Broncos come in at 32 .
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WCC Teams as of 12/1:
| Team | NET Rank |
|---|---|
| Gonzaga | 5 |
| Saint Mary’s | 29 |
| Santa Clara | 32 |
| Pacific | 81 |
| Seattle | 109 |
| USF | 121 |
| LMU | 143 |
| Portland | 223 |
| Washington State | 225 |
| Pepperdine | 247 |
| Oregon State | 265 |
| San Diego | 279 |
OOC Opponents as of 12/1:
| Team | NET Rank | Quad System |
|---|---|---|
| McNeese State | 44 | 2 |
| Xavier | 102 | 2 |
| Nevada | 118 | 3 |
| Idaho St. | 131 | 3 |
| Louisiana | 348 | 4 |
| Saint Louis | 49 | 1 |
| Minnesota | 144 | 3 |
| Utah Tech | 243 | 4 |
| New Mexico | 112 | 2 |
| Arizona St. | 100 | 2 |
| North Texas | 226 | 4 |
| Loyola-Chicago | 354 | 4 |
Some surprises: Pacific is quite high. Good for them. Cougars and Beavers…oof. And what a disappointment the two Santa Cruz games are turning out to be from an analytics perspective. Neither has any realistic chance of becoming a Q2 game.
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Santa Clara marketing needs to step up and figure out how to draw way more students to games. 32 in NET and most of our home games have 25% of capacity. Bring back the free beer or something.
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How frustrating that Loyola Chicago is essentially within the margin of error of being the worst team in the Country… massive bummer.
On attendance, we need to do better with alumni and the general public. Many non-student sections sell close to zero tickets.
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While I agree we can do much better with the GP, I think the way you make the games more appealing to them is by bringing a big energy. Many people go to pro sporting events just because of the atmosphere even if they know nothing about the teams playing.
The current student section is very loyal. It’s also <10% of the school. Even if we saw 3x the number of students per game, I think more local residents would see how fun the games are and then would buy a ticket for them and/or their family.
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Broncos 32
Billikens 49
Stanford 107
Minnesota 144
Xavier 102
McNeese St 44
Nevada 118
Idaho State 131
Louisiana 348
Please explain how our team is 32, the team who beat us is 17 slots below us, and the team who beat them the following night 58 slots below them, and the rest of our schedule to date has consisted of teams currently ranked from 102 to 348.
Is it because we are St. Louis’ only Quad 1 win, all of their other wins are Quad 4? Whereas we have Q2, Q3, and Q4 wins? But they still beat us heads up in our only Quad 1 matchup this season.
You have to take margin of victory as well as home/away/neutral into account. Santa Clara lost by as thin a margin as possible to SLU on a neutral. SLU lost similarly to Stanford. But Stanford got beaten by Seattle at home and has no significant wins other than SLU.
Similarly, SCU dominated Xavier, Minnesota, and Nevada in an away, neutral, and home environments respectively. And Santa Clara beat McNeese–the best opponent–pretty handily too.
All that adds up.
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Patty, not to split hairs, but I believe we played Louisiana (the Ragin’ Cajuns) not LA Tech. Which is even worse as they are all the way down at 348. Quad 5? 
I have the Cajuns down, but you caught my mistake anyways: it should be Utah Tech not LA Tech.
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My overarching point is that, while pleasantly surprised by the ranking, I am extremely skeptical. SMC at 29 vs. SCU at 32 just seems off. If we were to go head-to-head with them 10 times the way the Broncos are today, I think the Gaels would win 9 out of those 10, some of those handily. I think we’d have three bigs in foul trouble within the first 10 minutes of the second half. And as someone just said on one of the other threads, RB would/will watch tape of the St. Louis and the Minnesota games to see what confounded our squad, and then build solid game plans to exploit those shortcomings. In other words, HS needs to address the foul trouble and the sloppy play ASAP.
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From a students perspective:
Wednesday & Thursday nights a lot of people go to the Hut/Bronco.
Saturday afternoons most people are at Dartys.
That being said if they did a $2 beer deal, or something for upperclassmen and put a sign up outside the library they would do way better on attendance among students and kids would be way louder. However, as demonstrated, that is not something the administration would be willing to do. Also tough when students see things like last year where we blew games to teams like NDSU, etc. I also don’t want to say that’s the only option but there has to be some way to improve concession incentives or ticket incentives for the general public.
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The students respond when there is a buzz.. in the Nash days the place was packed..Need to market this amazing team to the students so they realize every game is exciting to watch and we are winning like crazy.
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Great to see us so high in the NET rankings. Last couple of years this board has always complained our rank was too low, great to see us now so high.
And in other news, Joe Lunardi has Santa Clara ranked as first team out in the NCAA tourney. Great to finally be in the conversation!
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Do you think a pre-game discount beer and post-game discount beer (with student ticket and ID, of course) inside the arena would work?
Important to get students in AND keep them in for the entire game.
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Pre game makes sense. Post game idk why anyone would want it to go after, everyone generally just rushes to leave at that point. Maybe halftime to keep people from leaving then?
First the positive…..I love the effort, hustle and improved toughness of this squad…..all things that were sorely lacking with the more talented teams from the past two seasons. Specifically, I’m enjoying Hammond’s overall play, Graves’ interior toughness and rebounding, Bukky’s shot blocking and dives to the rim on pic/roll, Jake’s glue guy contributions and efficiency. Mahi and Knapper have also been steady and given about what you’d expect of them.
But……I’m with buckets…..people are kidding themselves if they think we’re legitimately the 32nd best team in the country right now. The advanced metrics aren’t perfect and it’s still somewhat early with a smallish data sample size. We haven’t beaten anyone of significance and there are a ton of things this team needs to clean up that could be problematic when playing quality teams. The OOC is OK but not as strong as some here predicted or believed it to be. It’s possible, maybe likely, that the only Quad 1 game is SLU, a loss, yes a close loss, but a loss. It’s also possible there are Zero at-large bid quality teams. Overall it’s not a bad schedule, a lot of above average and decent teams but it lacks any true Top 25 quality teams making it hard to really evaluate where we stand.
There is reason for optimism….but we need to see more from Darlan, improvement in the team’s 3pt shooting, better team offense and a sharp reduction in the fouling that has led to a tremendous disadvantage in FT line scoring. Whether we can improve in at least of few of these areas will determine if we can make some real noise in the WCC and become a legit at-large bid candidate.
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Agree on all your points above. I don’t think anyone actually thinks we’re a top 35 team in the country.
BUT, it is nice that we’ve seemed to play the system nicely (and for the most part won games we’ve needed to win). For the first time it feels like we are IN the race with the horses, rather than being ranked #105 when conference play starts and having to play an impossible game of catchup.
Hopefully this gives our team and fans some belief as the season continues to progress. Perhaps into a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy to that #32 ranking.
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We fell to 38 in NET after the 10pt win vs Utah tech.
Now ranked 40 in Torvik and 50 in Kenpom.
Still a long way to go, the next two Saturdays are huge.
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I’m with you 92. A number of unexpected bright spots, but lots to clean up before we’re ready to beat the truly top teams.
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Does anyone have an idea when Normand will be available?