Wednesday, January 28, 2009

AU hoops stuff

And yet the team in white beats the team in blue by all of three.


Whoops. So most of this optimistic post from Monday looked like a giant pile of WRONG during Auburn's 66-63 escape from transitional independent UT-Pan-American, ranked No. 309 by Pomeroy. But I guess I got one thing right:
Auburn should, hypothetically, regress back to the mean and win a few of the close games they've dropped to date.
Funny, I expected that to apply in SEC play, not against a team Jay Tate described as "so much smaller than Auburn. It's pretty amazing."

But I guess Auburn has to live with it, especially after shooting 2-of-14 from 3 against Pan-Am's lilliputians and going an altogether-too-normal 15-of-27 from the line. Jeff Lebo, I'm curious, what's your take on being the seventh-worst free-throw shooting team out of 344 Division 1 teams?
Fifty-five percent is just terrible. It’s terrible is what it is. It’s just terrible.
At least we're in agreement on that. Now let us never speak of this game again.

The best ... around! One thing you could use that phrase to describe is the Auburner, who showed why by putting together this highlight package of a second thing you could apply it to, the Auburn women's hoopsters:



Sweet. By the way, do you think Pat Summitt was very happy with her team getting flat rolled in Beard-Eaves the other day?
"I was trying to be patient," Summitt said. "I've lost my patience. It's gone." ...

"We've got some non-competitive people on this team and that's not going to get it. They're not going to play," she said.
There's no denying that Summitt makes for a hell of a villain, but you also have to admit that it's this kind of willingness to kick asses when they need kicking that's made her, well, Pat Summitt. I'll take her steeliness over Auriemma's insufferable slimeball act any day of the week and twice on Sunday.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'd rather they have an off night shooting against a team that won't beat them because of it. RPI doesn't consider margin of victory, does it?

Jerry Hinnen said...

No, it doesn't. It's just three basic components--your win %, your opponent's win %, and your opponent's opponent's win %--with a small bonus for winning on the road. It's OK as a rough measuring tool (honestly, better than some people have made it out to be) but Pomeroy or Sagarin are much, much better measures of actual team quality.

Anonymous said...

But when the NCAA tournament is looking at computer rankings, it's the RPI it's looking at. They don't consider Pomeroy or Sagarin. So in the outside chance we go on a miraculous run into at-large consideration, last night's win won't be detrimental to our case.

Jerry Hinnen said...

No, you're right about that, jd. Or at least, you're supposed to be right--there's some debate as to whether the Committee takes "close losses" or "close wins" into account, but I doubt they have the time to parse that finely and besides, they're all old-school athletics types who are going to tell you a win is a win is a win.