No Respect Thread

[Caf]

I love the hate. I love the disrespect. Keep telling me our defensive efficiency ranking is 73rd.

RPI, Kenpom, all of the other stats have no way of measuring familiarity. The round robin is something no one outside the BE fully appreciates. You know how hard it is to beat a team twice in a year? We beat 8 teams twice this year. We've been a resume win since the get-go and from my perspective we've been playing postseason basketball since Marquette on 12/27.

[xukeith]

Deal with it.

Xavier won't truly be respected until we AT LEAST get to a Final Four. There are those that won't give us our due until we win out, and there are still a few jackoff idiots who won't even then (they got lucky, it was an easy path, a down year in NCAAMBB, etc). But they are jackoff idiots and self proclaimed know-it-alls that are really dinosaurs and has-beens .... so who cares.

JUST WIN BABY!!!!

Arizona's message every year since Miler has been coach.
It is extremely difficult to get to FF.

[XU 87]

I don't see how anyone is claiming "disrespect" when X is number 3 in the country and is in line to get a #1 seed.

[Drew's Crew]

I agree that the "disrespect card" is a bit silly, but.....it is still a bit ridiculous.

I have been binge listening to college bball podcasts and on the Courtside podcast they ran through their predictions of all of the conference tournaments and never mentioned the Big East.....

And then on the "Screen the Screener" podcast they literally predicted us to lose to NC State in the second round.

I understand that a lot of fans look for reasons to feel slighted and I usually stay away from that, but after listening to those podcasts back to back, I realized that there are going to be a lot of people that don't believe in us and I am OK with that.

So ideally, if we bitch enough about being disrespected, maybe the players will feel it and come out like gangbusters bc of it!

[Caf]

From Seth Davis and Sam Vecenie on which 1 or 2 seed has the most to prove:

SAM VECENIE C.L. is right about USC, but I’ll also say Xavier. The Musketeers won a tough Big East — a league that plays a round-robin format — outright. That’s impressive. For that reason, the Musketeers are expected to be a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament. But is it weird to say I don’t have a crazy amount of faith in them like I would in a typical No. 1 seed? The reason is obvious: The Musketeers struggle to get stops defensively. They’re 73rd in KenPom’s adjusted defensive efficiency metric, a number that most consider far too high to win a title. Additionally, one of their best defenders, junior Kaiser Gates — a 6-foot-8 combo forward — has struggled in recent weeks and seen a bit of a reduction in minutes. Chris Mack is a genius at preparing for specific matchups. It’s why his teams have often overperformed their seed line. Maybe he mixes and matches defenses on his way to confusing opponents into a Final Four run. That’s easier said than done over a four-game stretch, though.

SETH DAVIS I’m putting this one on Xavier. Think about it: The Musketeers have basically locked up a No. 1 seed, they won the Big East regular-season title outright and they are ranked No. 3 in the AP poll. Do you know anyone who is picking this team to win the national championship? Bueller? Moreover, Xavier has gotten two shots at Villanova and lost both those games by a combined 40 points. If the Musketeers want to be taken seriously as a title contender, they need to go to the Garden and bring back the broomstick of the Wicked Witch of the West.

We can debate over what is "disrespect" and what's not, but it is clear that we are the most doubted of the top 4 and maybe even the top 8.

[muethibp]

This was a wildly successful season, to win the BE regular season title was just fantastic. I won't ever suggest otherwise. No matter what happens, I'll always remember this season and the players behind it with incredible fondness and appreciation.

But...

...if you're being honest about the season, it would have taken very little to make the season far less magical. You could argue that Xavier played 11 close games (ETSU, Marshall, Depaul x2, @SHU, @Butler, @Creighton, SJU x2, @Marquette, Georgetown) and went 11-0 in those games. Swing, say, three of those to losses and you have a team that is 24-7 and whose profile looks a little more like, say, Arizona or Auburn. Very good to great teams but probably not a national title contender.

Consider the closeness of the games in a different way. X outscored its BE opponents by a collective 76 points. That's pretty good but it's not blow-you-away amazing - it's an average of 4 points a game which is not at all a huge margin in basketball. It could easily have gone another way. Butler, for example, outscored the 18 opponents by 74 points and got 6 less wins for essentially the same margin. Villanova outscored its 18 opponents by 210
points which is pretty amazing.

Anyway, because of the closeness of Xavier's wins and its winning all the close games, the computers take a dimmer view of Xavier if you compare it to its seeding and ranking. Many computers - Sagarin, Kenpom, others - have Xavier rated in the 12-18 range. See a collection of rankings here: https://www.masseyratings.com/cb/compare.htm

Now, my point is not to suggest that Xavier is going to crash out or even to say I agree with the computers. And to a certain point, winning close games is a skill of a senior-led team, and despite what the computers generally assume, winning close games is a repeatable skill. In other words, "yeah, but you just won a bunch of close games" it not the criticism that some would make it out to be.

My point really is to say that for those that claim Xavier is a weak one seed or take a somewhat skeptical view of national title or Final Four prospects, well they do it with some ammunition and I won't rail against people that do. It's not unreasonable though I sincerely hope it's proven wrong.

[atljar]

Consider the closeness of the games in a different way. X outscored its BE opponents by a collective 76 points. That's pretty good but it's not blow-you-away amazing - it's an average of 4 points a game which is not at all a huge margin in basketball. It could easily have gone another way. Butler, for example, outscored the 18 opponents by 74 points and got 6 less wins for essentially the same margin. Villanova outscored its 18 opponents by 210 points which is pretty amazing.

Wow. I was just chatting with a guy at work about this. It was my perception than Villanova had burried a bunch of opponents this year where we had won a lot of close games. I didnt actually know the numbers. Thats a LARGE spread difference

[markchal]

This was a wildly successful season, to win the BE regular season title was just fantastic. I won't ever suggest otherwise. No matter what happens, I'll always remember this season and the players behind it with incredible fondness and appreciation.

But...

...if you're being honest about the season, it would have taken very little to make the season far less magical. You could argue that Xavier played 11 close games (ETSU, Marshall, Depaul x2, @SHU, @Butler, @Creighton, SJU x2, @Marquette, Georgetown) and went 11-0 in those games. Swing, say, three of those to losses and you have a team that is 24-7 and whose profile looks a little more like, say, Arizona or Auburn. Very good to great teams but probably not a national title contender.

Consider the closeness of the games in a different way. X outscored its BE opponents by a collective 76 points. That's pretty good but it's not blow-you-away amazing - it's an average of 4 points a game which is not at all a huge margin in basketball. It could easily have gone another way. Butler, for example, outscored the 18 opponents by 74 points and got 6 less wins for essentially the same margin. Villanova outscored its 18 opponents by 210
points which is pretty amazing.

Anyway, because of the closeness of Xavier's wins and its winning all the close games, the computers take a dimmer view of Xavier if you compare it to its seeding and ranking. Many computers - Sagarin, Kenpom, others - have Xavier rated in the 12-18 range. See a collection of rankings here: https://www.masseyratings.com/cb/compare.htm

Now, my point is not to suggest that Xavier is going to crash out or even to say I agree with the computers. And to a certain point, winning close games is a skill of a senior-led team, and despite what the computers generally assume, winning close games is a repeatable skill. In other words, "yeah, but you just won a bunch of close games" it not the criticism that some would make it out to be.

My point really is to say that for those that claim Xavier is a weak one seed or take a somewhat skeptical view of national title or Final Four prospects, well they do it with some ammunition and I won't rail against people that do. It's not unreasonable though I sincerely hope it's proven wrong.

I agree with this. Part of it is also going to be because we're a smaller school. Heck, even some on this board last year were pining to be placed in Gonzaga's region. We also don't really have any marquis wins out of conference. I don't know who is jumping us as a one (Kansas?) but that team will also have plenty to nitpick. It's been sort of a weird year overall. Still, even if we won a lot of close games, a win is a win, and we deserve a 1, even if we aren't seen as some dominant team.

[chico]

When people talk about all the close calls we had, I like to point out that this team was 20-11 against the spread this year. Only one team had more wins agains the spread - Michigan - and only two other teams had at least 20 wins - Canisius and Loyola of Chicago. Now I know the computers think we had a bunch a close games and "luck" and dinged us for that, but I'd argue that the boys in Vegas who set the lines may know a thing or two about how a team is going to perform.

[Xavier]

I agree with this. Part of it is also going to be because we're a smaller school. Heck, even some on this board last year were pining to be placed in Gonzaga's region. We also don't really have any marquis wins out of conference. I don't know who is jumping us as a one (Kansas?) but that team will also have plenty to nitpick. It's been sort of a weird year overall. Still, even if we won a lot of close games, a win is a win, and we deserve a 1, even if we aren't seen as some dominant team.

I don't think so. I think no one questions what Xavier has done to get a 1 seed. As you said, it doesn't need to be pretty but a win is a win. But If I were and 8/9 I think Xavier is certainly the most vulnerable potential 1 seed. Hell, most fan bases would much rather play Xavier than UNC/Duke/Purdue (projected 2 seeds). I can't blame them- but to that point I'd guess the disrespect card will be played by Mack in a big way.