About a month and half ago I took issue with The Big Lead and his claim that the Big 10 would struggle to get teams into the conference tournament. Mr. TBL himself would pay us a short visit and lay wager on the line with me. Him and I discussed the terms via email, and now I come not to collect, but to gloat.
I never doubted my claim that the Big 10 would get 6 or more into the tourney. It was still foggy in January as to who the other 3-4 teams would be following Michigan State, Purdue and Illinois. I tried to predict who I thought would get in at the time, and I didn’t include Ohio State and Wisconsin, though I did preference that nobody should sleep on the Badgers. Of course I discounted OSU and then they beat up Mich St. in the Big 10 tourney. But the fact remains that I countered every argument he made against the Big 10 and showed the flawed logic in thinking that they would not be successful in bringing the numbers to the tourney.
For the following weeks, TBL would try to discount anything and everything the Big 10 would do, publicly predicting that they would not get more than 5 teams until late yesterday, and even then wouldn’t put Ohio State in, even though everyone else had them as a lock after defeating Michigan State. The Big 10 would have ended up with 8 had Tennessee and Butler stepped up.
Listen, I am not a homer when it comes to the Big 10, I leave that to Spencer during football season. But the facts were clear in late January that the Big 10 was for real. The stats don’t lie. They had a high RPI for a reason this year. They were beating teams in the Big East and the ACC. They didn’t pad their records beating up on panzies before conference play began(except for Penn State and that is why they are in the NIT). I knew what I was talking about, and it was quite clear that TBL was blinded by his massive hate of the Big 10. Basically, I rule.
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What were the terms of he bet again? HawkEye19(Quote)
Let’s just say it revolves around a baseball game. sparty(Quote)
Looks like you got your wish hawkeye, Gophs play at 6 JRod(Quote)
Penn State still should have been in
/bittered
/homered Johnny(Quote)
Congrats to the Big Ten, hopefully schools from the other conferences can counteract their completely boring brand of basketball. cbh49er(Quote)
Paul Pierce > TBL
/john’d
//true
///Big 10 earned it
///gitc’d knightro(Quote)
The Big Ten only plays that way so that they can lull their opponent into a coma thereby allowing them to win with scores in the 50’s. Unfortunately they forgot they were playing other Big Ten schools and the result is the high…I mean low scoring games you’ve witnessed. JRod(Quote)
In general, the selection committee does a good job considering there are always a handful of teams on the bubble and there is justification for putting any of them in or leaving any out (kind of why they are on the bubble).
One interesting trend that I saw in this morning’s Newsday is that at large bids from mid-majors have decreased every year since 2004. Not sure they deserved to be in but I wanted to see Creighton, St. Mary’s and Davidson in the tourney. I am not going to be as excited to see Maryland or Arizona State upset someone as one of the first 3 teams I mentioned. cycledan(Quote)
I was pleasantly surprised at the seedings for my teams. I thought Cornell would be a 15 and they are a 14 seed. They are a big dog but at least should have a chance.
I thought Syracuse would be a 4 and they got a 3. However, when I looked at the other teams, their RPIs, OOC wins, it really was justified despite the grumblings of people like the Dagger on Yahoo! sports.
Interestingly, Boeheim thought they were going to get a 4 or 5. He complained when they didn’t get in 2 years ago (and rightfully so) but at least he is willing to admit when things exceed his expectations. cycledan(Quote)
I like to see the mid majors get in as an alum of a mid major but I don’t really feel like Creighton or St. Mary’s got shafted. Both were blown out in their conference tournaments and didn’t leave good last impressions.
The only team I really have a gripe with getting in is Arizona. cbh49er(Quote)
Even as a Big East fan, I won’t discount the Big 10. There are some good teams in the conference. Criticizing a style of play doesn’t make sense to me as long as a) its within the rules and b) is successful.
The grind it out style is fine unless a team falls behind by 8 or 10 and then needs to play a different style to try and catch up. Kind of like a football team that runs it up the middle. It is fine as long as the game is close. cycledan(Quote)
WHOO!! BIG 10 RAWKS!!!!!!!! spencer096(Quote)
good thing we play on friday. our game is at 9:50. Hawkeye, you trying to go to any games? sparty(Quote)
I might make a trip down to see if anyone is selling. It’s $193 for the weekend, so there’s no chance I’m paying that. I figure I should be able to buy a ticket off a NDSU fan. HawkEye19(Quote)
I predicted 7 teams at the time of the bet. So I rule too. knightwhosaysni(Quote)
darn thug NFL wide receivers sae(Quote)
Spring Break week at NASA is really weird. There’s like a quarter of the people at work that’s normally here Johnny(Quote)
Spring Break for me right now consists of watching a Cardinals,Tiger spring training game. JRod(Quote)
One of my buddies here at work just made his bracket choices via coin flip (after picking the #1’s and #2’s to get out of the first round)…his winner ends up being Sparty >Purdue) & Dook > UNC with Sparty > Duke in the final. rekcalsa(Quote)
I think you guys should have taken a pic of Jason and had him in middle, so it would appear the mascots were beating him. cbh49er(Quote)
cbh-thought of that. sparty(Quote)