ESPN ranking of the teams in Illinois

[TheAsianSensation]

I get what your saying, but the problem with your argument is that RPI means nothing now as stated by the NCAA tourney committee last year. They said they don't even look at it anymore.

Technically correct, but it leads to a more important point. They say they don't look at the RPI of the at-large team in question. But they DO look at the RPI of your opponents to help determine strength of victory, bad losses, etc. So ISU's poor RPI, SoS, etc., does impact Wichita St and Creighton's profile, etc.

Again, if ISU is not good enough to make the NCAA tourney and they are in 2nd or 3rd place, what does that say about the valley overall anyways?

I think people are selling ISU way short. That team in the past 2 years was good enough to make the NCAA tournament and do damage in that tournament. They underachieved a bit, IMO.

After reading the rest of your thoughts, it almost feels like Jank is not giving his own squad enough credit for being good. He seems to schedule down, but he needs to give his team more opportunites to win better games, because they're capable of it.

but still, if your team is good enough to make it into the NCAA tourney, you will by winning all the games on your schedule that you need to in order to get in.

Completely fair point, but when you schedule like Jank, the number of opportunities to prove you belong in the NCAA tourney reduce to a precious few opportunities compared to everyone else. Tougher schedules mean more margin for error. The attitude that you have to win every single game you're supposed to win is a dangerous one, because it's so hard to be so perfect.

[TheGuy]

Completely fair point, but when you schedule like Jank, the number of opportunities to prove you belong in the NCAA tourney reduce to a precious few opportunities compared to everyone else. Tougher schedules mean more margin for error. The attitude that you have to win every single game you're supposed to win is a dangerous one, because it's so hard to be so perfect.

I agree 100%. It is very dangerous, which is why I hope the schedule is better next year when we should be one of the better teams in the valley. Actually barring injury/transfer, there should be quite a few good teams next year, BU included. Although the record doesn't show it, I am impressed with how your team is playing considering what you have had to deal with. You never wish injury upon players, but assuming there will be medical redshirts awarded, it could actually be a blessing in disguise. Just like I want our team too, your younger guys by necessity are getting extremely valuable experience this year and you could have one of the strongest benches in the valley next year because of it.

Next year ISU is tentatively scheduled to be in the Cancun Challenge where supposedly Illinois and Rutgers are confirmed to play. It is 8 teams total with 2 games being played in the U.S. and 2 in Cancun. There are two divisions, so even though a team like Illinois is scheduled to be in it, there is no guarantee that we would play them. Assuming Bruce gets his way, we won't get the opportunity. Rutgers isn't a basketball powerhouse, so we will have to wait and see who else will be in, but hopefully it is an improvement. At this point, I don't think ISU fans even care about going out and getting BCS teams on the schedule. All we are asking for is an opportunity to get games against better mid-major teams out of the A10, CUSA and CAA. The team I think they need to start a series with now before they become relevant again is DePaul.

The cancun challenge might be our only chance besides maybe one other scheduled OOC game to have a decent schedule next year so I am crossing my fingers. Right now we are locked in to.

@Morehead St. (no fahried)
SIU-E
UNC-W
UALR
@MWC Challenge (might be a home game though-or we might not get one at all depending on how that all works out)
Bracketbuster
*not sure if we are playing UIC or not again.

Include 4 games from the Cancun challenge and thats a total of 10 leaving about 2 more games to be scheduled. So we will see, but there should be no excuse not to get something better next year given the fact they should be one of the better teams in the valley next year.