NCAA Tourney or NIT?

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goldy93

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Realistically, we need to win 11 of our remaining 15 games to guarantee a spot in the NCAA (however, with the week B1G this year, it may take 12). Here is the rest of our schedule. We need to sweep the rest of our home games and win at least 3, possibly 4, road games.

at Michigan
Iowa
Rutgers
at Nebraska
Illinois
at Penn State
Nebraska
Purdue
at Iowa
at Indiana
Northwestern
at Wisconsin
at Michigan State
Wisconsin
Penn State

Not trying to be a pessimist, but I guess I do not see it happening. Anyone see something else? A glimmer of hope? We basically have no margin for error the rest of the year.
 

I still think 10-8 in the big ten will get you in. Spots 2-10 will be a blood bath. 10-8 and as long as we don't lose to a Rutgers or be in the btt. I think we get in.
 

goldy93 said:
Realistically, we need to win 11 of our remaining 15 games to guarantee a spot in the NCAA (however, with the week B1G this year, it may take 12). Here is the rest of our schedule. We need to sweep the rest of our home games and win at least 3, possibly 4, road games.

at Michigan
Iowa
Rutgers (W)
at Nebraska
Illinois (W)
at Penn State (W)
Nebraska (W)
Purdue (W)
at Iowa
at Indiana
Northwestern (W)
at Wisconsin
at Michigan State
Wisconsin
Penn State (W)
Click to expand...

The highlighted games pretty much need to be stone-cold W's. Can't lose any of those 7. The trickier part is winning 4 of the other 8 (3 if 1 of the wins comes vs. Wisconsin), and making sure at least 2-3 of those 4 wins come against upper-echelon B1G teams. Still time to recover, but if I had to guess right now the half-dozen games that will define the Gophers' season are the 4 games vs. our two rivals, @ Indiana, and @ Michigan State. Need to win 3 of those (2 if 1 is vs. Badgers).

It all needs to start Saturday in Ann Arbor.
 

Really need a confidence boost right now, a win at Michigan could be a turning point, follow that up with a win against Iowa and they would be right back in the mix.
 

Just beat Michigan and we'll move on from there.
 


We are likely looking at another NIT bid, although I'd love to be wrong. With Andre Hollins really not the same since he hurt his ankle a couple of years ago, at least mentally, it seems like we lack a guy who can lead the charge when it's time to take over the game. That will make getting the required wins from the remainder of the Big Ten schedule tough. Hopefully he will find himself or someone else will emerge. My main hope is we get better as the season goes on so that if needed, and it likely will be, the Gophers can make some noise at the Big Ten Tournament.
 

In order to make the NCAA's now, we'd have to get on a roll, a hot streak. I'd like to see us get hot like that, but I just don't see us having the horsepower. It's like Moonlight wrote in another thread, we should light some votive candles and pray for our forwards and centers to start playing above their capability. With Hollins playing like this, who's going to be the scorer? Considering what's becoming a disappointing season for Andre, the Gophers' chances this year hinged on winning the close games and not losing games they're supposed to lose. So far they've already let two or three of those get away.
 

bemidjigopher said:
I still think 10-8 in the big ten will get you in.
Click to expand...

9-9 with two wins in the Big Ten tournament might do it too. Stranger things have happened. One of Tubby's 9-9 teams (2010) won 3 games and got to the finals. They only had an 18-12 record going into the tournament. Just have to try to avoid that 8/9 spot.

Illinois' dismantling of Maryland (after losing their leading scorer no less) last night provides further evidence that almost every team in this league is beatable. Even Wisconsin at home couldn't seem to pull away from Purdue until the final minutes of the game.
 

Right before the Big Ten started I thought, and still think, 10 wins would put us at the top of the bubble pecking order.

Looking at the upcoming Big schedule I was hopeful for 2-1 to start these first 3 but was expecting 1-2. I've been a huge downer the last few weeks even looking back on my earlier thoughts because we definitely are underachieving. However, if we just win 1 game we aren't favored in to make up for that Purdue loss and not blow it against the bottom feeders we could be right back on track to 9 or 10 wins.
 



Screw it. How bout we just win this first one then win the rest while we're at it. No way to project what we'll need right now. Let's just kick Michigan in the teeth and get rolling
 

Debby Downer thought for the day - If the Gophers don't start playing better, they might not even make the NIT.

Honestly, the way they're playing, I don't know if they'll be favored in any of the remaining games. It's a little depressing when every B1G team looks more athletic than the Gophers. I know Pitino is only in his 2nd season, but he is going to have to be a REALLY good recruiter if he wants to bring up the athletic ability of the team in order to play the style he says he wants to play.
 

I'm clearly in the minority, but I think this team will still win ten games in conference, barring another injury or defection.

They lost their arguably second hardest conference road game to Maryland by only 12 points while getting destroyed on the boards and getting very little production from their guards.

Then they lost arguably their second hardest conference home game to Ohio State because Ohio State's lottery pick went off in the first half. However, we were still very much in the game at the end (clearly).

The schedule softens up considerably after the Michigan game.

Win the seven softies that SS outlined above and pick up three of the remaining eight (including two home games) and this year would be a step forward. At some point, this team will start to win some of these coin flip games.
 

The idea that we need 12 conference wins is ridiculous. A B1G team with 22 wins isn't getting left out. Even 10-8 is probably on the right side of the bubble. In any case if we're sitting any worse than 2-4 10 days from now (hopefully 3-3), it'll be time to give up the ghost.
 



howeda7 said:
12 conference wins is ridiculous. A B1G team with 22 wins isn't getting left out. Even 10-8 is probably on the right side of the bubble. In any case if we're sitting any worse than 2-4 10 days from now (hopefully 3-3), it'll be time to give up the ghost.
Click to expand...

Who is predicting 12 wins?
 

upnorthkid said:
Screw it. How bout we just win this first one. ... Let's just kick Michigan in the teeth and get rolling
Click to expand...

Best thing I've seen all day. Need a win under their belts, then maybe relax a bit and start winning games.
 


upnorthkid said:
Screw it. How bout we just win this first one then win the rest while we're at it. No way to project what we'll need right now. Let's just kick Michigan in the teeth and get rolling
Click to expand...

Now that's the spirit! Crying over spilt milk is a waste of time. There are 15 regular season conference games left and I'm looking forward to them. The team could get hot at any time and almost no conference team is unbeatable.
 

e.bigelow said:
Just beat Michigan and we'll move on from there.
Click to expand...

Agree with that, a win against Michigan gets us heading in the right direction and hopefully some confidence.

I do agree with Short and Ornery, if we don't play better it is possible that we fail to qualify for the NIT. At this point, as bad as we have been in conference, I still think it is more likely that we aren't in the NIT for the good reason rather than the bad one, but if we lose to Michigan, I might start to reconsider that. This game is huge, I don't want to look any farther ahead than Ann Arbor right now.
 


The Gophers winning enough conference games the rest of the way (be it 10 or 11) to make the tournament is no more unlikely than the Gophers losing enough games down the stretch to miss the tournament as they have done several times in recent history. Even last year required a mini meltdown for the Gophers to miss the dance. I am not trying to sell anyone on this years team, just pointing out that we are more than do for a season that head in an unexpectedly POSITIVE direction.
 

upnorthkid said:
Screw it. How bout we just win this first one then win the rest while we're at it. No way to project what we'll need right now. Let's just kick Michigan in the teeth and get rolling
Click to expand...

Agreed. If Rutgers can, we can! Go Gophers!
 

We are only two wins out of second place. However, we do have to beat somebody sometime pretty soon to move up.
Let's hope we are unconconscious from 3 and the free throw line on Saturday.
 

cjbfbp said:
9-9 with two wins in the Big Ten tournament might do it too. Stranger things have happened. One of Tubby's 9-9 teams (2010) won 3 games and got to the finals. They only had an 18-12 record going into the tournament. Just have to try to avoid that 8/9 spot.

Illinois' dismantling of Maryland (after losing their leading scorer no less) last night provides further evidence that almost every team in this league is beatable. Even Wisconsin at home couldn't seem to pull away from Purdue until the final minutes of the game.
Click to expand...

Big difference between that year and this one was the B1G was so much stronger and we beat several ranked opponents during the year (Butler and Wisconsin come to mind as well as Purdue and MSU in the B1G tourney), came within 1 or 2 points of beating a couple of other ranked opponents, and had a much tougher schedule than this year. Right now, there are only 3 B1G teams ranked in the top 25 and only 5 teams in the RPI top 50. We can go out and beat Michigan, but what is their RPI now? I know it is below ours and we were sitting somewhere in the 80's. Beating teams with RPI's hovering near 100 will only do so much for us.

That is the problem this year, the weak B1G. I could realistically see only 5 or 6 B1G teams getting in this year.
 

*Bump*

Well, I guess the NIT is about all we can hope for now, unless we do a complete 180 and win about 8 in a row. This team absolutely cannot finish games and no lead is safe. Sucks we already have to start looking towards next year, which is even more concerning when you figure who we will be losing.
 

Yeah it is pretty tough to come back from this. I'm usually one of the guys saying there are plenty of games left blah blah blah but you might as well start thinking about next year is right...at this point it probably wouldn't hurt to get Konate some minutes even if they aren't great minutes.
 




7 is probably the magic # for the NIT. That would put us 18-13 before the BTT.
 

Ok, someone has to try to pull some positive something out of thin air. So I'll give it a try.


0-4.

3 of those games were ROAD games.

The home game was vs a Top 20 ranked team. (I'm ignoring the fact that OSU went 0-2 this week).

Of the 3 road games, one was vs a Top 10 ranked Maryland team, very understandable loss. Michigan is now 3-1 in the B1G, so could end up being an understandable loss? Purdue is 2-1. Purdue's Sagarin Rating is much better than their RPI, so they might not be so bad? Michigan's Ken-Pom rating is also much better than their RPI rating, so maybe they are not so bad?

PSU, Rutgers and NW, all future opponents, have much worse Sag and KP ratings than they have RPI ratings, so maybe they'll be easier wins than they might otherwise appear? Nebraska is rated badly in all of the ratings, so they might be an easier win than would have been imagined going into the season.

Beating Iowa could kickstart a run of 7 straight wins. We literally could be 7-4 before going to Indiana. If we lose to Iowa but then win the next 6, at 6-5 things would look bad, but we'd have lots of opportunities to make a big impression to finish the season, with road games at Indiana, Iowa, MSU and a home game vs Wisconsin that all could be winnable games. I'd say the road game vs Wisconsin may be the only gauranteed loss.

Now I am NOT predicting anything, just saying you never know!! Realistically I'm wondering what we have to do to get into the NIT.
 

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