IowaBear said:

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I mean… rightfully so, we don't deserve to be ranked

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I agree, neither should Houston.

Rightfully so. Embarrassing performances (not UConn) can only be overlooked for so long. Have to turn it around and prove it. It's a shame because the conference is there for the taking.

To be fair almost everyone is losing to decent teams on the road and we've already played two of them. The potential is still there in my view to be in the mix.

St Johns and Arky are less impressive wins now. That may change for the positive as the season rolls on

first time since?

Bearsalwayswin said:

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first time since?

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Gene Iba asking for replacements from student body when half the team walked off?

Stefano DiMera said:

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Bearsalwayswin said:

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first time since?

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Gene Iba asking for replacements from student body when half the team walked off?

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Gene's one good season was when we made the NCAA Tournament as an 8th seed. As this was the only season between Drew and Bill Henderson's 1950 team, we manged to make the NCAA, I am guessing we were unranked 1950-200?

Not surprised that Tennessee made #1. I would say they are the best we have faced thus far. It does not appear to me there is a dominant team this year. Maybe 8-10 teams that will flit in and out the top spots. We are at least a rung below that, though I think our function this year could be spoiler: get someone in our building, and/or where we are hitting our shots, we can play with anyone. I understand that the spoiler idea may not sit well with some of our fans who may feel it is below expectations for us as an elite, brand new blue blood...by the way, unless the was a cancellation, I believe we have a game today. Not a single mention of it on this site. Blue blood indeed...

I find polls this time of year comical. We could have easily scheduled the decade ago Scott Drew schedule of MEAC, SWAC and Southland schools and be 9-0 and inside the Top 4 with everyone fat and sassy thinking we were unbeatable since none of those schools would have exposed our defensive issues. But instead we played one of our toughest non-cons during Scott's time here and the issues were exposed earlier than usual.

Meanwhile, OU has one of the biggest jumps of the week and moves up 8 spots in the AP poll to #13. How? Well, they beat the powerhouses of Georgia Tech (4-5) and Alcorn St. (0-10) last week, which should impress every pollster. Best win so far is over unranked Arizona (4-4) and Louisville (5-4).

Conference play is when separation starts full force and effect, and determines who plays after the 1st week in March when conference tournaments are done.

I know the SEC is very good this year, but 9 of 25 is ridiculous.

Big12Fan2024 said:

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Meanwhile, OU has one of the biggest jumps of the week and moves up 8 spots in the AP poll to #13. How? Well, they beat the powerhouses of Georgia Tech (4-5) and Alcorn St. (0-10) last week, which should impress every pollster. Best win so far is over unranked Arizona (4-4) and Louisville (5-4).

Conference play is when separation starts full force and effect, and determines who plays after the 1st week in March when conference tournaments are done.

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But SEC will have the benefit of having a lot of their conference losses against ranked teams.

SEC is something like 47-15 against other power conferences, one of the most impressive records by a conference in CBB in years. They are so locked into the NET and other metrics now it will be almost impossible for them to get fewer than 8, most likely 10 and possibly up to 12 into the NCAAs. They'll never hurt themselves in any of the metrics used by the committee once conference plays because it will all counterbalance. We can hate on them all we want but they are pretty much locked in unless a significant number of teams have injuries. There is a high probability a SEC team may get into the tournament with a losing conference record.

Both #Baylor men's and women's basketball teams are unranked in the same weekly #APTop25 poll for the first time since December 2003.

It's a rare moment for both programs to be outside the Top 25 simultaneously, as they came close in January 2023 but kept at least one ranked. https://t.co/0Iu6mLkbni

— Michael Haag (@MichaelHaag_) December 9, 2024

I was wondering about mens and womens unranked. 21 years! Wow!

Curious where we would be in you took out Gonzaga. Still not great but definitely better

350 out of 355? Wow.

Was Tang our D coach or what is up with this because this is our problem the last 4 years (tho Tang left 3 years ago)?

Our offense can beat most but once we get a team that plays both sides of the ball well, we seem to crumble.

GoodOleBaylorLine said:

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Curious where we would be in you took out Gonzaga. Still not great but definitely better

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For 3 point D, we'd stay the same. It drops 3 pt % D from 39.8% to 39.3%, which still leaves us behind #349.


For FG%, it would drop FG% to 44.9% which still leaves us in the #270 to #272 range.


No matter how you slice it, we've been awful at defense.

Maybe it'll put a chip on their shoulder's....time to earn it back in the weeks ahead

boognish_bear said:

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Maybe it'll put a chip on their shoulder's....time to earn it back in the weeks ahead

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Gotta beat somebody with a pulse. St. John's is an outlier for us so far this season.

canoso said:

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boognish_bear said:

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Maybe it'll put a chip on their shoulder's....time to earn it back in the weeks ahead

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Gotta beat somebody with a pulse. St. John's is an outlier for us so far this season.

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and even that took a tiny miracle to pull off...

canoso said:

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boognish_bear said:

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Maybe it'll put a chip on their shoulder's....time to earn it back in the weeks ahead

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Gotta beat somebody with a pulse. St. John's is an outlier for us so far this season.

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2-3 against ranked opponents (you forgot Arkansas) - none of which were at home. We'll get some skins on the wall at Foster, no doubt.

And it's probably been years since UCONN lost in Storrs or the Zags lost in Spokane. It's the way that we peed down our leg against Gonzaga and the Vols that has me concerned.

Arkansas win looks pretty good tonight.

Way too early to be stressing about things.

Wait about 4-5 games into conference and you'll have a read on what this team. And every other team is about.

boognish_bear said:

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Both #Baylor men's and women's basketball teams are unranked in the same weekly #APTop25 poll for the first time since December 2003.

It's a rare moment for both programs to be outside the Top 25 simultaneously, as they came close in January 2023 but kept at least one ranked. https://t.co/0Iu6mLkbni

— Michael Haag (@MichaelHaag_) December 9, 2024

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Mulkey is much like Briles in May of 2015. Self conflicted wound. We are Baylor. It is what it is.

IowaBear said:

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I mean… rightfully so, we don't deserve to be ranked

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Maybe so, but our 3 losses are against 2 top 10 teams and a top 20 team:
Tennessee - #1
Gonzaga - #8
UConn - #18

All about the finish

We got absolutely steam rolled in two of those games.
Could have easily lost to SJ as well.
Right now we have no business being ranked, that'll probably change in the near future

IowaBear said:

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We got absolutely steam rolled in two of those games.
Could have easily lost to SJ as well.
Right now we have no business being ranked, that'll probably change in the near future

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I sincerely hope so. Seriously.

It depends on what it means to deserve a ranking. I'm pretty sure we're one of the 25 best teams in the country. But I also agree that it's great to be on the outside looking in. We've had our weaknesses totally exposed early, which will hopefully be an advantage moving into conference.

I struggle to see where having a sub 300 defense in multiple categories could ever be considered an advantage.
We've had some awful awful defenses the past few years and this one may just take the cake.

Agreed. But better to know exactly how bad it is now than to wonder.

I have a good friend who played at Kansas under Self. He thinks the Big 12 Champ this year is going to have at least 5 losses.

I personally think ISU wins the conference, which would bum me out, but that's the only team I see that could lose 3 or fewer games in conference.

what's odd to me is that we might have our best defender since davvion

Stefano DiMera said:

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Arkansas win looks pretty good tonight.

Way too early to be stressing about things.

Wait about 4-5 games into conference and you'll have a read on what this team. And every other team is about.

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Yeah but Arkansas also beat a team that is legitimately played no one and basically had zero resistance this year, Michigan should fall back unranked.

ursamajor said:

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It depends on what it means to deserve a ranking. I'm pretty sure we're one of the 25 best teams in the country. But I also agree that it's great to be on the outside looking in. We've had our weaknesses totally exposed early, which will hopefully be an advantage moving into conference.

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I guess at the moment Vegas would agree we are somewhere in the Top 25