ISR March to Madness thread
- Thread starter dexterhawk
- Start date
They didn't drop much after their last 3 losses and the teams were getting bunched point wise around the NET 30. .
They were due for a decent drop either way with yet another loss. They were likely going to drop more than a spot either way.
The difference between 29 an 19 was not far enough to make a loss inconsequential.
UNI still needs to win the MVC Tourney obviously, but they have really stepped it up 2nd half of season. 13-3 since Jan 1 and wreaking havoc in the Valley. Watched them in person this past Sunday v.s. Missouri State and they shut them down. They are limited in the paint, their best "big" is 6'6'' Noah Carter from Dubuque, and they were getting abused by a big beefy ogre for MO St. until he fouled out, but when the 3 balls are falling, they could beat damn near anyone probably. There might be better top end talent on this roster than their Sweet 16 team from a decade ago (how has it been that long already?) Former Cyclone fantasy recruit Bowen Born is a great 6th man for them right now.
Honestly the Valley tourney would be a fun watch.
Totally agree, always one of my favorites due to local interest and the general equality of talent amongst league members resulting in highly competitive games.
Yep…for some reason they were showing highlights of the earlier Virginia win at halftime of the Iowa game…had the sound off and assumed it had happened that night.
I’m not sure UVA is quite as criminally underrated as you think. They have bad losses and a decent record in a bad league. Not sure if Bennett just doesn’t have the horses or what, but they are just an OK team.
The thing is you can only use the non con games to figure out how good the conferences are. Those non con games led to the pretty obvious conclusion that the ACC isn’t good. Therefore racking up wins in the ACC in general isn’t going to help you all that much.
Beating Virginia on the road in November is not unlike ISU beating Oklahoma State on the road in January. You don't hear or see a lot of ISU fans thumping their chest over that one.
I get that to a degree but I feel they've made noticeable improvement. The past month they've played some of the best teams in the conference twice and won 3 of them.
They’ve beaten Miami 2x and Duke once. That Duke win was no doubt a great win, but Miami is not some amazing win. The ACC as a whole is just pathetic this year. Seriously though if Iowa or Iowa State were in that league, they’d no doubt get 2nd and depending on how they’d do against Duke, would be contending for the title.
Actually one is a quad 1 win and another is a quad 2 win, so it's a fairly significant difference.
You're right. Makes it even more strange that Hawk fans are touting the UVA win.
They also call Kirkwood a prestigious graduate school.
Teams improving as the year goes on is usually more that they just get into league play in a weak conference. Obviously teams improve through the year at different rates, but more often than not you'll see teams from bad to mediocre conferences "improve" once they get into conference play, teams in brutal conferences slide or struggle from non-con to league play.
Virginia is not a bad team. But they aren't a good team either. I think you are letting the fact that they are a good program with a great coach in what is historically a great league give them more credit than they deserve. They simply aren't that good this year.