Bryan may have another year due to the new waivers for some folks who transferred from JCs. That would be huge, and I think he would take it if given the opportunity with how big of a leap he has made this season.
I worry most about Tilly. Quality bigs are the most valued commodity in the college game, and someone may back up a Brinks truck for him.
Still, evaluating transfer talent is the thing I trust this staff with the most, especially recently. Podz was an all time hit. Set aside NBA aspirations for Bal, and he’s a great transfer on his own terms. Pipes, Caffaro, Marshall, Jr., Braun, Bryan, O’Neil, Mahi are/were all good to excellent players in their own right. I can only think of Benjamin as being sort of a miss on the portal over the last 4 seasons. So I’m hopeful that some good players will join the Broncos next season.
On the subject of next year…Longcor looks very polished in the footage I have seen of him. Seems like one of those freshman guards that could give you some minutes right away.
I just took a quick peek at NET rankings after last night’s game. SMC jumped up from 21 to 19. We stayed put at 54. So not a horrible outcome for us.
Now it’s time to take care of business down the stretch:
LMU @Wazzu
Gonzaga @Pacific
Gotta finish at least 3-1, with only loss to Gonzaga.
That would put us at 20-11 (12-6) going into the conference tournament. Hopefully good enough to earn a 3/4 seed. Ideally 3 so we wouldn’t have to face SMC in the semifinal. But that seems a tall order.
I see three difficult games there… LMU is playing well, Beasley is a difficult place to play, and Gonzaga is, well… Gonzaga (we are 2-2 against them in the last four… when’s the last time that was true? Certainly under Davey, probably mid-to-early tenure Davey).
And the Spanos Center is an absolute cavern when empty.
3rd place would be nice… and I think it’s achievable, if the Broncos stay focused and things play out well for us in the other games.
Third will almost certainly require USF dropping an unexpected game. The Dons aren’t a great away team, so maybe. But that tie-breaking win over SMC is big. At this point, both teams are projected to go 12-6 in conference which would put USF in the 3rd seed. If Santa Clara wins out, they’ll get third (most likely) with a one game lead. But that will require perfection from here.
I don’t see USF beating or even really coming close to the Zags in either game. But who knows. Malik Thomas and Marcus Williams can do some amazing things.
Don’t sleep on Oregon St. They are lurking behind us at 7-5, tied in the loss column. And their next 4 games are against the bottom 4 teams in the league so they could go in to the final week of the season at 11-5 then play USF @ home and finish with SMC. If they beat USF they’d be at 12-6. Could be a 3 way tie….those 3 teams all split vs. each other, USF probably gets 3rd because of their SMC win, both the Broncos and OSU beat GU……I think you’d end up going all the way trough head-to-heads and they’d still be tied, so maybe we land 4th based on NET??? Lots of ifs that I don’t like.
If Broncos go only 2-2 down the stretch and OSU beats USF the last week of the season, the Broncos could drop below OSU to 5th place….that would require 4 WCC tourney wins and probably end the at-large hopes.
I’m sure many on this board caught Joe Lunardi’s comments relative to WCC. He views USF “under consideration” and SCU as “Out”. He mentioned the Broncos tough non conference schedule, but that we didn’t win enough of those games. I got the impression personally that even had we pulled the upset last night, much more was needed to be drawn into the at large discussion.
So, I believe that if we were to win the next 4 (a tall task), which would include a sweep of GU…still not enough. We will need to win the WCC tournament, but finishing in Top 4 is imperative to have a realistic shot.
Hypothetically, if we were to reach the title game and lose, is our resume strong enough??
Agree Pistol, that was my take as well.
And it’s important to note that ‘under consideration’ is a far cry from actually getting a NCAA tourney bid. As the season winds down, there will likely be a dozen+ teams in the conversation as a bubble teams but there will really only be 3 to 4 slots truly up for grabs, there will 30+ at large bids that are more or less a given…for instance, the top 6 to 8 SEC teams that don’t win SEC’s tourney. In other words, there will be more bubble teams that don’t make the tourney than those that do.
Re: USF…the only legitimate shot I see for USF is if they run the table, which means beating GU twice…I would be shocked if that were to happen and even if they do it may still not be enough for an at-large bid. And 8 hours from now, we’ll know more with USF playing @ Gonzaga tonight. And beyond GU, USF also needs to win @ Oregon State in their 2nd to last game of the season.
For what it’s worth, Torvik gives USF about a 5% chance of an at-large bid…it’s debatable if that low probability qualifies as ‘under consideration’.
I’ve been holding on to at-large hopes much longer than is reasonable, but I think the SMC loss + the LMU loss last night has officially shot them even with a trip to the WCC Tournament championship.
SCU needed to end the season with just one Quad 3 loss (NDSU). LMU’s embarrassing loss to Pacific has really dropped them in the NET so that I’m not sure it’s possible for them to get up to #135 to be a Q2 loss. NDSU is also regressing and close to a Q4. Stanford is stubbornly just outside the top-75 (i.e. Q3) and while Washington has maintained top-100 status (i.e. Q2) they’re one loss from dropping to Q3 as well.
SCU will likely end the season with at least two bad losses in the analytics and maybe as many as four. I don’t know that a run to the WCC championship is enough to save them at this point.
I think we had to beat Saint Mary’s and run the table and then get to the championship game to even have a chance at an at large. We don’t have enough Quad 1 games left to boost our resume as WAB in the 80s won’t cut it. Realistically we’d have to had a NET below 50 which is achievable but we need our WAB around 50 which will not happen as we sit at 86 currently.
Hopefully we catch some magic in the WCC tourney as we have the ability to win it.
After watching USF vs GU last night and being in the building in Moraga on Tuesday, it’s clear to me that both SCU and USF are capable of beating both teams. Oregon State and Wazzu are wildly inconsistent but also have some real talent. I wouldn’t say the WCC Tournament is wide-open, exactly. But there are better odds of preventing an SMC-GU championship this season than probably any season in the previous 5-7, I think.
It would be great if the WCC could get 3 bids to the tourney. Only way I see that happening is if SCU or USF pulls off the upset to win the tourney and then Saint Mary’s and Gonzaga are left scrambling for at large. Saint Mary’s seems a decent lock to make it but Gonzaga probably would have to get to the Championship game to keep an at large berth in consideration if they finish the season as a 2 seed for the WCC tourney. Though personally I would love to see the Zags miss the tourney and play in the NIT!
USF’s dreams of an at-large died with the loss last night. Torvik gives them a ~3% chance of an at-large and the Broncos ~1.5%.
The Broncos just didn’t win enough games they could have or should have…NDSU, Stanford and LMU were all killer losses. And while the USF loss wasn’t a bad loss, it was a missed opportunity for a Quad I win. And let’s not forget both ASU and Washington games were winnable games in our grasp (leading ASU w/ 5-7 minutes left if I recall).
Missed opportunities…
I agree. I’ll say this, though: I hope SCU schedules like this every year going forward. Not since the 90s have the Broncos ever had a shot for an at-large deep into conference play. They gave themselves plenty of opportunities, got enough of the big ones to matter but let too many head scratchers pull them down.
The soft schedules of the not-too-distant past, when SCU hosted what seemed like half the teams in the SWAC, need to go. They do nothing for your ranking and look suspiciously like a way to gin up the overall record in the eyes of those who don’t know any better.
I thought this year’s schedule was great, and I hope they continue to challenge themselves next year and beyond.
It’ll be interesting to see how it plays out; given that a lot of key players won’t be back, I suspect the schedule might soften. I hope that’s not the strategy— I’d rather see them lose to solid competition than beat a mediocre (or worse) team.
Yup. It’s also just true that even good teams have bad games. I remember the Pac-12 had that SWAC home-and-home challenge to highlight HBCUs that they didn’t continue because the Pac-12 teams kept losing.
The Broncos basically didn’t show up in Reno, but no one talks about the Nevada game as one keeping SCU out of the Tournament. UNR is a pretty good team. You don’t want to lay an egg there, but it won’t kill your season.
The higher level of competition you play, the fewer opportunities to take season-ending losses. Or at least you can balance out the worst losses with good wins.