For whatever it’s worth, their board seems quite confident and is discussing whether their margin of victory will be sufficient.
I find it curious given that we beat them last year, and our squad this year appears to be much improved - we ended as KenPom 59 last year, and currently sit at 55 with maybe some head clearance to move up…
I suppose they feel much improved as well.
I do enjoy that they mid-major Catholic schools are, by the computers, the better two teams than the ACC/BIG teams participating.
Saint Louis has a lot of history and a much more robust basketball program than Santa Clara in recent history–enough that the Kevin Foster Broncos got votes just by beating them back in 2012. I think our fan base is made cautious by repeated disappointment–every streak is a loss away from revealing itself to be a mirage…actually, exactly what happened the last two times we beat SLU. Their fanbase isn’t used to the same degree of extended disappointment and more willing to see success as indication that they’ve arrived (again).
We want to believe that we have a program that can beat SLU by 2 points; they want to believe that they’re back to being a program that can wallop SCU by 22 points.
For those who like train wrecks…Wazzu is being doubled up by Chaminade in the Maui Invitational right now. The Cougars have committed 15 TOs to Chaminade’s 1.
On track for the worst loss in all of D1 this year. There’s a whole half left. But Wazzu looks like they’ve already given up.
Wazzu held on to win 90-85, Chaminade had them down to just a few points but couldn’t quite make it work. The Cougars are gonna be a mess this season. Happy to see it, carpetbaggers.
UC Davis just spanked Louisiana 77-56. I guess only losing by 21 is better than losing by 37. I feel bad for the Ragin’ Cajuns.
Torvik adjusted efficiency without preseason bias. It’s still a bit early to be filtering data like this, but since the hype meter is starting to tick up, here’s more grist for that mill:
I just read through the SLU board. A bit comical. They are much more blindly bullish on their squad whereas we are a bit more cautiously optimistic – perhaps that’s just a product of our fans’ collective hopes getting squashed repeatedly over the past 28ish years.
@getnashty, was that you posting as @SantaClaraFan on their board?
Wazzu fell to ASU 100-94 in the Maui Classic. It was a fast-paced, entertaining game.
ASU moves on to play USC in the championship game.
Although the Cougars fell short, they have a freshman, Glass, who put up 40 points, outshining the Sun Devils’ Moe Odum. I expect WSU will steal a few games this year if he gets hot. We’d better be prepared to put our best perimeter guys on him when we catch them in conference, because he can drain the 3 at-will.
Yeah @TheWeave, clearly ESPN trying to pull the nostalgia angle on us older folks with that tournament branding.
Jim McKay with the classic narration of that introduction.
Would be better if Pete Twinkle (Jason Sudeikis) had narrated the sponsorships. Greg Stink (Will Forte) could’ve added some *interesting” color commentary.
As far as classic TV sports programming intros and outros go, I still think think Mel Allen’s This Week in Baseball final credits takes the cake:
A bit of trivia: the theme song is called “Gathering Crowds” written and performed by John Scott.
St. Mary’s just eked by Wichita State 70-65 in a neutral site game in the Bahamas. The Gaels did not shoot particularly well, going 2-16 from 3 and 39% overall. However, they only had 9 TOs (to the Shockers 13) and hit 22-26 FTs (85%), including going 6 for 6 in the last 90 seconds or so of the game. McKeever is a beast, ripping down 15 boards to go along with his 13 points; Maurauskas added 9 rebounds and 20 points. Impressively, McKeever played 35 minutes - not really common for a 7’3” 285 lb man.
We are gonna have our hands full when we play SMC.
Mods, feel free to move this wherever you see fit. I didn’t really see a clean place to put it. Maybe in the future vs. ASU thread?
ASU beat Texas (a high Torvik ranking) yesterday. Big win. They earned the right to play Washington St today, which should be an easy win for the Devils. They will then have a long break (12ish days, maybe finals?) before playing Oklahoma in Phoenix (at the Mortgage Matchup Center, fka US Airways Arena, America West Arena, et.al.) on 12/6 and NAU on 12/9. SCU plays ASU in Henderson on the 12/13. If they can squeak by the Sooners (I’m guessing it is a “neutral” court because it’s not on campus, but all the way across town?), and beat NAU as expected, they’ll go into the game with the Broncos with an 8-1 record, with the only loss coming at the hands of Gonzaga earlier this season.
Both teams seem to be high on the Torvik-adjusted rankings, and both are likely to be bubble teams, so the 12/13 game could be extremely important to differentiate our Broncos, if needed, come March.
They’re a good team. And Moe Odum is fantastic. But you wonder how sustainable it is for one guy to be scoring almost half of your teams’ baskets in the high stakes games. Anyways, I’m sure Santa Clara will watch a lot of film leading up to the match but for now, a win over SLU followed by a win over Stanford or Minnesota would be very big for us.
Some of SCU’s OOC opponents are trending up, which is good. McNeese and Xavier may very well end up as Q1 wins. ASU is looking like a quality matchup, at least Q2. That helps with Nevada being a little down and Loyola Chicago having fallen off a cliff.
But you’ve gotta win those matches. First up, the Billikens.
Wasn’t intending to look dismissively past SLU. The Billikens are a very good team, unless we play like garbage, the game can’t really decimate us (like a loss to a likely Q3 team would). Of course the team needs to focus on SLU…but we fans can peek ahead to some what-if scenarios.
Got to watch 2 games of Moe Odum live at the WCC tournament last year and talk to him a few times in press conferences. Imo he might be the best PG in CBB, definitely one of the highest basketball IQs. That being said, we lost to Pepperdine last year because we couldn’t shoot, and I think this ASU team has a someone similar profile to them with less perimeter shooting, so as long as we don’t put up another stinker from the field we should be ok. Also I don’t think Herb & co will want to give Odum any space after what happened last year and with how much of the load he is a carrying for ASU right now.
ASU lost to USC in the Maui Invitational championship, 88-75. Still, they’ve got a decent record and will be a good neutral-site opponent for SCU. With Loyola-Chicago losing to SJSU today, Santa Clara needs all the help it can get from its past and future opponents. Poor Sister Jean is not smiling down on the Ramblers right now…
Also, I’m going to merge this thread with the other “Around the WCC…” thread later today just to have all of our discussion of past/future opponents in one place.
BTW, Zags and Michigan in a huge game tonight for the Players’ Era championship. I don’t root against WCC opponents generally–except USF sometimes, I’ll admit. But here I have another alma mater to support.
