Haters, wanna challenge our Conference?
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Just some tidbits for the haters. - -one’s who question the legit of our conference, can’t dent facts. - -numbers don’t lie.
Every team in the Big 12 has EITHER been ranked or received votes in the top 25 this year. how tough is this league? - -70% of the games have been decided by 10 pts or less. The Avg win margin of the league is 7.9 for the year - - nothing easy. Toughness? - -Only conference every team among the top 76 BPI. .797 Non Con % - - best in Nation Non Con Toughness ? - -Big 12 has .575 win % -versus ACC, Big East , Big 10 , Pac 12 , Sec , the 8th straight year of 500 vs Nations top conferences. Big 12 - -102-26 Non Con - - - 17 of those losses by single digits- - -4 in OT. Big 12 has the most semi finalists for Neismith – in the Nation 3 now - -ANY QUESTIONS? - -the only thing I WILL say, now we ( the big 12 ) has to go out and prove ourselves in the NCAA’S - -make that sit down and shut up statement. - - ROCK CHALK ALL DAY LONG BABY
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There’s a lot of reasons the conference has been so tough.
I think it starts with the 10 team format of the round robin schedule. Every other major conference besides the Big East see a lot of unbalanced scheduling. I think it creates a competitiveness edge when every team must go home/away.
No other team has a Bill Self. The other 9 teams are competitive enough with each other because they don’t routinely get enough top talent to overcome how good of a coach Bill Self really is.
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@jayballer54 said:
Just some tidbits for the haters. - -one’s who question the legit of our conference, can’t dent facts. - -numbers don’t lie.
Every team in the Big 12 has EITHER been ranked or received votes in the top 25 this year. how tough is this league? - -70% of the games have been decided by 10 pts or less. The Avg win margin of the league is 7.9 for the year - - nothing easy. Toughness? - -Only conference every team among the top 76 BPI. .797 Non Con % - - best in Nation Non Con Toughness ? - -Big 12 has .575 win % -versus ACC, Big East , Big 10 , Pac 12 , Sec , the 8th straight year of 500 vs Nations top conferences. Big 12 - -102-26 Non Con - - - 17 of those losses by single digits- - -4 in OT. Big 12 has the most semi finalists for Neismith – in the Nation 3 now - -ANY QUESTIONS? - -the only thing I WILL say, now we ( the big 12 ) has to go out and prove ourselves in the NCAA’S - -make that sit down and shut up statement. - - ROCK CHALK ALL DAY LONG BABY
Speaking of facts…each year some dumba$$ posts this exact same post only to see BIG 12 shit its pants during the tourney followed by a landslide of posts from everyone here about how they knew to begin with big 12 was weak, etc, etc.
As always, KU is the saving grace and for reason this season, is making all the other big 12 teams look a lot better.
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The reason folks challenge our conference is because this conference regularly fails to produce Final Four teams and National Champions. No team in our conference has won a national championship other than Kansas since the 64 tourney format started in the 80s, and we’ve only won two of those (counting when we were the Big 8 and the SWC was in existence).
The perception is that we secure our conference strength by playing each other, and we don’t “prove it” in the NCAA tourney.
Until the Big 12 starts getting to multiple final fours, and winning national titles at a reasonable rate, it really isn’t “hating” – I believe it’s just a reality we just need to accept.
It’s the only “shut up statement” that will get us past the skepticism.
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Although last year wasn’t bad…an elite 8 and a FF team…even though they got blown out.
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@elpoyo So you calling me a dum ass - umm also I wouldn’t exactly say some of our frequent early exits would be what you wanna call saving grace. - - - ALL teams best show up and solidify this league - I dunno, that’s just what one dum ass shit has to say roflmfao - -. - - -don’t really feel like a dum ass -don’t look like a dum ass but hey thanks for the enlightment - -I feel so much better ROCK CHALK ALL DAY LONG BABY
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@HighEliteMajor that sounds good - -only thing is like is pointed out in the thread - -winning Non Con of .797 and has the winning pct of the power Conferences - -where we really fail is in the Tourney - -who is on a roll at the time - -one bad game you out. - -Agree we just have to do better in the tourney - Even us KU we will never shed that over rated theory till we get past the Northern Illinois , Bradley , Bucknell and so, on and so on. - - Other then Kentucky - -possibly duke how many other teams have won National titles as you say a " reasonable rate " ? their is non - -or better yet what is a reasonable rate? -pretty hard to win on a regular basis hell if you win a National title once every five years should be considered really good. - -just to many factors play a role. - -it’s the eatly exits that kill us as a league - -as you saw I said it’s time for us to do better -that WILL be the shut up and sit down statement. - - -ROCK CHALK ALL DAY LONG BABY
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Northern Iowa, not Northern Illinois. The Huskies haven’t sniffed the tourney in quite a while.
I was going to post what the others have. Regular season wins haven’t amounted to much for our league.
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@wissox ya your right. I’m sorry, it’s my old age lol. Ya your right, that’s exactly why I said we ( this league has to make a statement, get past this opening weekend make a run. - No reason if we are as good as we think no reason why Ku, WV< Baylor , & Iowa State not all get to the 2nd weekend at least - -got to stand up. - -The team I really think will be the 1st to slip might surprise, but I think could very easily be Baylor - -not playing that well, although their win against WV was bog for them. - -ROCK CHALK ALL DAY LONG BABY
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The Big 12 regularly produces a lot of very solid teams and generally avoids having any outright terrible teams. Once TCU stepped up, the Big 12 hasn’t had an outright awful team in the conference. Even Texas and Oklahoma, the bottom 2 in the conference this year, can punch with the middle tier teams in other conferences.
The problem is that at the top, there’s Kansas and no one else. Baylor this year, but generally, it’s KU and a bunch of 4-6 seeds in the tourney. That means that if KU underperforms, it’s highly possible the Big 12 doesn’t have a team go past the Sweet 16 because the conference is full of solid but not great teams.
The Big 12 hasn’t had a lot of teams rise to the level of national contender, which limits the greatness of the conference. Blake Griffin’s last OU team, that Frank Martin KSU team, last year’s Sooners, this year’s Baylor team, the DJ Augustin led Texas squad, TJ Ford’s Longhorns, some of those Kelvin Sampson OU teams, Eddie Sutton’s last couple of OSU teams and that’s probably about it. We’re talking about maybe a dozen non-KU title contenders from the conference in the last 15-20 years, and less than 5 in the last 6 or 7 years.
That’s why it’s important that Smart succeed at Texas, and that Drew figures it out at Baylor (I think he has), and that K-State finds a competent coach, and ISU remains solid, etc. The Big 12 needs to have other strong title contenders, not just a bunch of solid teams that can crack the top 25 at some point.
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Don’t take @elpoyo personal. He/she represents a different perspective on Kansas and the Big 12 basketball. You can say it is negative. But, to be honest, I’m glad someone has the guts to come into our love den and smash the coffee table. @elpoyo will challenge you to the far edge of discomfort. It can be very challenging to spar with such a person. But just push a positive approach and brush off the insults. Consider yourself vetted!
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Are “haters” part of the Deep State overthrowing our country, or are they Deep State lackeys embedded into sports media to color revolution-ize the greatest game ever invented, or are they just hemorrhoid sufferers?
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Very good post.
I think Drew has made a big leap forward. He has faced quite a few challenges this season, but he has kept his guys playing to a certain level. He still has a ways to go, but you can now see him possibly getting there.
I don’t think we can talk about the Big 12 without mentioning HuggyBear. He is also improving on his tactical ball. He has finally figured out that he needs to have a respectable half court offense if he hopes to win more games every year. There is a limit to how much he can win without more weapons. And even with all of his depth, it is hard for his team to stay healthy through March. He might be able to go at least 10 deep on his squad, but he still has to count on a handful of players to be the real playmakers that makes their season go positive. His only limit is he coaches at WVU, and it is hard to get top tier talent at that school.
FAN ALERT: OU is going to be good… very good… and soon! I think next year they will be back on the winning side… and if Lon can keep his guys together and healthy, 2 years from now they are going to be lethal! Perhaps the best team he has had in the Big 12!
Shaka? He represents the unknown. I believe he has the 14th best recruit class coming in next year. If he can’t do anything with that talent, he should be gone. Since Texas has done so much to control our conference, including being a major factor why many of our original schools left, I believe we all should have a say in if he stays or goes. So far, if I judge him today I say he goes. He had plenty of talent to have a more respectable team in our league this year, and if Rick Barnes was still in his shoes, Texas would have been near the top of our conference.
Shaka’s mantra of “aggressive chaos” just looks like chaos. But… we will see what happens next year, when he has additional uber talent on his squad. I just see him pretty much exactly like I see Marshall at WSU. Both are capable as long as they stay at a mid-major and sell the “we get no respect” chip. Texas is not a school to run that type of program. Texas fans don’t see themselves as a charity case.
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For us to challenge for the NC we need NC contenders in our conference that we’re playing against. I don’t know what happened in the FF with OU last year. We know that was not the team that we played twice in the regular season. Playing regularly against good teams, who want to give us their best shot, is good for us, but it really hasn’t led to post season success for us.
When we won in 2008, our league had regularly been much tougher. Texas was a regular top 10 type team. OSU was, ISU was. Not sure you can say that in the last half decade.
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@justanotherfan you make very solid points. - -couldn’t agree more. - -ROCK CHALK ALL DAY LONG BABY
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@drgnslayr ya first time I ever seen it respond on here, the way they came off was kinda like - - BUT I feel ya, got where your coming from. - -ROCK CHALK ALL DAY LONG BABY
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@jaybate-1.0 LMAO, well I think maybe a little of ALL the above you mentioned. – I know I would miss them like one hemorrhoid misses another lol - -ROCK CHALK ALL DAY LONG BABY
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@jayballer54 National titles since 1990? We know the big names - Duke 5, UConn 4, UK 3, UNC 3.
The topic you raised is by conference. ACC, Big East, SEC, and even Pac 12 have better NCAA title resumes in that time frame. The Big 10 also has more final fours than the Big 12.
The Big 12 hasn’t had another school in the title games since OU in 1988.
The Big 12, once March begins – where it really counts – is the worst of the power 5 conferences.
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@elpoyo So yeah they may poop in their britches, but that’s only the one’s that get in the dance. Some poor asses like the bovine brothers at ksu or jackass breeders at misery don’t even make the NIT so they can just crap all over the place without any clothes at all, then scoot like dogs. Tell us elpoyo, which of those do you really root for… and hiding behind the keyboard is not only not fair, it’s just plain chicken poop…
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@globaljaybird that’s a lot of
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@drgnslayr He or She? That’s it, El Poyo is my ex-wife. A version of SNL’s “Debbie Downer”. Hitting all of the right buttons. Odds are that at least 3 of the #1 seeds will lose in the Tournament, maybe all four. I’m sure there are @elpoyo’s on each of the fan sites to let the other’s know what homer’s they are.
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@wissox So what is the answer? Should KU join another conference? Is that the problem? I’ve tried not to show my happiness with having a coach like Self. I’ve tried to ignore the Conference streaks. I’ve tried to be negative about our chances. @elpoyo needs to tell us what we need to do to win. We know our problems, what are the solutions, If I agree that the Big 12 sucks, will we win?
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The problem isn’t the conference.
I don’t have the solution either, we’d probably have more titles already if the solution was so easy.
But if I’m being realistic I think the issue is two fold. We need our Coach to step up as he does in the regular season. And we need the players to step up and seize the moment.
I don’t know why Self is a master of the regular season but in the tournament things go differently. Last year is a prime example of that in the Elite 8. Why did Perry Ellis only get 4 points against Villanova? Why did Wayne Selden’s 3 point shot look like he had never practiced before. Why didn’t Self make adjustments to figure out how to effectively beat Villanova’s defense. Realistically our coach was out-coached, our players were simply out-played. It happens, it’s happened a lot.
I think this fan-base has an itch it needs to scratch.
08 was amazing, 12 was great even in defeat but we want more.
But we’ve had some really good teams that haven’t done their job, or suffered some injuries that left the team less then whole. And finally Self as the coach is ultimately responsible for how the season ends so he must continue to try and find ways to step up.
Hopefully this is the year where the coaching and the players seize the moment and deliver!
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@BeddieKU23 are you saying coach owes you a national championship?
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@HighEliteMajor said:
National titles since 1990? We know the big names - Duke 5, UConn 4, UK 3, UNC 3.
Glad you brought these up.
I’ve been needing a Memory Hole Pump Out…
Duke 5: one with an obviously hopelessly impossible without Deep Basketball forces long stack that even Bo Ryan called Rent-a-players; that leaves 4; one with the pioneering introduction of XTReme Cheap Shotting vs. Butler in which refs appeared to completely favor Dook by not so much allowing the cheap shotting but appearing to enable it; that leaves 3 and one of those had a player that was reputedly playing for expensive jewelry; that leaves 2 and I bet anyone with a better memory than mine can whittle away at least one, or maybe e both of the remaining “championships.” Next.
UConn 4: Calhoun won the last two having to quit after each one and hide behind cardiac problems to avoid reputed recruiting death penalties; that leaves 2 and both of those reputedly involved rosters that never earned a sheep skin and heavy recruiting investigations; that leaves zero. Next.
UK 3: Oh, shit, why even both beating this corrupt dead, horse. ZERO. Next.
UNC: Como se dice Easygate? It is not clear that UNC would have even been able to field a team some of those seasons had they had to go to class and take real tests. ZERO. Next.
These are not the big names any more.
These are the FAKE big names.
These are recent equivalent to the Rupp Kentucky point shaving teams.
They aren’t even relevant to talking about D1 basketball really.
They have just been AAU teams on Steroids allowed to play long exhibition seasons with D1 teams.
There is no more similarity regarding the apparent “rules of the game” between the recent title stealing AAU on Steroid teams–Duke, UConn, UK and UNC–have been playing under and KU than saying KU and them wear shorts and shoot at ten foot baskets on the same size floor. Similarities stop there and everyone knows it, or has not been “woke.”
Next.
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@HighEliteMajor Sad, but true. In fact, the B12’s performance is even more distressing than that. As you note, the ACC, Big East, SEC and Pac 12 all have multiple titles since 1990 (and each with multiple teams winning). 5 teams have more titles than the entire B12 conference during that span - the 4 you note plus Florida. The lowly B10 matches us with just one national title during that time frame. However, in contrast to the B12, where KU is the ONLY team that has reached a championship game during that time, the B10 had 6 runner-ups in addition to the one titleist - with 5 different teams - Michigan, Michigan St., Indiana, Illinois and Ohio State.
The B12 is a VERY solid conference from top to bottom - the worst teams in the B12 this year are better than the bottom teams in other conferences. And, that has arguably been true for the past couple of years (esp. now with the influx of coaching talent). But we don’t come close to matching the top tier talent of the other power conferences year in and year out.
The argument that the tournament is a crap-shoot is a cop-out excuse. Over 25+ years, there is a lot of data and the randomness factor falls away. Sure, the very best team doesn’t win every year - but one of the very best does with rare exception (perhaps excluding the 2 recent UConn champs and maybe Arizona in '97 (but they had real NBA talent).
The bottom line is that of the power conferences, the B12 has the fewest titles (tied), the worst W-L record (by far), the fewest different teams in the title game and Final Four. Performance has been especially poor over the past decade (last year was one of the best in many years). It’s not hating - but there is no reason to sugar coat it either. Unless and until the conference wins the big one, and with someone other than just KU (fine with that ONLY if they don’t beat us to get there), the overrated label will stick…
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@DCHawker said:
The bottom line is that of the power conferences, the B12 has the fewest titles (tied), the worst W-L record (by far), the fewest different teams in the title game and Final Four. Performance has been especially poor over the past decade (last year was one of the best in many years).
But this only makes sense, since the B12 appears to face the most asymmetry in seeding and whistles every season. It would only make sense for the B12 to do better than it has done, if it faced no apparent asymmetry in seeding and whistles.
I really don’t think this is rocket science.
It keeps going on year and after year.
It happens whether the B12 has great coaches, and lots of talent, or only good coaches and less talent.
Don’t you see? If things were not being driven by entertainment values and there were apparent seeding and whistle symmetry, we would expect the B12 to do at least as well as the other conferences.
I just don’t see any other logical explanation for the phenomenon.
You don’t seriously think the B12 has an inferiority complex, or some kind of chaotic “strange tendency” that makes them under perform relatively to the other power conferences, do you?
I mean, think about it. All of the B12 teams recruit all over the country, same as the other Power Five conference programs do. All the top programs in all the Power Five Conferences get players from all over the country. There would be no reason for the recurring phenomenon of the B12 doing worse that the other conferences over a long period if seeding and whistles were symmetric. Its not like it used to be when teams depended heavily on local talent that the population concentrations favored teams in big cities and densely populated regions. Self and staff can go out recruiting on a private jet every day anywhere in the country. Now they don’t even have to bother with finding the top talent because the top 100 is sorted out for them every season. They are televised everywhere all the time, so there is no huge edge there either in terms of making your brand known.
It just has to be something like seeding and whistle asymmetry, Petroshoeco-Agency dynamics, or something else as yet unknown, that is biasing the outcomes as they are. Its been going on too long to be random. And the Big 12 has had too many runs of fine coaches and good talent for the tendency of the outcomes observed to occur.
Something appears to be biasing the outcomes.
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@jaybate-1.0 By your reasoning, the Atlanta Braves must have been the victims of assymetric umpiring during their run of Division titles with a woeful record in the post-season and only 1 WS championship.
Statistical aberrations occur.
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@jaybate-1.0 There has been asymmetry in seeding - B12 teams apparently have routinely been over-seeded - the conference has consistently under-performed its seed expectations. The selection committee appears to have bought in to the regular season conference rankings and rewarded B12 teams with high seeds - which, disappointingly, they fail to live up to.
Perhaps there is a simpler explanation for the bias - lack of top tier and depth of talent. Just one data point, but I believe there have been just 4 B12 players that have made an all-NBA team over the past decade (that includes 1st, 2nd and 3rd team) - Durant, Griffin, Aldridge and Pierce (and the latter was about a decade ago). Maybe Wiggs, Embid and Jackson can change that, but hasn’t happened yet. UK has at least 5 itself. But that suggests that Self at least has done a lot more with lesser talent - although still the best breadth and depth of talent in the B12 - I believe KU has the 4th most 1st round draft choices over the past several years.
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@DCHawker I appreciate your effort, but wouldnt your “explanation” require a vastly greater array of assumptions and statistical improbabilities and complexity as precondition than my hypothesis of simple entertainment values driving seeding and whistle asymmetry against B12 team’s chances for success? My hypothesis is so very simple . and elegant. Yours requires such improbable underlying randomness on a consistent basis producing a recurrent pattern over a long period! It’s just hard for me to believe that randomness in the face of such variation and.complexity can produce the bias of outcomes you attribute to the B12.
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@jaybate-1.0 Actually, his explanation is very simple and very elegant. It is a given that a disproportionate number of basketball players come from urban centers where the AAU programs, public and private school competitiveness, and media exposure tend to reinforce the desirability of conferences NOT located in the hinterlands.
In other words, it is freakin’ hard to get kids who grew up in a city to move to the farm belt!
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@mayjay you sound like Walton, KU is plodding farmers.
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@jaybate-1.0 said:
@DCHawker I appreciate your effort, but wouldnt your “explanation” require a vastly greater array of assumptions and statistical improbabilities and complexity as precondition than my hypothesis of simple entertainment values driving seeding and whistle asymmetry against B12 team’s chances for success? My hypothesis is so very simple . and elegant. Yours requires such improbable underlying randomness on a consistent basis producing a recurrent pattern over a long period! It’s just hard for me to believe that randomness in the face of such variation and.complexity can produce the bias of outcomes you attribute to the B12.
Seems that we’ve been down this path before…
An “elegant” hypotheses supported by… nada, zip, zilch - with another hypothesis supported by at least a modicum of facts. You’ve challenged me in the past - will do the same to you. Analyze the facts - give some data to support your hypothesis - anything… Foul discrepancies in games that B12 teams have lost in the tournament. Shoeco comparisons in those games. TV market size comparisons of the two teams… anything. I bet it is out there - go get it!!!
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I am not convinced of a vast conspiracy to screw the Big 12. Seemed to me that we have had many well paved paths that we’ve managed to screw up.
I would also say, generally, that the best players do not come for the hard streets of the inner city. That is, most of these kids are at prep schools and have already ventured away from their home towns. Different age right now.
Really, though, any efforts to explain catastrophic failures, or to make excuses for a long term epidemic is a losing proposition.
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I don’t root for any conference teams unless it helps KU. I spend two months hoping Baylor loses every game, and now I’m supposed to root for them so i can brag to my buddies about the Big 12? No thanks.
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@HighEliteMajor And Just like I mentioned BEFORE when you responded, I said responding to your reasonable rate. – I stated what is a reasonable rate? - You respond since 1990. and give your schools, as I stated once about every five years should/would be reasonable a it’s really hard other then DUKE which you mentioned with five U con - -4 that’s like one every not even one every five - -UK only 3 - -Unc only 3 in that span that’s not even really close to one in every five - -so just like I said. so that point is pretty invalid - - that’s not even one every five year period - -It is just not that easy, cause your mentioning National titles, hell even Duke not averaging one in every five years like I mentioned. So then with me saying one in every five, evidentally you not liking that rate - -but yet all the schools all the conferences you stated not even averaging one in every five National titles since 1990- -what is a reasonable rate to you? - -ROCK CHALK ALL DAY LONG BABY
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2013 NCAA tournament match ups eliminate complete tournament engineering to me. Yes, we played North Carolina who was an 8 seed. Villanova was the 9 seed and Kansas and Villanova did not have a lot of history together, especially compared to 2 other 9 seeds, Missouri and Wichita St. Why would the NCAA avoid a potential KU-Missouri match up during Missouri’s first year out of the Big 12? Why would they actively avoid a WSU game people have wanted to see for awhile?
Put either one of those two teams as a 9 seed against UNC and we were guaranteed a highly publicized 2nd round game no matter what instead of a 50/50 shot at one.
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First, kinda sensy, eh? You’re wheeling out the old “you got nothing” cliche, when if I had nothing, you would have no reason to respond. Right? I even concede you have “something.” It just appears too implausible for me to be persuaded.
Second, you appear upset that I called into question the meaning of the very thing you appeared to feel quite justified in thinking; that the B12 has underperformed and it’s its own fault. You appear to imply it could have done better, but some how failed.
right?But then here I came along suggesting maybe it did about the way it would be expected given the topo of the playing field. Grrrrrrrr. Dissonance. Double grrrrrrrrrr.
Then the cliche “you got nuthin’.”
I can see why you might get annoyed. It must have felt pretty good to judge the B12 leaders and coaches and players as just not having been up to your sense of snuff.
right? You hated to say it, but they just have been significantly worse than the 4 other conferences that you had to do your duty, like you had to with me having nothing, right?But like I said; then I unintentionally turned your explanation upside down. What if the Big 12 folks did good, but the playing field were a leeeeeeetle unlevel?
Then boom! “You got nuthin’, bate 1.0.” Ooooh the predictability of it gives me goose bumps.
Third, you also give me some weird feelings; like you appear to be rejecting my hypothesis to distract from the apparent inelegance and apparent implausibility of your “explanation”. Your “explanation” seems vaguely like: an elephant can hang from a daisy; i.e., a conference of highly paid professionals can underperform 4 others over a long period on a level playing field.
Creative and metaphysically possible, I grant you, but does it really elegantly, plausibly, validly and with high probability explain why one of five power conferences would violate the statistical tendency of a random walk of conference performance in the long run without biasing in the context? Hmmmmm, I just can’t quite buy your explanation as a fitting explanation. But I am magnanimous by comparison: You GOT SUMTHIN’. 
Nevertheless, I apologize for annoying you.
Have a nice day and we’ll find a fitting answer to the mystery of the under performing conference sooner or later.
Rock Chalk!
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I do NOT hypothesize complete tournament engineering.
I hypothesize legal partial tournament engineering based on legal entertainment values.
Absolutely illegal conspiracy free.
@Blown recently posted an interesting Mick Cronin take. It appeared reminiscient of our former KU STAFFER now at maybe SIU?
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Actually it doesn’t appear to me to be.
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@Crimsonorblue22 said:
@mayjay you sound like Walton, KU is plodding farmers.
Not my impression after living there, but most of the country hasn’t lived there. Why would urban kids growing into adulthood and hoping for excitement want to move to Ames (school ranking lower than over 2,000 other schools out of 2,400 rated for diversity), Waco (to a restrictive religious school, no less), Manhattan (let’s drive to Junction City!), Lubbock (middle of nowhere, someone said?), Morgantown (coal country), and “Stoollwater”? TCU at least has Fort Worth/Dallas to offer, and KU has Lawrence with KC nearby. Norman is near O City, which might be fun to a bb player wanting to follow the NBA. But what else besides tornadoes? Austin offers the fun of living in a capital city in a football crazed state that is busy trying to beat Kansas and most of the South in a race backwards to the past.
Drought, dust, country music, flat land… In the entire geography encompassed by the Big 12, there are two NFL teams, two baseball teams, and two NBA teams within an hours driving time of any of the 10 campuses (3 if you include San Antonio at 80 miles from UT). Compare that with the urban attractions of the Big 10, Big East, Pac 12 or whatever the hell it is by now, or even the ACC.
Kids who grow up in the Midwest may implicitly recognize the region’s attractiveness, but it is not always apparent to visitors craving the type of things they grew up around in big cities. So, when coaches recruit well in the Big 12, they are overcoming huge assumptions kids can bring with them.
I love Big 12 country, but I grew up there.
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@HighEliteMajor said:
That is, most of these kids are at prep schools and have already ventured away from their home towns. Different age right now.
True, but living as a 16-19 yr old at a prep school is vastly different from looking at up to 4 years as an adult in relative isolation, culturally and geographically.
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IMO Isn’t the thread question “Who has the strongest conference?” And you could answer that based on either one season, or over multiple seasons (if multiple, how many years? 5? 10? 27?) I would like to know that out of curiosity and KU/B12 pride. Then the $64,000 question is "How do we DEFINE the “strongest conference?” NCs? FFs? SW16s? Tourney Bids? Season’s ending mix of Final Rankings, BPI, RPI, SOS, SOR, yadda, yadda, yadda? Note: NC and FF appearances alone do not a strongest conference make!
No surprise that there are many, many statistical (and dare I say asymmetry?) factors that would reveal the answer(s), and it makes my head spin just thinking about it. I’m not a pro at this, but I still think that B12 is the strongest, and has been one of the strongest conferences overall for enough years now to shut most haters up. Rock Chalk!!
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@mayjay Of course, there’s always a difference. The point is that now, kids live many times far away from their homes. Gone are days when the good NYC kids go to St. Johns. It’s a different age, where an east coast kid may play HS ball in Vegas. And his mom (dad of course probably isn’t around) stays back at home working, and the kid lives with another family.
By this theory, all of the colleges in big cities should dominate. But, of course, they don’t.
If you get a top coach, you can get players. Doesn’t much matter where he goes, within reason.
All of these excuses to explain the limited issue of why the Big 12 fails to achieve in March.
Referees, tourney fixing, geography, the grassy knoll.
Look at the draw KU got in the 2010 NCAA Tournament. or in the 2011 NCAA Tournament. Could you ask for anything better?
Duke and UConn took care of business. We make excuses.
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@HighEliteMajor I was adressing a limited topic, which was recruiting barriers as a possible reason for the phenomenon raised by someone else of the Big 12 as a whole not producing more NBA stars, not making excuses for anything. You keep urging UConn and Duke as your guiding stars. I would still rather be a Jayhawk.
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I didn’t want to post to this old topic that is dragged out every year. Yet I can’t resist.
SEC—Who has won a championship besides UK and Florida?
ACC—Who has won a championship besides UNC and Duke?
Pac—Who has won a championship besides UCLA?
Big 10—Who has won a championship besides Indiana?
Big 12 —Who has won a championship besides KU?
Now I know some other teams have won in some of these conferences. Yet that isn’t the point. No conference has really dominated the national championship game. Well except maybe the old Big East.
The real argument in this topic that everybody is dancing around except @HighEliteMajor. Is why hasn’t KU won more National championships.
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@HighEliteMajor the grassy knoll… Lmfao
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@jaybate-1.0 the Russians have been hacking the tourney since the Cold War.
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I’m sure it is all tied together somehow with the space time continuum, Amelia Earhart, the moon landing, and the color of undies I select to wear on tournament game days
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@cragarhawk I assume the last item is variable, depending both on your initial choice and on the progress of the game.
