Sunday, January 06, 2008

Big East Ballot- Week 8

Wild, wild week. The Irish leap to #3 by virtue of staying unbeaten in two games. Villanova beat Pitt, who has been #1 this season and lost to DePaul, who has been on the bottom most of the year. Really tough to rank the squads, but I tried to stay consistent.

Team Rankings-

  1. Georgetown- Much weaker than thought at the beginning of the year, but they find ways to win. Hibbert is not as good as advertised.
  2. Marquette- Drop to #2, but have chance to jump back to the top if they beat the Irish and the Hoyas lose.
  3. Notre Dame
  4. Syracuse
  5. Villanova
  6. West Virginia- Knocked off the former #1 team in the conference, but lost to the Irish earlier
  7. Pittsburgh- Who knows where to put this team? The injuries haven turned them from tops in the league to possibly middle of the table.
  8. Connecticut
  9. South Florida
  10. DePaul- Leap up the rankings with two big wins
  11. Providence
  12. Seton Hall
  13. Louisville
  14. St. John's
  15. Cincinnati
  16. Rutgers

EDIT- And West Virginia just beat Marquette... this league is crazy

Player of the Week- Luke Harangody- Notre Dame- two double doubles like Arinze Onuaku, but single-handedly won the West Virginia game for us.

Freshman of the Week- Donte Greene- Syracuse- 21 and 9 against S. Florida. 22 and 3 against St. John's.

6 comments:

BlackandGreen said...

My apologies for perceived mistakes in the rankings. This was an insane week in the conference. Looks like the rest of the season will be exciting!

Mike Shannon said...

Syracuse????? #4?????

BlackandGreen said...

They actually have the 2nd best RPI in the conference (10th nationally, behind Pitt). One of only four teams to survive the first week of Big East play unscathed, with two wins.

The computer rating is definitely too high and the Orange didn't beat any of the top teams in the conference, but they didn't play down to lesser opponents easier. Are they just cleaning up on home field advantage? We'll find out next week when they visit Morgantown and Bob Huggins' Mountaineers.

Bryan said...

Just noticed that for the second year in a row, Notre Dame is 'slamemd' with a terrible layout to the BE schedule. 2 games in 3 days, followed by the first 'bye' (meaning 7 day with no game), then 3 games in 7 nights, then the OTHER bye (b/f it's even February), then ANOTHER 3 games in 7 days. Just ridiculous. And that's not including the 3 games in 5 nights at the end of Feb.

I guess making it 18 games this was inevitable, but it still a bit ridiculous. Throw in 2 of the 3 biggest home games being while the students are away, and it could wake up the conspiracy theorists like me.

Bryan said...

I didn't get a chance to bring this up, but the 'home game while the students aren't here' thing is gonna reach epic heights soon. I know it's an unavoidable problem, but could the conference be more sensitive to school that have 'national' student bodies vs local ones, and make it so teams inliek Uconn/WVA/South Florida play home games in Jan when they have a betterchance of the students taking time out of their breaks to go to the game due to travelling issues?

BlackandGreen said...

The 18 game schedule made this absolutely brutal. I haven't checked how other teams are scheduled, so I have no idea if what we received was "fair" or not. Certainly a killer conference season awaits us.

The comment about the students is an interesting idea. I don't know how the league assigns schedules, whether it is thought out or computer-generated, but it would be a good idea to make sure that students could make as many home games as possible. Clearly the home atmosphere is affected by the absence of students. A home game in early January is different from one in early March.