CBI? ... News to me

More games, huh?

Looks like Cincy isn't done yet (yeah, I'm a little late with the news). Frankly, I didn't know about this tourney (the College Basketball Invitational) and figured the Bearcats were finished for the year. According to Koch, they'll now face Bradley in the first round of the CBI.

Personally, I'm excited that there are more games, and we'll see what happens here.

But I wanted to take a moment to address a couple of larger issues. I'm not a controversial person by nature (at least at this point) and since nobody reads this anyway, I doubt my thoughts on these issues will be deemed controversial. Anyway ...

The negative approach

The general negativity from a large portion of fans is quite hard to believe. I guess, maybe it's understandable, but it goes beyond simply be frustrated with the season. It is like some people will make a negative comment on any issue that comes up (in the few blogs/forums that I read). Sure, any fans who post their thoughts on the 'net are "super fans" and probably not that representative of Bearcat fans as a whole, but it seems like there are quite a lot of them with negarive views.

Anyway, is there any reason to be particularly upset with getting an invite to this little tournament? It's more games to watch (maybe; if they're on tv), it's another game for the seniors, another game for the younger guys, perhaps there's a chance for some recognition, etc. etc. Where's the bad stuff? Sure, it's no big deal, really. It's not the NCAA tournament, but who's making it out to be that? Better than nothin', I say. Either way, to each their own ...

What's that about wins and losses?

The other thing that I think is interesting is that many fans cannot seem to look past win-loss record. Sure, it's important; nobody would deny that. But a win and a loss is on such a cut and dry scale. Imagine this: Cincy loses to #1 ranked, oh let's say Duke, 65-61. Marquette loses to #255 ranked Longwood by 20. That's all the info you have on both teams. Are they equal because they're both 0-1? Not if I have anything to say about it. Now over the course of the season, things like that are supposes to balance out and W/L record will become pretty telling, right? Well, sure, to a degree. But record by itself serves little purpose. I mean, just take a mid-major variety ball club. They could easily go 25-5 and not be ranked all year (and righlty so). North Carolina does that and they're a top team. That brings us to the novel concept of ...

Strength of schedule. Pomeroy has UC's SOS at 21st in the nation. That's second best in the Big East and, well, 21st overall out of some 300+ teams. Now it's 13-18 against much better than average competition. Pomeroy then has UC ranked 100th overall. Nah, it isn't great, but it's a lot better than you'd expect from a 13-18 record, and a lot of that is due to that tough schedule.

So is there awkwardness with UC getting into this tourney? I don't see it. Bradley and their much more respectable 17-15 mark are ranked 85th by Pomeroy's measure, just 15 spots better than Cincy. Brown, another CBI team, is ranked a whopping 148th in the country, but of course their 19-9 record makes them look, well, pretty damn good. They played in the Ivy League, folks.

A bad 30 point game?

This is turning into a longer post than I planned and, quite frankly, I'm having fun with it. I was meaning to post this the other night but I didn't get around to it. Anyway, is it possible to score 30 points in a 40 minute game and have a bad night offensively (I'm only considering shooting here; not passing, ball control, defense, etc.)? The quick answer would probably be no, not really. But did you see Deonta Vaughn the other night vs. Pitt? Outside of being electrifying at times, he had a pretty rough night. He scored 30 in 39 minutes, but he shot an ugly 8-25 from the field.

Let's pretend Vaughn took every Bearcat shot that night (all 54) and got to the line as much as he did, relative to his field goal attempts. That gets us:

from the field: 17.28-54
from 2: 6.48-21.6
from 3: 10.8-32.4
from the line: 19.5-26

Total points = ~65

I'm all over the place here. If you can't follow what I did there, you're in good company, as I can't either. I think I did it right, though, and the point is: Vaughn barely increased UC's point total, relative to how his teammates performed (Cincy actually scored 64 points). Of course, this is an oversimplified "analysis," as players don't take all of their team's shots. if they did, they'd be blanketed more than Deonta was, and they'd shoot an even worse.

I'll go a step further and say that part of the reason Vaughn had to shoot so much was because he was the only player that could consistently get open. Yeah, the rest of the team shot 45% compared to Deonta's 32%, but if they only shot when they were open and they didn't get open often, what was he supposed to do? Now, I'm not saying that's what happened; I'm merely throwing it out there as something to chew on.

Men of Bradley

So we've got this game with Bradley coming up. Who are these guys? They're 5-11 vs teams in Pomeroy's top 115. That means they're like 12-4 vs. teams outside of the top 115. So they beat up on bad teams ... but who doesn't? Plus, the 115 number was just an arbitrary selection by me (it's close to Cincinnati's ranking).

They play to about 70 possesions a game compared to Cincy's 65, so the game might be a battle of conflicting interests, at least in terms of pace. They're also real dangerous from 3 with 5 guys who've made at least 20 on the year.

We'll see you around.