It's barely a day-and-a-half old, but this is already feeling like one of the stranger weeks I've experienced in a while.
On one hand: it's a big fat week of Flyer Nothingness. Seven whole days with no new Flyer news, results, or input of any kind. Robbed of that usual stimuli, it should be a case of "out of sight, out of mind."
And yet, on the other hand: I'm all-too-conscious of what looms at the end of this week. A cataclysm at the D-Rena, to be broadcast worldwide on the ESPN Family. So forget the lack of stimuli... the Flyers are still very much on my mind, even if my mind doesn't quite know what thoughts to think about.
Surely, I can't be the only one?
Or maybe I am: I have no fricking clue what Tim is doing this past month but he ain't doing it here. And Secaur's dirty little secret is that he suffers from a severe emotional imbalance and cannot maintain a cogent thesis about the Flyers for more than 3 days at a time. In a world where he can go from predicting a 9 game winning streak heading into Temple all the way to volunteering to personally incapacitate Brian Gregory with his bare hands just to stop the man from coaching us straight into the CBI, you can see why he's not around checking with voluminous Flyer Thoughts. The blog was supposed to be a fun hobby, not something that causes one to be filled with murderous rage.
But I'm here. And despite the lack of fresh input, *I* can't stop thinking about the Flyers during this alleged off-week. I find they're mostly optimistic thoughts, at least, as compared to most of what I've seen passing as Flyer Discourse. Not naively optimistic (there's a bit of that out there, too, and I find it as laughable as the venomous and misguided pessimism), but I'm still excited for what is to come, rather than dreading it.
Or worse: considering it meaningless.
I think that's the mindset that I find the most troublesome at this point. People who get all whiny and indignant because Dayton has now already played its way into the NIT, and there's nothing to be done about it, and the season's over. Bottom line: anyone who says that DOES NOT KNOW WHAT WORDS MEAN. They should be forced to ride a short-bus to the Arena when parking in the Delco Lot, if you catch my drift.
Feel free to question our ability to do what it takes to cement our spot in the NCAA Tourney, if you want to have an intelligent discussion on the matter. But do not sit there an opine that we've already sealed our fate. Because if you do, what you are saying is that you not only predicted the Flyers to finish 25-5 or better, but that you believed that 25-5 WAS THE FLOOR for being considered for an at-large bid.
A few people might have said the former at the start of the season. But nobody said the latter. Nobody of consequence, anyway.
So why, now, in the first week of February, are people rushing to the nearest internet to type angry missives about the patheticness of our Flyers and the irrelevance of the rest of our season, now that we have 6 losses? Simple: because most people are stupid, but we have to humor them because if the internet has accomplished nothing else besides free and easy distribution of porn, it's democratized intelligence. Dumdum McGED's vote is worth as much as mine. Whee.
Way I look at it, I predicted a 23-7 regular season (11-3 OOC, 12-4 A-10), with that being more than ample to be an NCAA lock. Presently, RPIForecast.com backs this up, as our SOS is mighty (top 20 for our OOC schedule, and it'll end up being top 40 overall at the end of the season), and a 23-7 regular season would land us with an RPI in the top 25. Impossible to leave out of the Dance, really.
Even at 22-8, we remain a top 30 RPI team at the end of the year, and just because of the difficulty of our remaining schedule (and the fact that to reach 22-8 would still mean going 8-2 in the Selection Committee's precious "Last 10 Games"), we'd still have 3-4 regular season Quality Wins up against just the single Bad Loss (St. Joe's). We only really dip onto the Bubble (probably on the wrong side of it) if we stumble to 21-9.
Ergo:
(1) We're only really one game off the pace that I would have predicted, en route to my anticipation of a 23-7 finish. I had @Eggs, @Temple, and @Richmond pencilled in as losses, with the Flyers dropping one other random game, because that's what the Flyers do. Now: we've lost TWO other random games. And we did it back-to-back, which is probably why the angry shouty internet diptards decided to lose all sense of logic and fly off the handle the past week.
(2) 23-7 would be all well and good, but 22-8 will get the job done. Anybody who's written off the rest of the year because we have 6 losses is stupid. We have two more losses to give before a thinking person writes off the rest of the season. Until we give them, I say this is like baseball, and WE CONTROL OUR OWN DESTINY. We basically have a "magic number" next to our name in the standings. In this case, that magic number is currently 7.
(3) I'm not even prepared to say that this-game or that-game is a "must win" for our resume. Obviously, it would sure as hell feel good to bitchslap Eggs on Saturday, not just for reasons of blind personal hatred, but also because it's a quality win over a borderline top-20 RPI team. Others claim we need the "signature road win" @Temple now, because of how bad our resume sucks. Horsefeathers to all of that, says I! HORSEFEATHERS! Also: HOGWASH~! If we win 7 more regular season games, but default at least 1 of them will have to be a Quality Win (quite possibly 2 of them). That pairs up nicely with two pre-existing Quality Wins (GATech and ODU), and doesn't even get into what we'll have a chance to do to play add-on in the A-10 tourney (1 or 2 more Quality Wins are possible, depending on how the chips fall).
(3a) So to simplify: no one game on the remainder of the schedule is "must win." The only "must win" thing in my mind is the number 7. That's it: 7.
(4) Bringing the A-10 tourney into consideration, I think our other "magic number" to keep in mind is 24. If that's our number of total, overall wins on Selection Sunday, it's the one that makes us bulletproof. If we somehow still meet my prediction and finish 12-4 in the A-10, that means we just win one game in Atlantic City, in order to avoid another borderline "bad loss." If we hit 11-5, it means no bye, and we should AT LEAST win our game at home before advancing to AC, where we can make the Selection Committee's job easy by just getting one more Quality Win before crapping out in the semis; make the semis, and we're indisputably a top-4 team in what'll probably be a 4-bid conference. 10-6 or worse and, well, we pretty much have to win the tourney, which in a best case scenario probably means hitting 24 wins. Though if it's fewer than that, it won't matter, cuz they have to take us!
(4a) If you're some kind of schadenfreude enthusiast who can't wait for UD's 6th A-10 loss (9th overall), so you can come back and rub it in my stupid face that NOW the season is over, just you wait! Cuz I'll change my tune so fast, it'll make your head spin! Until we're ELIMINTED FROM THE A-10 TOURNEY, the season's not over. Nobody in this conference is really THAT much superior to us so as to make a neutral court game unwinnable (sadly, we're capable of such swings that nobody other than Fordham is that much inferior to us, either), and as long as there's an Auto-Bid on the table, I ain't ready to start talking about next year's recruits or whether CW will stay or go, dammit! I'm sticking with the 2010 Flyers until some point in mid-March, and there ain't nothing you poopy-pantsed pessimists can do to stop me!
To wrap up....
Saturday's home showdown with Eggsavier may be why I'm still Flyer Obsessed during this off-week, but as my mind wanders, it does tend to wander to the Big Picture. And despite the Sting of Pain after those back-to-back losses last week, the Big Picture is still looking alright. At least: we still control our own destiny, and don't have to rely on others to fade down the stretch. Feel free to rationally debate our ability to do so, but if we lose 2 or fewer games between now and March 6, we ARE dancing. Simple as that.
24/7, baby, those are the magic numbers. It's got a nice, easy-to-remember ring to it. 24/7, and the Committee doesn't matter. We'll have made the Selection for them. If you look at the data objectively, 23/6 should even keep us amply in the discussion and on the bubble, too. But I'd rather be in the Dance than in the Discussion, just to be on the safe side.
24/7... who's with me?
Rick
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Showing posts with label optimism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label optimism. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Five reasons UD will (not) make the 2010 NCAA tournament
Flyer nation has to be feeling pretty good after the success of 2009. Not only an NCAA tourney berth but a win, the program's first since 1990, has the Faithful in high spirits.
Tim is a glass-half-full kind of guy, and he sees no reason why Brian Gregory's boys won't piggyback off of last year's success in the 2009-'10 season. He gives you five reasons Dayton will be in the field of 65 come March 2010. Secaur is, predictably, the eternal pessimist. Last year was a fun one to be a Flyers fan, but last year is just that. And it guarantees nothing for the one upcoming. He lays out five reasons the Flyers could be NIT-bound this spring.
UD will not be dancing in 2010 because:
5. Lack of a third scoring option
My mild dislike for the coaching of one Brian Gregory is fairly well known at this point; it's also an extreme understatement. Because of those feelings I almost made BG's in-game coaching my #5 reason, but then I thought, "The dude won a school record 27 games last year and took UD into the round of 32 for the first time in two decades. Maybe I ought to cut him some slack." It's the first, and likely last, time I'll let that thought slip into my brain.
Since BG and I are boys now, I decided to go with this as my fifth reason. Last year Chris Wright and Marcus Johnson averaged 13.3 and 11.8 points per game respectively. Charles Little was third on the team and Rob Lowery fourth with 7.3 a game, while only one other Flyer averaged more than 4.6 points per. With Little gone to graduation and Lowery likely not back to 100% until January (and who knows if he'll ever be the same player?), I have some concerns about UD's offensive output.
Many will point to Chris Johnson, who managed 6.3 ppg in only about 16 minutes of play per contest. C. Johnson is the likely candidate to pick up the slack and become a viable third scoring option. Others will say that a consistent third scoring threat is not necessary. UD didn't really have it last season, as it relied on stingy defense and different players stepping up on different nights, and that seemed to work out okay.
In my mind, a legit top 25 team needs to have a third guy it can count on on a regular basis. A guy who will step up when Chris Wright is being hounded by the opposition's best athlete and most capable defender. A guy to shoulder some of the burden when Marcus Johnson's jumper just isn't falling. A player you can pencil in for 8-12 points a game no matter what. A few players have this potential, but as the season nears, none has proven himself as that third scorer just yet.
4. Kurt Huelsman
3. Bad Luck
You may see this and think that predicting bad luck sounds like the most ludicrous thing you've ever read. To that I say, read on friends. This blog is only a few weeks old; I can come up with stuff that's far more absurd.
Here's my point, though. The Flyers were something like 10-1 in games decided by five points or fewer last season. (I'm too lazy to look up the actual stat.) A lot of fans saw that as the mark of a gritty, hard-nosed team. One that knew how to get the job done by any means necessary and come out on top in a close one. Others saw that stat in a less positive light. They said the Flyers don't seem to be able to pull away and beat teams by large margins. That squad after all wasn't built to blow out its opponents.
I, on the other hand, saw the 10-1 record in close games as this: an incredible run of good luck. If you played out the 2008-'09 season again, there's no way UD would rack up a 10-1 record in those games. These things even out over time, especially when you have a team that far too often let inferior teams hang around deep into games. Play with fire enough times, and you're bound to get burnt, which leads me to...
2. A razor thin margin for error
This has been chronicled throughout the offseason basically since the non-conference schedule was released. It's a problem that is very easy to identify and far more difficult to solve.
Outside of Puerto Rico, the Flyers really have no chance to pick-up a marquee OOC victory. Match-ups with fellow mid-majors Creighton, George Mason and New Mexico have their benefits but aren't exactly head turners come Selection Sunday. If UD goes 1-2 in Puerto Rico or even if the team loses to Ga Tech and wins its next two, the chance for a resume padding non-conference W (a la Marquette last season and Pitt and Louisville two years ago) has slipped through its fingers.
And let's face it, the A10 itself is always a crapshoot. Other than Xavier, which team can you really rely on to be good? You could have a situation where Dayton's "signature" OOC wins are Creighton and George Mason, and that means the Flyers would have to be almost flawless in the A10 to secure an at-large bid.
UD pulled this feat off last year, I know. But even with 26 wins heading into Selection Sunday, the Flyers were on thin ice. Playing the "what if" game is pretty pointless after the fact, but one can't help but wonder: What if Fordham doesn't let Rob Lowery go coast-to-coast for a game winning lay-up? What if Karl Hobbs knows you're only allowed to play five guys at a time? That's why reasons #2 and #3 are so inter-related. A little dose of bad luck against a conference foe or two combined with such tiny room for error could spell the recipe for disaster ... or at least for an NIT bid.
1. The hunted, not the hunter
In recent memory the Dayton Flyers have never been the hunted. They've always been the hunter - hunting down some big-time BCS schools in the last few years and taking aim at Xavier which consistently sat atop the A10 standings.
Now the shoe's on the other foot. Your own Dayton Flyers are pretty much the concensus pick to win the league this season. They're in almost everyone's preseason top 25 rankings. Xavier has lost players to graduation, one left early to go to the NBA, and its coach abandoned ship for greener pastures.
Suddenly, UD is the team on top looking down at the rest of the league. It's a great spot to be in when you think about it. However, the Flyers had better be ready for a dogfight (not the Mike Vick kind) in every single conference game next year. Be ready to take your opponent's best shot game in and game out. Can the '09-'10 Flyers live up to being the hunted and not the hunter? I, for one, say this will slowly take its toll on this UD team and ultimlately cause it to miss the 2010 NCAA tournament.
The Flyers will once again be in the Field of 65 because:
5. Veteran Leadership
These guys just plain know how to win. Whether it's Marcus Johnson flushing down a dunk off a miss in the waning seconds of a road victory or London Warren straight glassing an opposing guards weak lay-in off a fast break, the senior leadership on this team has seen us go from rags to riches. Gregory gives them a lot of credit for the turning of this program they (yes, that includes Kurt) are and the #5 reason you will hear Greg Gumble announce our name on Selection Sunday.
4. Sophomore Slump?
I don't think so. It's cliche, I know, but Chris Johnson just plain has a nose for the ball. The kid can slam, he can jump, and every time we need a critical board he makes a video game-like leap across your screen to slap that ball tight. I see more of the same from CJ with a breakout year from Paul Williams to help the Flyers dance.
3. Ahhh Dee Dee Dee – D Fennnnce
When you talk about a team’s strong point, you’re talking about defense when it comes to the Flyers. If you want to log minutes in a Brian Gregory coached system, you best be playing defense. This team has shown it has what it takes to be, and I say this with a straight face, one of the best defensive teams in all of college basketball. Team defense along with spectacular individual defensive efforts from London Warren, MJ and Wright will have the Flyers blocking their way to the NCAA’s for a second straight year.
2. No clever saying here – Depth
I remember year after year of being a player away from this team self destructing. Hell, we saw what happened when a 14th ranked team lost a freshman – we missed the dance.
With the exception of the point guard position, this team has incredible depth. This depth goes two fold. 1) UD can sustain injuries should they happen. Now, I'm not talking about your ACL out for the year but the bumps and bruises that will happen over the course of a season and I'm confident our depth will be an asset. 2) While many (including myself) lost years off of our lives watching the first few years of Brian Gregory’s substitution patterns, I think we're stating to get it. He has his players, he's implementing that famous Michigan State system of depth, D and rebounding, and we have the horses to do it. Everyone will score, everyone will play, and come the tail end of the A-10 season, the Flyers will have the freshest legs in the conference.
1. Christopher Flyght Wright
Not only have we never lost a game when Flyght suits up in The Arena but the man has changed the face and attitude of Dayton Basketball as we know it. You could first see signs of it when a young (and arguably foolish) freshman from Trotwood took the ball strong to the rack at Freedom Hall years ago. He was absolutely stuffed time after time but the kid would not stop taking it strong. NEVER have I seen an attitude like that lace it up for the Flyers. Do remember, he had one of the key plays in that game with his gazelle-like striding lay-up in the final minutes to seal another W off Slick Rick and the Cards.
Wright has grown up a lot since that game, and has made this program what it is today. I love being able to out-physical a Marquette team and hear the Big East Network announcers comment that, "Wright has been the sherriff inside today." His attitude is the refuse-to-lose and scared-of-no-one type of attitude that we need.
I could type four pages about what Flyght has done for this program and maybe one of these days I will. But for now, you don't want to read it and I'm scared it might turn into a quasi-man crush love letter. The facts are that the kid is one of the best in the country and folks, he is the #1 reason why the Dayton Flyers will be dancing again in March!
Tim is a glass-half-full kind of guy, and he sees no reason why Brian Gregory's boys won't piggyback off of last year's success in the 2009-'10 season. He gives you five reasons Dayton will be in the field of 65 come March 2010. Secaur is, predictably, the eternal pessimist. Last year was a fun one to be a Flyers fan, but last year is just that. And it guarantees nothing for the one upcoming. He lays out five reasons the Flyers could be NIT-bound this spring.
UD will not be dancing in 2010 because:
5. Lack of a third scoring option
My mild dislike for the coaching of one Brian Gregory is fairly well known at this point; it's also an extreme understatement. Because of those feelings I almost made BG's in-game coaching my #5 reason, but then I thought, "The dude won a school record 27 games last year and took UD into the round of 32 for the first time in two decades. Maybe I ought to cut him some slack." It's the first, and likely last, time I'll let that thought slip into my brain.
Since BG and I are boys now, I decided to go with this as my fifth reason. Last year Chris Wright and Marcus Johnson averaged 13.3 and 11.8 points per game respectively. Charles Little was third on the team and Rob Lowery fourth with 7.3 a game, while only one other Flyer averaged more than 4.6 points per. With Little gone to graduation and Lowery likely not back to 100% until January (and who knows if he'll ever be the same player?), I have some concerns about UD's offensive output.
Many will point to Chris Johnson, who managed 6.3 ppg in only about 16 minutes of play per contest. C. Johnson is the likely candidate to pick up the slack and become a viable third scoring option. Others will say that a consistent third scoring threat is not necessary. UD didn't really have it last season, as it relied on stingy defense and different players stepping up on different nights, and that seemed to work out okay.
In my mind, a legit top 25 team needs to have a third guy it can count on on a regular basis. A guy who will step up when Chris Wright is being hounded by the opposition's best athlete and most capable defender. A guy to shoulder some of the burden when Marcus Johnson's jumper just isn't falling. A player you can pencil in for 8-12 points a game no matter what. A few players have this potential, but as the season nears, none has proven himself as that third scorer just yet.
4. Kurt Huelsman
3. Bad Luck
You may see this and think that predicting bad luck sounds like the most ludicrous thing you've ever read. To that I say, read on friends. This blog is only a few weeks old; I can come up with stuff that's far more absurd.
Here's my point, though. The Flyers were something like 10-1 in games decided by five points or fewer last season. (I'm too lazy to look up the actual stat.) A lot of fans saw that as the mark of a gritty, hard-nosed team. One that knew how to get the job done by any means necessary and come out on top in a close one. Others saw that stat in a less positive light. They said the Flyers don't seem to be able to pull away and beat teams by large margins. That squad after all wasn't built to blow out its opponents.
I, on the other hand, saw the 10-1 record in close games as this: an incredible run of good luck. If you played out the 2008-'09 season again, there's no way UD would rack up a 10-1 record in those games. These things even out over time, especially when you have a team that far too often let inferior teams hang around deep into games. Play with fire enough times, and you're bound to get burnt, which leads me to...
2. A razor thin margin for error
This has been chronicled throughout the offseason basically since the non-conference schedule was released. It's a problem that is very easy to identify and far more difficult to solve.
Outside of Puerto Rico, the Flyers really have no chance to pick-up a marquee OOC victory. Match-ups with fellow mid-majors Creighton, George Mason and New Mexico have their benefits but aren't exactly head turners come Selection Sunday. If UD goes 1-2 in Puerto Rico or even if the team loses to Ga Tech and wins its next two, the chance for a resume padding non-conference W (a la Marquette last season and Pitt and Louisville two years ago) has slipped through its fingers.
And let's face it, the A10 itself is always a crapshoot. Other than Xavier, which team can you really rely on to be good? You could have a situation where Dayton's "signature" OOC wins are Creighton and George Mason, and that means the Flyers would have to be almost flawless in the A10 to secure an at-large bid.
UD pulled this feat off last year, I know. But even with 26 wins heading into Selection Sunday, the Flyers were on thin ice. Playing the "what if" game is pretty pointless after the fact, but one can't help but wonder: What if Fordham doesn't let Rob Lowery go coast-to-coast for a game winning lay-up? What if Karl Hobbs knows you're only allowed to play five guys at a time? That's why reasons #2 and #3 are so inter-related. A little dose of bad luck against a conference foe or two combined with such tiny room for error could spell the recipe for disaster ... or at least for an NIT bid.
1. The hunted, not the hunter
In recent memory the Dayton Flyers have never been the hunted. They've always been the hunter - hunting down some big-time BCS schools in the last few years and taking aim at Xavier which consistently sat atop the A10 standings.
Now the shoe's on the other foot. Your own Dayton Flyers are pretty much the concensus pick to win the league this season. They're in almost everyone's preseason top 25 rankings. Xavier has lost players to graduation, one left early to go to the NBA, and its coach abandoned ship for greener pastures.
Suddenly, UD is the team on top looking down at the rest of the league. It's a great spot to be in when you think about it. However, the Flyers had better be ready for a dogfight (not the Mike Vick kind) in every single conference game next year. Be ready to take your opponent's best shot game in and game out. Can the '09-'10 Flyers live up to being the hunted and not the hunter? I, for one, say this will slowly take its toll on this UD team and ultimlately cause it to miss the 2010 NCAA tournament.
The Flyers will once again be in the Field of 65 because:
5. Veteran Leadership
These guys just plain know how to win. Whether it's Marcus Johnson flushing down a dunk off a miss in the waning seconds of a road victory or London Warren straight glassing an opposing guards weak lay-in off a fast break, the senior leadership on this team has seen us go from rags to riches. Gregory gives them a lot of credit for the turning of this program they (yes, that includes Kurt) are and the #5 reason you will hear Greg Gumble announce our name on Selection Sunday.
4. Sophomore Slump?
I don't think so. It's cliche, I know, but Chris Johnson just plain has a nose for the ball. The kid can slam, he can jump, and every time we need a critical board he makes a video game-like leap across your screen to slap that ball tight. I see more of the same from CJ with a breakout year from Paul Williams to help the Flyers dance.
3. Ahhh Dee Dee Dee – D Fennnnce
When you talk about a team’s strong point, you’re talking about defense when it comes to the Flyers. If you want to log minutes in a Brian Gregory coached system, you best be playing defense. This team has shown it has what it takes to be, and I say this with a straight face, one of the best defensive teams in all of college basketball. Team defense along with spectacular individual defensive efforts from London Warren, MJ and Wright will have the Flyers blocking their way to the NCAA’s for a second straight year.
2. No clever saying here – Depth
I remember year after year of being a player away from this team self destructing. Hell, we saw what happened when a 14th ranked team lost a freshman – we missed the dance.
With the exception of the point guard position, this team has incredible depth. This depth goes two fold. 1) UD can sustain injuries should they happen. Now, I'm not talking about your ACL out for the year but the bumps and bruises that will happen over the course of a season and I'm confident our depth will be an asset. 2) While many (including myself) lost years off of our lives watching the first few years of Brian Gregory’s substitution patterns, I think we're stating to get it. He has his players, he's implementing that famous Michigan State system of depth, D and rebounding, and we have the horses to do it. Everyone will score, everyone will play, and come the tail end of the A-10 season, the Flyers will have the freshest legs in the conference.
1. Christopher Flyght Wright
Not only have we never lost a game when Flyght suits up in The Arena but the man has changed the face and attitude of Dayton Basketball as we know it. You could first see signs of it when a young (and arguably foolish) freshman from Trotwood took the ball strong to the rack at Freedom Hall years ago. He was absolutely stuffed time after time but the kid would not stop taking it strong. NEVER have I seen an attitude like that lace it up for the Flyers. Do remember, he had one of the key plays in that game with his gazelle-like striding lay-up in the final minutes to seal another W off Slick Rick and the Cards.
Wright has grown up a lot since that game, and has made this program what it is today. I love being able to out-physical a Marquette team and hear the Big East Network announcers comment that, "Wright has been the sherriff inside today." His attitude is the refuse-to-lose and scared-of-no-one type of attitude that we need.
I could type four pages about what Flyght has done for this program and maybe one of these days I will. But for now, you don't want to read it and I'm scared it might turn into a quasi-man crush love letter. The facts are that the kid is one of the best in the country and folks, he is the #1 reason why the Dayton Flyers will be dancing again in March!
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