West Liberty Hilltopper Basketball

[IUP Extra Mile]

Re: West Liberty Hilltopper Basketball

AGREE WITH THIS, NORRIS!

The bump in SOS will be big, no matter what WL final record is...

[PSAC76]

Re: West Liberty Hilltopper Basketball

Playing an easy early schedule will not make a so-so team better. It seems that the WLU fans who are complaining about playing solid teams early (these are not national contender type teams) are simply admitting that they prefere to inflate their wins and then claim entitlement to the #1 seed in the regional. I mean no disrespect, but to be complaining about opening the seson at home against Kutztown (who turned around and lost to W.V. Wesleyan) is very nearly laughable.

Careful Knight, if you say ANYTHING that isn't over the top complimentary about WL, you will have 20 posts about it over the next 2 months calling you a hater or that you don't know what you're talking about. You'll also have your words twisted; just giving you the spoiler alert

[Knightmoves]

Re: West Liberty Hilltopper Basketball

Playing an easy early schedule will not make a so-so team better. It seems that the WLU fans who are complaining about playing solid teams early (these are not national contender type teams) are simply admitting that they prefere to inflate their wins and then claim entitlement to the #1 seed in the regional. I mean no disrespect, but to be complaining about opening the seson at home against Kutztown (who turned around and lost to W.V. Wesleyan) is very nearly laughable.

[IUP24]

Re: West Liberty Hilltopper Basketball

The pragmatic goal is to win conference tournament and host regional. Playing tough teams early with young team is risky. Injuries in Jan and feb can result in unexpected losses. Early losses to good teams, while better than late losses, reduce margin of error for making tourney simply due to number of losses much less hosting. Iup fans might weigh in based on last year.
Imho This year iup looks to be the team in the Atlantic and can play anyone early. West Chester has some chemistry issues imho.

I believe there needs to be a systematic overhaul of how we view wins and losses against SOS in college athletics across the board, specifically when it comes to football and basketball. For years, West Liberty didn't play "risky" games they had the potential of losing. That paid off for them by most years serving as the regional host. On the opposite extreme, IUP has played a murders row of a non-conference schedule the last 3-4 years. They haven't hosted a region. Hell, they haven't even won the PSAC. They've missed two of the last three tournaments and have won one tournament game the last three years. That's the opposite end. There needs to be something in between.

I think for a lot of people, they always viewed the non-conference cupcakes as a cop out to a degree. You don't count or expect West Liberty to ever lose more than 2, maybe 3 games in the regular season. So automatically, there you go, you can almost guarantee who will be hosting in March. And yeah, I know Fairmont has hosted, and a few others, but you see my point. For a PSAC team to host given how West Liberty has typically scheduled and performed, they can't lose more than 1, maybe 2 games. East Stroudsburg is exhibit A of that.

I think my point is that people only value wins and losses, and I think that's wrong. Nobody cares if you played the best 6 teams in the country if you went 3-3 in those games. But if you played 6 of the worst squads in the nation, in the eyes of many fans, you should be rewarded because you won those games and the other team should be punished for splitting 6 games against elite competition.

The same problem exists in FBS football currently. I'm a Pitt football fan, and sure they've been a tire fire for my lifetime, but oh well. Pitt is 6-4, unranked, and is considered a punchline when people talk about them playing in the ACC Championship. Syracuse, who Pitt beat, is 8-2 and is ranked 13th in the country. While Pitt played and lost to Penn State, Notre Dame, and UCF, Syracuse went out and beat Wagner, Uconn, and Western Michigan. Pitt is playing great football right now, but nobody really cares because they see they're 6-4. Watching both of them play, I can assure you that Pitt is a better football team than Syracuse is, but.... Syracuse has two more wins because they played more cupcakes. Therefore, they get to be in the national conversation. When you look at it like that, apply that to the debate between West Liberty playing nobody versus other schools in the region playing challenging competition. Why should West Liberty be more deserving to host if they go 30-3 playing nobody out of conference over Fairmont, IUP, West Chester, etc, who goes out and plays a challenging schedule and finishes the year 27-5?

I hope I didn't stray far from what the intent of your post was, but I think we need to view things differently in college athletics when it comes to this stuff. I think teams should schedule a combination of winnable games to "work out the kinks" while also scheduling challenges out of conference that are fun for both the fans and players alike. I wish IUP wouldn't schedule as heavy as they do. On the same token, I think WLU should be more ambitious than they are most years with their non-conference schedule. Needs to be a balance, and how the committee seeds should reflect that. A team shouldn't get to host a region every year based on the sole fact that they win two more games than everybody else when it's clear what their agenda and intent was in their non-conference schedule.

[IUPbigINDIANS]

Re: West Liberty Hilltopper Basketball

Keep this in mind (before Boat storms Ben's office):

Fairmont already has 2 losses.

Slippery Rock already has 2 losses.

Concord is 1-1.

Virginia State is 0-2

West Chester is 0-2

Kutztown is 1-1

East Stroudsburg (defending champ) is 0-1

[Columbuseer]

Re: West Liberty Hilltopper Basketball

Several points:
1. The ooc options are not just terrible teams ( cheyney) or experienced top tier teams (iup). There is a big fat middle of bell curve that are solid but not great teams.
2. While not a conspiracy, it is reasonable for ncaa to spread out hosting locations unless there is a clear leader in Atlantic in terms of record and strength of schedule.
3. I have sensed that ooc strength is playing a tie breaker role.

4. Mec is tougher conference than it was but to prove that u need to have these inter-conference showdowns like this weekend.


Typical high risk , high reward dilemma.


I'm for strategy that gets us into tournament and best prepares us to win against tough competition

[Chuck Norris]

Re: West Liberty Hilltopper Basketball

I guess we'll see this season. We now have started the year with two very good teams and went 1-1 were we typically are 2-0. By somes measure, that should make us tougher come tourney time. Given as how we have gotten to the NC game playing it Crutch's way, this early hard sched should result in a NC victory. Of course, we now have a loss and will need to come close to running the table from here on out to host the Regional tourney and maximize our chances of getting to the Elite 8 and ultimately the NC.

Guess we'll find out if two hard games in early November equal a National Championship five month later in March.

When has WLU been 4 or 5 games clear of the SR1 field??

[boatcapt]

Re: West Liberty Hilltopper Basketball

I guess we'll see this season. We now have started the year with two very good teams and went 1-1 were we typically are 2-0. By somes measure, that should make us tougher come tourney time. Given as how we have gotten to the NC game playing it Crutch's way, this early hard sched should result in a NC victory. Of course, we now have a loss and will need to come close to running the table from here on out to host the Regional tourney and maximize our chances of getting to the Elite 8 and ultimately the NC.

Guess we'll find out if two hard games in early November equal a National Championship five month later in March.

When has WLU been 4 or 5 games clear of the SR1 field??

[Chuck Norris]

Re: West Liberty Hilltopper Basketball

The pragmatic goal is to win conference tournament and host regional. Playing tough teams early with young team is risky. Injuries in Jan and feb can result in unexpected losses. Early losses to good teams, while better than late losses, reduce margin of error for making tourney simply due to number of losses much less hosting. Iup fans might weigh in based on last year.
Imho This year iup looks to be the team in the Atlantic and can play anyone early. West Chester has some chemistry issues imho.

[Columbuseer]

[IUP Extra Mile]

Re: West Liberty Hilltopper Basketball

Maybe Ben learned that his team is resilient, plays hard, and beat PSAC East favorite today...Never would have found that if they played two tomato cans this weekend...

Nice Win Hilltoppers over West Chester...Saw the stats...didn't watch the game, so I wasn't able to follow the flow...But a good win, after a loss last night. And the Kutztown loss will pay dividends down the road...Got the team's attention, and provided that Kutz has a good to decent year...that will help schedule strength all year...

[boatcapt]

Re: West Liberty Hilltopper Basketball

WLU had a formula and we deviated from it this year. And it cost us. Now we effectively jave to run the rest of the year with no room for a bad game. That is incredibly hard to do when you have two games vs Fairmont, NDC and Concord. The "goal" for WLU is not to win the conf...the goal is to host and win the Region...NOT to be able to say we played tough games in November. Hopefully Ben learned a valuable lesson...If it ain't broke DONT FIX IT!!!

[Columbuseer]

Re: West Liberty Hilltopper Basketball

The pragmatic goal is to win conference tournament and host regional. Playing tough teams early with young team is risky. Injuries in Jan and feb can result in unexpected losses. Early losses to good teams, while better than late losses, reduce margin of error for making tourney simply due to number of losses much less hosting. Iup fans might weigh in based on last year.
Imho This year iup looks to be the team in the Atlantic and can play anyone early. West Chester has some chemistry issues imho.

[Columbuseer]

Re: West Liberty Hilltopper Basketball

This is what I was talking about. WLU traditionally uses the early season as extended practice. But this year we bowed to the pressure coming from quarters that don't have our best interests at heart and scheduled tough games. Now it is coming back to bite us. And what was the supposed reason for scheduling difficult games at the start of the season? To be "tougher" in the playoffs in FIVE months. No one has ever been able to show that playing a tough game or two in November has anything to do with success in March.

[IUP Extra Mile]

Re: West Liberty Hilltopper Basketball

I did. For the Topper fans that bowed to outside pressure and wanted WLU to schedule tough games early, congratulations, you got your wish.

I'm a huge WL fan...but to direct your anger to the topper fans who wanted some non cupcake games early, is mis guided. I want them to play tough games bc if we think the hilltoppers are a special team (year in year out) they should be able to beat a couple of PSAC teams at home...that's not really alot to ask? We're not scheduling West VA here, they scheduled West Chester and Kutztown, by all accounts, teams they could / should beat, but didn't beat one... And now I know that this team has some warts, and probably lowers my expectations a little bit...but season isn't over...I could see them still making the regional...and bc they lost 1 or 2 to start the year, if that costs them the regional, than they weren't going to compete in it anyway...I have no problem playing good teams, esp when WL talks about all their history of rankings and wins and 3 pointers, and such...just so happens this year is not a banner team...at least after one game..