by all the measures that count, including my opinion, so not wrong at all. But then again, I don't actually care and like being under-respected...No. We're definitely not a top 25 team.
We're a top 25 team when we're ranked in the top 25 by the AP and coaches polls. And I'd even go so far as to say we're only a top 25 team when we end our season in the top 25 of those polls.
We might be a top 25 team by the end of the season. But we're gonna have to get better on offense to keep winning games, and cannot have defensive games like we just did against Iowa.
As much as I hate to say it (which is not very much at all): YOU'RE WRONG!
See, what I'm wondering now is, is this just a fiendish plot to trigger my usual douchebaggery which, when combined with my hyper-contrary nature, causes me to heap tons of respect on you. Hm...
I know liking being under-respected is not the same as disliking being respected. However, knowing I would know that the two are not the same, you might be counting on me to extrapolate your stated fondness for under-respect into a love of disrespect which naturally leaves me with no choice but to respond with the opposite of what you extrapolatedly (yes it totally is too a word, and you know, it should be anyway) are pretending you want.
Which in turn provides you with what you really want, respect.
Well played, Mr. Numbers. Well played.
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Never on a Tuesday evening.
I noticed, in your quoting of my post, that I used "or" where I meant to use "and" (which I've since corrected in my post). So thanks for quoting it. I hate to see grammar and/or usage mistakes in my writing.
Had I been into the blow, that mistake would never have occurred. Of course.