Babblemur brought in the points this week, scoring 29 points off of 15 wins with 4 losses. The next closest were 24 for Jutdog, 23 for ProgressMedia, and 22 a piece for Phunmunki, Boaris and Jaybird. Akaoni (15), HippieD (16) and Gunz (16) fell behind.
There are clearly 3 tiers now:
Top Dogs: Boaris (249), Babblemur (228), Akaoni (223) and Jutdog (219) are setting the pace for the rest.
The Middle: Jaybird (201), The CEO (200), Gunz (194) and Progress Media (193) are all within 8 points of each other, with Gunz falling and the others rising.
The Bottom Feeders: Phunmunki (181), HippieD (175), NotaTurtle (171), and Musashisan (167) are all scrambling to stay out of the basement. Phunmunki and Turtle have been rising, HippieD and Musa falling.
However it is still anyone's game. There are 82 points separating last place from first place, and plenty of games between now and the end.
Team of the Week
UCONN (HippieD) beat back #5 Louisville and Michigan to bring home 8 points (half of HippieD's points for the week and stay on top of the brutal Big East. Nice job!
Expansion Team of the Week
California (Phunmunki) took 6 points off of wins over Washington and Washington St. Nice job!
HOT MIDWEEK ACTION
Hot conference play going on!
In the SEC, Akaoni's Florida (6-2, 19-4) takes on Boaris' Kentucky (5-3, 16-7) on Tuesday in a battle for the top of the SEC East. Then on Wednesday The CEO's LSU (7-1, 19-4) faces Boaris' Miss St. (6-2, 16-7) in a battle for the top of the SEC West. Big games for Boaris.
In the Pac 10 on Thursday, Notaturtle's UCLA (8-2, 19-4) faces Babblemur's Arizona St. (7-4, 18-5) to stay on top of the league.
The Wedneday game between Phunmunki's Xavier (8-1, 20-3) against Akaoni's Dayton (7-2, 21-3) could decide the Atlantic 10 champ.
The West Coast game on Thursday between Gonzaga (Phunmunki) and St. Mary's (ProgressMedia) may determine once and for all who the WCC champ is. St. Mary's lost the last meeting at Gonzaga. This one is at St. Mary's. Zaga is 8-0.
In the America East, The CEO's Boston (9-2, 14-9) takes on Phunmunki's Vermont (8-3, 17-7). Vermont won the last match up at Boston by 16 points.
And of course we have the North Carolina (7-2, 21-2) vs. Duke (7-2, 20-3) matchup on Wednesday between brothers Jaybird & CEO. ACC first place is on the line.
And don't forget the Mountain West Showdown on Wednesday between Jutdog's Utah (7-2, 16-7) and Babblemur's San Diego St. (7-2, 17-5). MWC first place is on the line. The Aztecs won their other meeting.
42 comments:
The CEO and Babblemur have potential 15 point Wednesdays, however improbable it might be...
Tulsa over Memphis?
Syracuse over UCONN?
San Diego St. over UTAH?
Well the last one is a solid at least.
San Diego St @ Utah buddy. Utah by 4.
Aztecs by 14
Weds is huge for CEO, a win over Vermont gives Boston U control of their own destiny of their conf. Duke /UNC should be a battle, we'll see which Duke team shows up, I'd say home would be favorable, but being the UNC fan I am, I know that UNC has won 3 straight at Cameron. LSU should win, and we'll see if Northern Iowa's confidence is shaken. The 15 pts are possible, but it won't be easy,
-The CEO
WOW - BIG WED NIGHT!! 5 of the top 9 teams play, including conference leads on the line in the following:
~ Atl 10 - Xavier (Phunmunki) vs. Dayton home(Akaoni)
~ MWC - Utah home (Jutdog) vs. San Diego St. (Babblemur)
~ SEC - Miss St. home (Boaris) vs. LSU (The CEO)
~ ACC - #3 North Carolina (Jaybird) vs. #6 Duke home (The CEO)
~ Vermont home (Phunmunki) vs. Boston U (The CEO)
Also, the possibility for upset as Okla has to travel to Baylor.
And the predictions:
1. All the home teams listed above win except Duke!
~ Jut
Is X top 10? Maybe Dayton can make up for my crappy play thus far this week...
-aka
I predict:
Xavier
LSU
San Diego St
Duke
Vermont
Down with Oklahoma! Go Baylor!
Vermont has now destroyed Boston U twice, but if they lose again, Boston U will win the conference. I don't understand how you score 15 in a whole half, but Vermont has Boston U's number.
2 out of 5 babs, your prognostication doesn't look so hot.
-aka
Babs, I prefer New Castle, New Glarus Nutbrown, or Sam Adams Brown Ale. Let me know when you're feeling cocky and confident again. Go Utah, MWC leader.
~ Jut
Looks like he's a-losing bets left and right huh?
-aka
I bet Jutdog wins
HA HA HA!
Actually of the 11 head to head match ups last night I predicted them all correctly except for two: LSU & Dayton. I know I said something else above, but the real truth about who I think is going to win each game is over on the right side bar with the weekly match ups.
See I like to get this updatin' done as quick as possible. It is much easier to paste "defeats" over "vs." than switching the teams around, writing "defeats", deleting the "vs." etc.
So I always put the teams in order of who I think will be winner vs. loser. It saves me time.
So check out Thur - Sun if you don't believe me - I'll be correct in 9 of 10 of those games.
Why? Because I am great and you are not so great (unless you agree with me, in which case you are great too).
The CEO, having played 20 more games than JDog, is creeping up, only 11 pts out of 4th
Had I picked the teams I really thought were going to do well in the draft, I would be in first place by over 300 points right now. I know the teams I did pick aren't doing so well, but the real truth is on the "cheat sheet" I made before the draft. If you don't believe me, you can come to my house and look at the sheet, which will prove that I actually know way more about college basketball than the rest of you, because I'm awesome, and the fact that I'll once again be in 12th place by the end of the week doesn't mean anything.
Lost in all of this is Northeasterns' loss to Drexel evening up the Colonial. Northeastern still has matchups with George Mason (Sat I believe) and a rematch at Drexel. VCU has a rematch with James Madison at James Madison. Should be an interesting race to the finish. Northeastern does own the tiebreaker.
Carolina finally played some D!!!! Wow, they made Duke look silly in the second half, and after 4 years, I finally see why Lawson got a full ride, he earned it last night.
Boston U and Vermont tied, Vermont has tie breaker, and honestly, other than starting 0-2 has dominated that conference. Their 3rd loss was really fluky, blowing a 24 pt halftime lead that could have crushed them, but they bounced back nicely.
How about that LSU game, Miss St shot 54 freethrows, what a game.....
Jutdog will extend the gap tonight with a couple of head to heads,
-The CEO
Year 2009-2010 improvements
The following confs are consistently ranked between 7-17 (I looked back through 04):
- Atl 10
- Mountain West
- Miss Valley
- CUSA
- Horizon
- WAC
- West Coast
- MAC
- CAA
These teams should comprise our middle tier.
If we divide into three groupings, that would mean 7 in tier 1 (major confs), the above listed 9 in tier 2 (middle confs), and the remaining 16 in tier 3 (bottom feeders).
Tier one reg season championship: 10 pts
Tier two reg season championship: 8 pts
Tier three reg season championship: 6 pts
Going undefeated in any conference + 3 (rarely ever happens - last year only davidson, this year maybe zaga and utah st). To enable this, I had to comprimise with the corrupt Babblamur an agree to +1 for pre-season tourneys.
Also: Plus 1 for a victory over a top 25 team, plus 1 over a top 10 team, meaning the same scoring we have now, except that if you beat the 23rd ranked team, it is now worth one additional pt(total of 2 if non-player team, 4 if a player team).
Comment away you opinionated kids
~ Jut
I think adding more and more scoring rules just makes the league more Byzantine and confusing. I think a streamlined scoring system is much more preferable.
-aka
I think there are just 6 major conferences: ACC, Big East, SEC, Big 10, Big 12, Pac 10. 6 majors, 9 "mid majors", and the rest bottom feeders?
I thought the "great compromise" was 9 pts for majors, 7 for mids, and 5 for minors?
And 2 less for each for conf. tourney champs...
As for Top 25, I think that might be just fine. Now that we've seen how this new scoring plays out (compared to last year) I think I like it, and minor tweaks like this would work. So if I beat another players team and they are top 10, I get 5 pts, top 11-25, 4 pts, others are 3 pts - fine with me.
I think something else we may want to consider is the NCAA Tourney points - after the tourney that is. Are the rounds worth too much, too little, etc. Does the tourney over shadow the regular season or vice versa? Does it matter?
On the rare occassion, I agree with Babs re. the NCAA tourney. I was waiting to comment until afterwards to see how it goes.
Aka, granted in Iowa you like things very simple, like only eating corn, but really is it too complicated when you add a little butter to the corn? Maybe a glass of water? Not to make things CRAZY, but just a dab of salt?
BTW, Iowa really sucks, and the Badgers destroyed them last night. You are next buddy.
~ Hall of Fame member, Lord Jut
Here goes the argument:
The Mountain West conf is loaded, with a possible 4 NCAA teams in BYU, Utah, San Diego St, and UNLV. Plus there are several other solid squads like TCU.
So is this really only worth the same as winning the SWAC? Or slightly better?
I would say winning the Big East is huge, and should be recognized as such, compared to the Ivy league and such. T
here clearly are 3 tiers, and creating the tiers would be consistent with the mind of anyone who knows anything about college basketball, unless your from Iowa, in which case you don't.
Think it over and see if counting to 3 is difficult after 1 week. I'll get my 2 yr old daughter to do it to.. it'll be sort of fun.
Re. the team breakdowns, we'll make a nice chart so you don't forget that Kansas is a top tier team while Texas A & M corpus christi is a 3rd tier team.
As for Notaturtle, his season was doomed solely based on the draft order. Am I right?
Picking 3rd overall, he got 11th ranked UCLA, who has the 9th highest point total right now, and if they win the PAC 10 that will go up. It was a good pick - especially given that Duke, Oklahoma and Wake for that matter have all exceeded pre-season expectations. UCLA also has the potential to go deep in the Tourney - maybe the Elite 8.
Every pick after UCLA basically sucked.
Miami with 26 pts is actually doing well for a late 2nd round pick - better than Notre Dame or Davidson that is for sure.
Mississippi with 23 points is actually one of the better 6th round picks, and has more points than Turtle's 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th round picks. The best 6th round picks were: #65 Dayton (34), #61 Minnesota (32), #62 Butler (31), and #63 San Diego St (26), but Turtle picked at #70 so he couldn't have them. Too bad he didn't grab one of these fine teams in the 5th round instead of Cleveland St, but who knew?
I predict Turtle hanging onto 11th place through the week.
Re: Simple v. Complicated;
Last night Lord Jut Hall of Lamer was talking about procuring software to handle the scoring system.
I think Lord Jut needs to consider just eating the corn with butter and salt instead of trying to shove the cob up his ass for flavor.
What happened to spreading intelligence about college hoops on this message board? Does no one talk about college hoops? The fact that UNC found their D? One post in like 3 days on who will get into the tourney, who won't, etc...
Engaging in a discussion with people rooted in Iowa:
Example one:
Person A "You know, eliminating funding for renewable energy development may have resulted in increased carbon emissions, air polution as a result of coal burning, and reduced our nation's ability to be reliant on cheap, clean, and locally produced energy"
Iowan response "Your mother is a fuckin idiot"
Example two:
Person B "Due to the city's absolute resistance to any positive change from within concerning its environmentally-damaging practices, it may be more effective to work from the outside raising hell throughout the community"
Iowan response "Take raising hell, shove it up your ass, and eat it.. ha ha ha, I'm laughing at myself"
Example 3:
Person C "Maybe it would add the the excitement of the challenge by exanding reasonable avenues for teams to gain points"
Iowan response "Dude, don't make us count to three, and go eat yourself.."
Thanks for contributing to the dialogue.
I don't know if it's just me, but at least from what I've seen on this message board there's much more vulgar vitriol spewed from the Wisconsin side thank the Iowa side. For instance, Jut’s constant insults are neither meaningful nor particularly clever. He does manage to throw in some profanity from time to time but it does little to further his arguments and seems more of a reflexive reaction to confusion and fear rather than any sort of rational response. But perhaps that’s just Jut, other ‘sconsonians seem more rational and well spoken, so I’ll refrain from passing judgment for the time being.
As to the complexity vs. simplicity argument, my objection is two fold. First, a well designed competition generally has simple rules but complex strategy. Like Chess or Diplomacy the fun is had in matching wits vs. one’s opponent, not pouring over pages of rules to figure out how to play in the first place. I think that adding more and more scoring variations only bogs down the overall game and takes away from some of the fun.
My second objection is to the subjectivity of basing scoring on team ranking. The ranking system is so flawed and biased towards large school or prestige programs that it skews this kind of scoring system towards big conference play. Further, the rankings are largely based on popularity, media concentration, with a bit of what-have-you-done-for-me-lately thrown in for good measure. Rankings often overestimate the strength of teams from the Big East or ACC while largely ignoring very good teams from smaller schools or conferences. Additionally, rankings are further invalidated because of the way they change over time. Does a team really deserve a big scoring bonus for beating a top 10 or 25 team early in the season who really isn’t as good as their early ranking? Conversely, why should a team who beats a very tough underrated (and therefore under-ranked) team early in the season be penalized those points?
In the end this kind of scoring is entirely too arbitrary for my liking. Thus I think simple is better. Make it an even playing field. The better teams will eventually win out.
Regardless, before we should see how the Tourney plays out before we make any huge changes in scoring. Or at least that's the way I see it.
Oh, and as far as corn goes, I prefer it fresh with butter, salt and pepper. Sometimes simpler really is better.
-aka
Well, you probably won't go with this either, as I was also considering throwing out the possibility of plus 1 point for defeating a mid-major top 10 team. www.collegeinsider.com/mmpoll/
I considered it a one-move diagonal for a pawn. Chess actually has quite a few rules with numerous strategies to win.
I agree that I don't want endless rules, but rather want to take advantage of any points of the game that can contribute to the fun of our challenge, while also reflecting the success of team's season.
.. and the un-ending battle between Iowa and Wisconsin is a must. I understand your concerns though, quite a down year over there.
Does Babblemur count as Iowa or Wisconsin because he's the one with the potty mouth.
Oh, "rooted in Iowa" is a direct poke at the ole Babblemur because I'm the only one that challenges your insults with derogatory comments such as sticking vegetables in body holes.
Well at the trailer park in Iowa I lived in that is actually a debate technique that is an art form. The big difference between there and here is that I can't hit you over the head with a whiskey bottle on the Interntes, and you can't boink my ex in retaliation.
Iowa is really special, you can't understand. Never.
I think the term "cousin-brother" came from Iowa...
I've been reviewing the conference champion scoring debate from pre-draft and I have to say that both Jut and Babs are ignoring a key provision that I proposed earlier. Namely:
ICE CREAM!
I believe that the addition of the above provision would lead to a quick and harmonious resolution to the conflict.
That is all.
-aka
My two cents: our scoring system this year is much better than last year. The new BRI is good evidence of that, as I think it pretty accurately reflects who the best teams in the country are (with the glaring exception of Washington). A few tweaks may be in order. I'll let Babs and Jut hash that out, with me occasionally texting Babs about how much of a freaking idiot Jut's mom is.
I'm lactose intolerant.
I agree with Turtle here, this year's scoring is better than last year. The removal of punative negative point scoring for losses combined with increasing the importance of the NCAA tourney were excellent rule changes. I just don't want such a complex maze of rules that we focus more on that then the games themselves.
Washington's point totals could be attributed to a couple of different explanations. Perhaps Washington is just stronger than they have been given credit for. Maybe it's just an artifact of sheduling (more games played against weaker teams from other players), or maybe they've just gotten lucky...
I think that if a top-10 team loses to an unranked team by 25+ points it should be worth -50.
See they way Iowan idiots talk about your mother, CEO and Jaybird (seeing as their mother is also Jutdog's mother).
Note that Washington does have a top 25 coaches poll rating as well as a top 20 RPI and a top 25 Sagarin rating. http://www.usatoday.com/sports/sagarin/bkt0809.htm
But all that aside, I don't think they're top 8 material.
The glaring flaw in our system is that out of 96 initial picks, no one selected Missouri or Illinois.
~ Jut
Yup, Washington is good.
Here's the rule I would like:
Players that played the season before can "lock" up to four of their teams from the year before - they become that player's first four draft picks, or however many teams they "lock in". Draft order is still determined randomly and in snake fashion, but if "returning" players "locked in" teams then those teams count as their first draft picks. "New" players can pick from any team not "locked in".
This allows players to develop a "legacy" - for example this is my second year with Syracuse - I think they are going to really explode next year or if I just want them again, I can "lock" them in as one of my first draft picks.
I actually think this could work, because you would have to "lock in" your teams say two days after the draft order is determined for the new year - so you would have to weigh how good your teams are going to be vs. picking new teams.
HippieD could lock in UCONN. Turtle could lock in UCLA. Jut might lock in Green Bay.
Not fair to new players? I beg to differ.
This is similar to some fantasy football legacy rules. Often however there is a +1 rule where players are valued at the draft round they were chosen +1. So a team picked in the first round can not be retained. A 2nd round pick is worth a 1st round, and so on. This allows top programs (or players in FF) to be made available for draft but still allows people to retain teams albeit at a slight penalty. I think this system rewards good late round drafting without penalizing teams who had a poor draft the year before. Just something to think about if we go down the road Ron suggests above.
-aka
I like the way the round chosen plus 1 sounds. I was thinking of a way to make a carry-over more fair, and having never done any other fantasy league, I wasn't familiar with what is out there.
Would we cap it at 2 or 3 teams?
What is the general feel from others about the carry over?
If we did the carry over, we could also incorporate trades, right? So if I carried over Wake Forest, who would be my round 1 pick, let's say I then am the fifth pick, I could trade my first round spot and 2nd round spot for someone elses first & second round, thereby moving up with my 2nd round pick.
We could incorporate several basic trade rules, incl everyone must have at least one draft each round, all trades must take place on the site - to allow others to counter-offer, and maybe cap trades at 2 or 3 per player
George Mason over Northeastern is making the Colonial race much more interesting! Then VCU loses to Old Dominion - Northeastern and VCU are a game up on George Mason now.
Boston U loss to Binghampton may have just taken them out of the American East running - Vermont & Bing are a game up now on the Terriers.
Arizona has a better Pac-10 record than UCLA??? Madness, that loss is madness. Arizona is suddenly looking like a good pick after all.
Missouri - Damn, looking good.
I think Cleveland St (Turtle) just denied Green Bay any hope in the Horizon League.
Cal Northridge (Turtle) just took first place in the Big West conference...
Belmont's (Phunmunki) win over E. Tenn St. (Progress) just put Jacksonville (Babs) into sole possession of first place in the A-Sun.
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