You are overlooking the obvious. It is hard to have team chemistry when the team was placed in hotel rooms for almost 1/3 of a season, because of ridiculous COVID protocols.
Blake moving on
- Thread starter SFspidur
- Start date
Many other teams seemed to manage just fine. St. Bonnie didn't even play almost the entire OOC portion of their schedule, came right off, waxed our asses and then won the league.
That damn St. Louis baseball team and their crazy concerns.
Agreed - in looking at our schedule last year, I can really only blame 2 losses on COVID - and that is the VCU game and LaSalle. VCU - We were coming off a COVID pause, and tried to schedule a game (and did with a D3 team) to knock the rust off, but it wasn't enough. LaSalle - I think we should still win that game, but we were coming off some rust with last game being over 2 weeks prior.
Loss to WVU had nothing to do with COVID. Just a better team that ran us off the floor in the first half.
Loss to Hofstra had nothing to do with COVID. Maybe just a let down as we beat Loyola just 3 days prior.
Loss to Bonnies. They were the ones coming off a pause and they beat us on our home floor.
Loss to St. Louis and St. Joes - not COVID related, but maybe injury related. Even so - no excuse for losing to St. Joes at the end even with injuries.
Loss to WVU had nothing to do with COVID. Just a better team that ran us off the floor in the first half.
Loss to Hofstra had nothing to do with COVID. Maybe just a let down as we beat Loyola just 3 days prior.
Loss to Bonnies. They were the ones coming off a pause and they beat us on our home floor.
Loss to St. Louis and St. Joes - not COVID related, but maybe injury related. Even so - no excuse for losing to St. Joes at the end even with injuries.
Well, you make it sound like we had a terrible season this past year. True, the team underperformed expectations, which I believe was due to Covid and injuries, but even still we finished with the 68th highest net ranking in the country and a trip to the NIT. Pre-Mooney, there were not many years where we had a better computer ranking. We have had 2 strong years in a row and they potentially would have been the 2 best back to back years in school history if it were not for bad luck. 2021-2022 is going to be a great season for the Spiders. You better order tickets early.
There are a lot of reasons to be optimist and few to be concerned, but the bolded part of your comment seems a bit of a reach. Didn’t computer rankings (Kenpom) start in 2002?
They did have computers ranking going back to at least the early 80s, just not the NET rankings. I like the computer rankings because it combines record with strength of schedule. We play a much harder schedule today then we did historically. The A10 has a lot of very strong teams at the top half of the conferences.
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Well, I think you will get your wish, because I believe we do have an NIT banner that last season will be listed on. Time to party!
I believed NET Ranking were first used in 2018-2019
Ken Pomeroy Ratings in 2001-2002
The RPI was first used in 1980-1981, but I believe the formula was not back engineered until 1994-1995 and not officially released until 2005-2006.
But I'm sure SF or 2011 would have a better handle on all of this.
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Sorry 80s, but hard to fathom this thinking. Are our standards reduced to celebrating making the NIT?
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Didn’t we celebrate every NIT in the 80s?
Later we had banners for each NCAA and one banner for all the NIT (That we would update when we went again).
I would be surprised and disappointed if we raised a banner that only celebrated a NET ranking...
But we can acknowledge the NIT while wanting and expecting more...
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Mite, don't disagree that NIT is worthy of celebration. Just the "let's party" attitude by the poster annoys me. As if after 10 years in the desert with respect to NCAA's somehow making a watered down NIT is a big deal.
Merely stating that it’s very possible that last season was anomalous. I actually am not suggesting that this year was poor like the two prior to 2019, but I am saying that two bad seasons and one mediocre one (it was mediocre, hard to argue otherwise) should factor into any trend analysis.
As noted, UR fans tend to have expectations that are not grounded in history or reality. We regularly project lots of PT and great production from freshmen for example when overwhelmingly this proves not to be the case.
I’m more optimistic with the guys coming back but also objective enough to interpret the data on its merits.
JOC article on Blake...
richmond.com
Former Spider Blake Francis focusing on point guard package for pro level
Blake Francis needs more basketball games. The last one in which he participated left him down and out.
I don’t recall where Blake played at Wagner but I have a difficult time seeing him gaining interest as a pro level PG. he averaged 1.7 assists for his college career. Feels like that’s a tough sell to a club that’s seeking a distributor-first point.
He can be a pretty exciting player, I hope he’s getting good input on how to position himself for whatever league he ends up in.
He can be a pretty exciting player, I hope he’s getting good input on how to position himself for whatever league he ends up in.
He primarily played the 2 at Wagner, with JoJo Cooper (6'0) playing PG for ~37 minutes per game. Blake also played the 3 at times for Wagner in some lineups where they would play a 5'11, 6'0, 6'0, 6'3, 6'8 lineup.
