College Basketball: Weekly Mailbag

Each Monday, CHN college basketball expert Joel Welser opens up his mailbag to answer fan questions.  At the end, Joel also includes some timely college basketball tidbits.  If you'd like to ask Joel a question or if you'd like to read past editions, check out the Monday Mailbag archive.

Joel,

Can Seton Hall actually make the Big East Tournament?  And who gets left out if they do make it?

From Eric,

New York

How about two consecutive Big East wins over South Florida and Syracuse with a victory trip to Raleigh squeezed in there?  That is surprising to say the least.  The schedule is also looking very favorable for the Pirates.  Road games at Providence, South Florida and DePaul are all very winnable as far as road games in the Big East go.  The problem is losing those games gives teams below them in the standings a big step closer to the top 12.  Back in my preseason rankings, in August or so, I projected Seton Hall at 13^th, or maybe 12^th in the Big East, I forget.  People complained that I was the only person who didn’t have SH last.  I assume they forgot about South Florida, but the point is that the expectations of this team were below nothing and that Louis Orr should be interviewing for jobs in the MAAC or practicing his play by play for CSTV as the season progressed just to get a head start on next season. 

South Florida and DePaul are in the biggest trouble as far as not making the trip to MSG in March.  Providence has a nice schedule coming up with five of their next six games against Seton Hall, St. John’s, DePaul, Cincinnati and South Florida.  If they win three of those, that would be five wins, which could be enough to get them to New York.  Notre Dame has so many tough losses and sits at 1-6.  They are going to have problems recovering from that record.  At this point I would have to project that South Florida, DePaul, Notre Dame and Seton Hall will be the four teams out.  It will be close and all those teams, well just about all of them, will have plenty of opportunity to battle into the top 12.

Joel,

Now that is Bracket Buster season again, I begin to wonder if the Bracket Buster is good for basketball or not.  Wouldn’t we be better off with the mid-major types playing middle of the road BCS conference teams?  Do I care if Central Michigan plays UC Riverside on Bracket Buster Saturday?  Why are they even in the thing since we all knew that these teams would not be any good?

From Kurt,

Oklahoma

I think it is fun.  Does it bust brackets?  Usually not, but it does increase and decrease conference RPIs, which is just as important in many cases.  There is no way BCS conferences would ever agree to play the upper echelon mid-majors anyway.  That would make sense, but it’s not going to happen. 

The positives are that teams that have played well throughout the year get a chance to showcase what they can do on TV.  Now they showcase it to many of us on TV quite a bit, but this is ESPN and ESPN2 and more people will watch if they think it is a big game.  Many of us see George Mason play quite a lot, but it is more interesting to most people to see them play against Wisconsin Milwaukee, or whatever the case may be. 

With teams like Central Michigan and UC Riverside, the positives lie elsewhere.  They won’t get on ESPN, they won’t see an increase in attendance for the game, but they do get a nice little non-conference game and, in the case of the road teams, a guaranteed non-conference return game next November or December.  That may not seem like much, but in many cases the schools involved can have a heck of a time filling up a non-conference home schedule…if there is a non-conference home schedule at all. 

With the way things are, I like it.  I’d prefer to get rid of it and get rid of conference tournaments and have true conference champions representing their conference in the NCAA Tournament.  But if we are going to have made for TV tournaments and mid-major days, we mine as well make them fun and have everybody involved, especially since we don’t know who is necessarily going to be good and ‘deserve’ to be in the Bracket Buster.  For one day in February we get to go back to November and have a bunch of games from a bunch of fun conferences.  Some games will be good and some games will be bad, but since we didn’t pay attention to CMU or UCR in November, we don’t need to now either, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t let them play.  By the way CMU and UCR, I’m still paying attention.

Have a question?  Ask them on the easy form at the Monday Mailbag Homepage.  We’ll post and answer as many as possible.  Please include your first name and home state and put Monday Mailbag in the email title. 

Joel’s Thoughts of the Week

Unless somebody starts winning on the road, the Big Ten is going to have tons of very dangerous teams come March around the 3-7 seed range.  The depth and parity of the top seven teams is so great that they just can’t win against each other on the road.  Yet, of course, they are all good teams and will cause major problems for their opposition in the NCAA Tournament.

The Kobe Bryant award goes to Andre Collins of Loyola (MD).  Collins averages 22.7 shots per game.  The rest of the starting five averages a combined 24.3.  But that is alright, because Collins makes 41.9% of those shots and averages 27.1 points and, more importantly, 5.1 assists per game.  That beats out Kobe by nearly one assist per game.

For 19 games, St. Louis has alternated one win and one loss.  Next up is a loss at Rhode Island on Wednesday.  If this keeps up, you do not want to play the Billikens in the first round of the conference tournament.  Ironically, the schedule plays out quite well for St. Louis to continue their win one, lose one pattern.  For fun, let us take a closer look:

Check back each week for Joel Welser's Monday Mailbag. If you'd like to ask Joel a question or if you'd like to read past editions, check out the Monday Mailbag Homepage.