Tinkle on turning the seasonaround

This is gonna likely get long, so I apologize.

Wilky — I’m not really sure what you mean by “I do not find your comparisons to teams from other conferences persuasive” because I didn’t make any comparisons. I just listed the schools that had a win the same as Oregon State last year. You completely missed the point, which is that there were no P5 or even mid- major teams on the list. It is really “difficult” for teams at that level to only win 3 games because their noncon schedules are filled primarily with cupcakes or teams that they are on par with overall. Those small schools have an excuse at least because they’re playing better teams on the road to get a paycheck. But thanks for proving my point by mentioning that a really bad Georgetown team still managed to win twice as many games as WT’s squad.

Not really sure why you mention Crean and his buyout. Neither I nor I believe ATown said WT should have been fired this past offseason. And not sure why what GA or IN does has any bearing on the Beavers coaching situation. I’ve come to believe that you like to use the buyout as a shield so that you don’t have to address WT’s really bad years — we can’t afford to fire him, so they don’t matter thinking. Even if there were no buyout, it has become apparent you wouldn’t want to fire him any.

Back to Crean and Indiana. You fail to mention that IU kept Crean around after he won 6, 10 and 12 games his first three seasons. And he rewarded them by having two Sweet 16 teams. Sandwiched around those seasons were 3 seasons with a combined conference record of sub .500 and no higher than a 7th place conference finish and a 10th place finish the year he was fired. You also failed to mention the numerous off court player incidents over the span of several years during Crean’s tenure. Right or wrong Indiana had enough. Again, not sure why that has any bearing on WT’s status though. Also, in regards to Mike Woodson, for me the jury is still out. I’d say as an Indiana alum, he’s much more qualified than Gary Payton, whose name gets floated around here as an alum candidate for Beavs. He also seems to have the recruiting thing down. His 2022 class includes the #23, 29 and 90 ranked kids and their 2023 class has 2 top 100 players thus far.

So, I think the real reason you mentioned Crean is so you could go off on the Big 10. First, I didn’t think Indiana should have gotten into tourney — even one of the play in games — like they did. I did like your creative, grasping at straws attempt to find something good about the Beavers season — we didn’t lose to UCLA as bad as another team did to them in the tourney. It is creative thinking like that that might make WT “unfireable” no matter what his record each year. But back to Big 10. Since the NET was established, it has finished 1 or 2 in the conference rankings. Last year it was #2 and had a noncon winning percentage of 77.7%. For comparison, Pac 12 was #6 with a winning percentage of 66.7%. Stands to reason that on average the better a conference performs during the season, the more teams it will have in the tourney. Just because five conferences have been labeled “Power 5” does not mean those five are all equal across all sports.

That brings us to what you see as a ridiculous snub of I’m assuming the Beavers after the 2018-19, with the other team in question being Wichita St. I can’t tell you when or if that exact scenario has played out. Can you tell me when a P5 conference has had a nonconference record against schools from the other four P5 conferences and the Big East of 7-26? I’ll give you a hint — Pac 12 in 2018-19. Unfortunately the Beavers did their part, going 0-2 against the two opponents they had from that group — Missouri and Texas A&M. By the way, those schools finished 12th and 11th respectively in the SEC that season. The Pac 12 that season was a P5 basketball conference in name only. It finished 7th in NET conference rankings behind the other four P5 conferences, the Big East and, wait for it. the American Athletic, home of Wichita St. The Pac 12 won only 61.3 of its noncon games that year. The next lowest of those 7 was the AAC with a winning percentage of 71.3%

That year Washington was the highest ranked Pac 12 team in NET at 45. The AAC had teams ranked at 4, 25, 30 and 46 in final NET. Wichita State was ranked 83 and the Beavers 87. Beavers only had 6 quad 1 and 2 wins meaning two-thirds of their wins were only quad 1 and 2 games. Wichita St had 4 quad 1 wins (Beavers had 2) and 5 quad 2. Beavers “signature” noncon win was against Old Dominion. Wichita State played four games against P5/Big East teams in noncon (the group Beavers went 0-2 against) and were 2-2. And they both had identical 10-8 conference records. So the only advantage Beavs had over Wichita St was they finished 4th in a P5 conference that had an historically bad year rather than 6th in a Group of 5 conference that was much stronger that year than said P5 conference. I’m an Oregon State fan, and I they did not get screwed. Not even sure the choice was that hard.

Oh, and one question. Is the 2018-19 team one of those that made your mythical two extra NCAA appearances for Tinkle of one of the two NIT appearances?

Wilky — Got it. Well one could make a decent case for SD being chosen over Beavers — Beavs were in a 3-way tie for 4th, which essentially means they tied for 4th, 5th and 6th; Utah finished 3rd in conference but with NET ranking of 105 for further proof how bad Pac 12 was that year; SD had 10-4 record against a noncon schedule ranked 81st by NET compared to OSU’s 9-4 against 236th best noncon schedule — so I don’t think it is anywhere near egregious, but I do think OSU should have gone in over SD. But your orange-colored glasses must be really thick if you actually believe Beavs should have gone to NIT over Wichita State that year.

But Wilky, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry when I read this — “The Beavers could have padded their win total, but what the hell would the point be?” Really? What is the point of winning? Well that explains your steadfast support of Tinkle I guess. And they could have padded their win total? So they just lost 18 in a row for yucks? You are delusional my friend. And Kenpom’s Luck rankings are basically worthless. It’s a “measure of the deviation between a team’s actual winning percentage and what one would expect from its game-by-game efficiencies.” Basically it is a catch all because his model (or anyone’s I’m sure) can’t account for everything. And the key phrase is “would expect.” Doesn’t mean they could have won more, but what the heck. Things like no killer instinct, inexperience and poor coaching are probably examples of what the model can’t account for. I hope to god that Tinkle doesn’t share your sentiment of “what the hell would the point be” to winning. If he does I think we have our answer to why the team’s winning percentage is worse than its game-by-game efficiencies.

Hey if I can stay up until 2AM+ my time to watch the whole game, you can make the drive. 😁 Have fun at game and enjoy first win of the season.