Chetburger

Dayton's NIT title is an interesting exercise in attempting to gauge its value. I think you have to break the measurement down in two key areas: notoriety and accomplishment.

From a notoriety standpoint, reaching the NCAA tournament and flaming out in the first round probably has more press clippings during the week leading up to the NCAAs than the NIT run. The NCAA is the carrot everyone strives for. Recruits prefer to hear about NCAA appearances than NIT titles. From this angle, the NIT title does not fare well.

If you put aside all of the off-court perks however of being in the NCAAs, the NIT title in a vacuum of pure basketball only was one of the best "runs" of any program in the A10 postseason outside of Xavier's Elite 8 loss to Ohio State which they should have won.

What UD did on the court was win a 32-team tournament where probably 16 of those teams were NCAA caliber -- meaning good enough to win a game in the NCAAs. To beat Illinois State at home, Cincinnati on the road, Illinois on the road, Miss. State neutral, and North Carolina neutral is a five-game run that stacks up incredibly well with any 5-game run by an A10 team in 15 years.

What Im getting at is its infinitely harder to win the NIT (and play 4 of those games away from home), than it is to win one NCAA game. Id much rather take my chances playing and beating West Virginia in 2009 than winning 5 NIT games in 2010. Dayton only had to be good on one night to beat WVU, but they had to maintain a high level for 2 weeks for the NIT. And for Dayton to maintain anything for 2 weeks is sometimes an exercise in futility.

If I look at everything UD has done in the last 15 years, the NIT run was probably the most impressive considering who we beat, where we beat them, and just how dominating we were against that competition. We were clearly the best team in the NIT and it was obvious to even non-UD fans. Im not saying we beat Final Four teams, but to beat 4-5 #11-12-ish type NCAA teams in a row is a feat even some of the best A10 teams in recent years would have probably been unable to do. No A10 team has won a larger field tourney in conference history.

So there's two sides to this. The public perception measurement. This is where the NIT title really suffers. I couldnt tell you who won the last 2 NITs after Dayton and there's a good reason for that. If you beat the LA Lakers and no one is there to see it, did it really happen?

On the other hand, if you beat the LA Lakers, you beat the LA Lakers and even the worst press cant take away what happened on the court to those in-the-know.

I think I'd probably value an NIT championship like an NCAA first round 30 point blowout loss in terms of press/publicity value, and a NCAA Sweet 16 in terms of degree of difficulty. The degree of difficulty in winning a solid 32-team tourney is pretty stiff.

No question, its still the wrong tournament, but the dive itself remains difficult. I like Dayton's chances of reaching a Sweet-16 much better than winning the NIT again. All neutral games, only need to play well twice rather than 5 times, and only the second game is really a crazy step up (stud) in caliber compared to the NIT field.

Assign it whatever value you like. Im just pointing out that it's a difficult thing to measure. Even I am having trouble assigning it a fair value.

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Head Coach Chester Chetburger, A10 Forum Hoops Touring Practice Squad

"Shaving points for cash since 1997."

xavierhoops

Xavier lost to Ohio St in the 2nd Round in 2007.

Are you talking about 2004 when Xavier beat Louisville, Mississippi St, Texas and then lost to Duke or

in 2008 when Xavier beat Georgia, Purdue, West Virginia and then lost to UCLA

MudFlap

Criteria has always been there:

1. Make the Dance.
2. Advance.

Not Included Tourney = not included.

e-parade

You guys are all forgetting to add points to UMass for what has gotten more press coverage than most anything we've done over the past 10 years.

Any time Calipari breathes, ESPN writes an article about him. Any time he's even mentioned in the article they bring up how his days at UMass ended. That sort of press coverage has got to be worth several thousand points on any reasonable scale (your choice on whether they're positive or negative points).

Free Quebec

Good point. Sorry.

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The Wall St. banker takes 11 cookies, turns to the tea party guy and says, "That union guy wants a piece of your cookie."

vaNtR

This is the most asinine ranking system I've encountered on this board in quite some time, possibly since I registered. It takes immense talent to propose ranking methodology this deplorable.

Every program in this league is valuable in one way or another. Typically, college basketball prestige is rather cyclical and every team in the league will have their ups and downs while managing to contribute along the way.

Free Quebec

To defend Bona, whoever said they'll never do anything again unless another Nicholson falls in their lap, I wouldn't necessarily agree.

in fact, Bona made the tourney twice since the last time UMASS made it. Some on this board may not have been following during the Caswell Cyrus/JR Bremer years, but the Bonnies built a good team then, too. It's hard to do it in Olean, but it's been done twice now since UMASS last made the tourney, so even if you want to dismiss last year as a fluke of recruiting luck (with Nicholson) you can't deny that it's been done more than once in recent years there so there's no reason to think it can't happen again.

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A Wall St. banker, a tea party guy, and a union guy all sit down a table with 12 cookies.

The Wall St. banker takes 11 cookies, turns to the tea party guy and says, "That union guy wants a piece of your cookie."

e-parade

Shouldn't we all just be rooting for everyone to step up occasionally and make the tournament anyway, rather than just dismissing them as "never gonna step up"?

It's good for the conference to have stalwarts up top, yeah...but it looks so much better if those at-large bids or auto-bids come from all over the place. It was a problem Gonzaga (not that they have much reason to complain about problems) had for quite some time, that they would never have any competition. Their league looked weak and they were diamonds in the rough. Now they have some competition, and the league is more exciting and they get more national play time with a "How is this race gonna end?!" special toward the end of the year.

jpschmack

Seriously, the top half of the league should love that Bona's gotten an autobid and an at-large bid in the last 12 years. That's all the ammo you need in an argument over everyone else: "Bona made it with the lowest budget in the conference, coming off a massive scandal, and while recruiting to Olean. What's YOUR excuse?"

Like I said, UMass has built back up a solid program, got jobbed once and were two games away from dancing (URI, CofC) this season.

bprichard

All that really matters is things that give the conference good press. So that basically means number of teams in the NCAA tournament, big out of conference wins, long stays in the polls, television appearances, and lately strong additions to the conference. So St. Joe's undefeated regular season and barnburner against Oklahoma State was huge. Xavier's elite eight runs were huge. Since the addition of VCU and Butler, the conference has had a very large media share of voice. And yeah, UD's win in the NIT is not equivalent to a decent NCAA run, but beating North Carolina in NYC in the final looks pretty good, too. In the end it comes down to eyeballs.

e-parade

On a related note, had UMass won the NIT a few years back it would have been a great thing...to be able to say you beat Syracuse at the Dome, then Florida and Ohio State. That would have been an impressive run, even in down years for those programs (it was definitely fun to be AT all those games at least...great atmospheres, even when the Syracuse fans told me to drive into a ditch on my way home).

But yeah, still not the same as NCAA tournament.

Chetburger

Duke. I have my games mixed up. For some reason I thought the OSU game was Elite 8 when that OSU transfer hit the trey. You beat BYU in round 1 right.

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Head Coach Chester Chetburger, A10 Forum Hoops Touring Practice Squad

"Shaving points for cash since 1997."

paulxu

Seriously, you've got a real hang up going on. If NCAA probation was worth -100 points, you would have a negative rating.

Everyone understands the small conference winners take a spot from some larger schools who are "better." But that's the beauty of the NCAA format; it takes the "best" from all the conferences. There are good teams in the NIT, but they don't earn units for the conference which everyone can share. So coaches and pundits might enjoy the games, but the value to the conference is minimal.

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...he went up late, and I was already up there.

ace93

Correct. The tiny bit of respect the coaches and pundits give it is more than none, which is what the casual fan gives it.

One of the things you hear the most during the first round of the NIT is how difficult it is for these teams to get up for these games after the huge let down of being left out of the tournament.

Muddy Waters

UMass87, congratulations on your excellent and thought-provoking Post # 1 and Post # 40, and the work you put into your spreadsheet.

Thank you for taking the time to carry out the exercise and for sharing the results with the rest of us.

Concerning the arbitrary weighting system you chose for your criteria, I fully agree with your carefully-considered decisions.

You nailed it, and I wouldn’t change any of the weightings you assigned in your Post # 1.

The only refinement I would make to your work is based on the title of this thread: "What Have You Done For The A10 Lately?"

If it isn’t too much work, would you please post your revised "point totals" if the results you have already compiled are weighted for "Lately" as follows:

. . . and then divide the resulting "point total" for each team by 77.5 (which is the sum of 5.5 + 6.0 + 6.5 + . . . + 9.5 + 10.0).

This will have the obvious effect of giving more importance to the more recent results, and giving the most recent results nearly twice the weight of the 10-year old results.

In my humble opinion, adding this weighting for "Lately" and using 10 years of data would give a more accurate answer to the question you posed than using unweighted 5-year results or unweighted 10-year results.

Thank you very much in advance, UMass87.

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BTW UMass87, your Post # 1 and Post # 40 both show that Xavier, Temple, and Dayton have been the most successful Atlantic 10 teams over the past 5 years and the past 10 years, when "success" is quantified by the very reasonable criteria you selected and the "importance weightings" you chose.

Below is a summary of the information regarding the Dayton Flyers.


It is worth noting that Dayton has been a RPI Top 40 team in 5 of the past 10 seasons. While that does not match Xavier's accomplishments in the RPI department over the same time period, it does compare favorably to the rest of the Atlantic 10 teams.


Link: RPI Rankings - Reference Post (Muddy Waters, A10 MB - November 2, 2011)

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