Leatherneck Nation

As mentioned in another post, USD is having some issues with their men's basketball team.

So, with that, and only 3 more weekends of basketball left, I thought I'd look at the chances that maybe we don't end up last in the conference this year.

Western's remaining games are: at Denver, at Oral Roberts, at North Dakota State, home against South Dakota State, Fort Wayne, and South Dakota.
North Dakota State is sitting in the middle of the conference. Denver, Oral Roberts and South Dakota all have losing records. South Dakota State and Fort Wayne are tied for the top of the conference.

South Dakota has 5 conference games left: home vs North Dakota State, at South Dakota State, home vs Denver, at IUPUI, and at Western (and a home game against non-conference NAIA school York College from Nebraska in there on the 17th)
Oral Roberts has 5 conference games left: home vs IUPUI, Western, Denver, then at Omaha and at South Dakota State.

We are currently 2 games back from Oral Roberts and USD, but I think that of the two, we have a better shot at catching USD. ORU doesn't have to play either of the top two teams in the conference anymore (SDSU, IPFW) has 3/5 of their remaining games at home, including the remaining head-to-head with us at their place. USD does have to play SDSU again, only 2 of their remaining 5 are at home, and their head-to-head with us is here in Macomb. Plus the previously mentioned personnel issues which probably won't hurt them too much, but if it ends up being a swing of a couple of points, it might make the difference in a game or two, especially ours where we usually stay pretty close with teams.

If we're able to put together a few wins against some of the other fairly mediocre teams in the conference...Denver, ORU, maybe pull off a win at NDSU, and if USD tanks and loses the next few of theirs, it's entirely possible that the last home game on February 27th will be the "play-in game" for the last spot in the conference tournament. Too much to hope for?....maybe. But at this point, it's not like we have much to lose...everyone now expects us to finish last...the worst we can do is to meet people's expectations.

ST_Lawson wrote:As mentioned in another post, USD is having some issues with their men's basketball team.

So, with that, and only 3 more weekends of basketball left, I thought I'd look at the chances that maybe we don't end up last in the conference this year.

Western's remaining games are: at Denver, at Oral Roberts, at North Dakota State, home against South Dakota State, Fort Wayne, and South Dakota.
North Dakota State is sitting in the middle of the conference. Denver, Oral Roberts and South Dakota all have losing records. South Dakota State and Fort Wayne are tied for the top of the conference.

South Dakota has 5 conference games left: home vs North Dakota State, at South Dakota State, home vs Denver, at IUPUI, and at Western (and a home game against non-conference NAIA school York College from Nebraska in there on the 17th)
Oral Roberts has 5 conference games left: home vs IUPUI, Western, Denver, then at Omaha and at South Dakota State.

We are currently 2 games back from Oral Roberts and USD, but I think that of the two, we have a better shot at catching USD. ORU doesn't have to play either of the top two teams in the conference anymore (SDSU, IPFW) has 3/5 of their remaining games at home, including the remaining head-to-head with us at their place. USD does have to play SDSU again, only 2 of their remaining 5 are at home, and their head-to-head with us is here in Macomb. Plus the previously mentioned personnel issues which probably won't hurt them too much, but if it ends up being a swing of a couple of points, it might make the difference in a game or two, especially ours where we usually stay pretty close with teams.

If we're able to put together a few wins against some of the other fairly mediocre teams in the conference...Denver, ORU, maybe pull off a win at NDSU, and if USD tanks and loses the next few of theirs, it's entirely possible that the last home game on February 27th will be the "play-in game" for the last spot in the conference tournament. Too much to hope for?....maybe. But at this point, it's not like we have much to lose...everyone now expects us to finish last...the worst we can do is to meet people's expectations.

i like you're thinking.that would make for a nice home crowd and then a caravan to the tourney.

Hopefully they can keep this little run going. I wont be easy with tough schedule on the road, but we know team has talent.

They have been playing much better team ball as of late and that has translated into positive things. Maybe they have found their groove and just at the right time if they get to go to siox falls.

Update time...

Western went 1-1 on the road trip, bringing them to 2-10 in the conference.
South Dakota also went 1-1, beating NDSU and losing at SDSU, taking them to 4-9 in the conference.
Oral Roberts won 2, so that pretty much puts them out of our reach (not technically, but nearly so).

We have 4 games left:
2/17 - at NDSU
2/20 - vs SDSU
2/25 - vs IPFW
2/27 - vs USD

USD has 3 conference games left:
2/21 - vs Denver
2/25 - at IUPUI
2/27 - at WIU

We can still catch USD, but...
- we need a combination of 4 of our wins and USD losses (out of 5 total games) to be tied going into the final game. We go 2-1 and USD goes 0-2....or we go 3-0 and USD goes 1-1...either of those would have us tied before our last game with them.
- one fewer win for us or one fewer loss for them (so, 3 out of 5 games going "our way") would have us 1/2 game behind them, which is still ok because in a head-to-head win, we gain 1 game on the team we're playing.
- if only 2 out of the 5 games go our way (like...we go 1-2 and USD goes 1-1), then that will put us 1 game behind USD going into the final game. If we were to win that game, we'd be tied with USD standings-wise and they'd have to go to tie-breaking procedures to determine who gets into the tournament at the 8th spot. If that were the case...here's how that would go:
1. Results of head-to-head competition between the two tied teams - WIU vs USD would be 1-1...they beat us at their place, we beat them here at home
2. Comparison of each tied team's record against the team occupying the highest position in the standings continuing down through the standings until a team gains an advantage - so , this would be tricky, because it would depend on who finishes first in the conference (likely SDSU or IPFW). We still have yet to play both of those teams at home, having lost each of them at their place (so...0-1 vs each of those teams). USD went 0-2 against SDSU and 0-2 against IPFW.

So....if only 2 out of the 5 games go our way, and we're 1 game back from USD. Then if we beat USD and end up tied with them at the end of the regular season, the 2nd-level tiebreaker would apply, and if one of those games (of the 2 out of 5) was us beating either SDSU or IPFW, then we would hold the tiebreaker advantage. If we did not beat either of those teams (as in, we're tied with USD and we both went 0-2 against the top 2 teams), the next team would likely be Omaha (they're currently 3rd in the conference standings), where we hold a 1-1 record against and UDS holds a 0-2 record against, so we'd win the tiebreaker there.

So, to wrap up...for our remaining 3 and USD's remaining 2 conference games:
5 out of 5 games go our way - we're up 1/2 game, and the game vs USD determines who goes to the tournament
4 out of 5 games go our way - we're tied, and the game vs USD determines who goes to the tournament
3 out of 5 games go our way - we're down 1/2 game, and the game vs USD determines who goes to the tournament
2 out of 5 games go our way - we're down 1 game, and a win vs USD gets us to tiebreaking procedures, which it looks like we'd probably win in most scenarios
1 out of 5 games go our way - mathematically eliminated from tournament
0 out of 5 games go our way - mathematically eliminated from tournament

Just win, baby.

vatusay wrote:Just win, baby.

Ideally, yes....win out and we're in.

Just so frustrating those games we let get away early in conference season.

For those five games leading up to the USD@WIU game, here are the probabilities based on current Massey Matchup predictions:

Probability of exactly 0 games going our way: 0.1088
Probability of exactly 1 game going our way: 0.3318
Probability of exactly 2 games going our way: 0.3522
Probability of exactly 3 games going our way: 0.1680
Probability of exactly 4 games going our way: 0.0363
Probability of exactly 5 games going our way: 0.0029

So the odds are slightly better than 50-50 (55-45) that the final game against USD will be a meaningful one.
I would take those odds to Vegas any day.

If it is to be a meaningful game, a little clever marketing could go a long way. How about the "BOB" (Beat On Bob) game?

So, I posted an update a bit earlier, but I think my math is off, so I took it down.

Essentially the way it stands now, we're 2-12 and USD is 4-10. We need to win our next game (home Thursday against Fort Wayne) and USD needs to lose their next game (at IUPUI on Thursday) for us to be 3-12 and USD to be at 4-11 going into the game on Saturday. A win over USD at that point makes us tied at 4-12 in the standings. I haven't checked tiebreakers based on any changes this last weekend, but prior to that, it looked like we held the tiebreaker over USD. I'll take a look at that tomorrow to see if I can figure out for sure.

If WIU wins and S.DAK. looses,sat. game will be for the last spot.No doubt about it.Because FT.WAYN E will be 1 or 2 and if we beat them,S.DAK. lost 2 to both them and SDST.