There were a few “re-rank the Sweet 16” lists going around this morning, and at least the ones I saw were not serious. How can we know they weren’t serious? They didn’t have Princeton last.
Princeton is a fun story, as any 15-seed playing into the second weekend is. Princeton is also a good team, as they demonstrated against Arizona and Mizzou on Thursday and Saturday. But as someone who followed the Ivy League for NIT Bracketology purposes this year, let me tell you how they do things:
They’re good until they’re not.
In Ivy League play, Princeton went 10–4. Along that journey, they cracked into the top 100 of KenPom exactly once, just as they did again on Thursday after upsetting the Wildcats. What happened? A 22-point loss to Yale, who beat them again later in the season in a game Princeton led by 19 with eight to play and the conference championship on the line. How did Princeton do against the rest of their schedule? Well, until they beat Yale in the Ivy League Tournament, they hadn’twon against a team in the KenPom top 70, and they lost to the likes of Navy, Delaware, and Dartmouth, to go with a few others.
How did they play so well against Arizona and Mizzou?
Well…did they play well?
Princeton did play well, simply being under control against Arizona and then outclassing a Missouri team who wasn’t stopping them at all on the scoring end. Those are accomplishments, and they’re worthy accomplishments, but.
But Princeton got a lot of help.
Mizzou has overachieved all season, and they still played one of their worse games. Arizona has been a major headcase team all year, and as headcase teams do, they seemed to look ahead, especially once they went ahead in the second half. Both upsets were upsets, both upsets were surprising. The first was shocking. But those were reflections of the opponents as well, and winning two games doesn’t mean Princeton’s better than FAU. Did FAU look good against FDU? No. But that was also only one game, and they did win it, eventually by eight.
So: Enjoy Princeton, cheer for Princeton, believe in Princeton. But believe they can win individual games. Don’t believe they’ve magically become a whole new team overnight.
Goodbye, Iowa State; and Other Thoughts
First: A quick goodbye to the Cyclones. It was a frustrating, heartbreaking day, but this was a heck of a class of guys, one who will hopefully be remembered with plenty of love. It should be a really exciting offseason, and the closer I get to that, the more fired up I become. Then, however, I think back to that Texas game in Ames, and I get sad again. We were so close to being so close.
Thoughts on yesterday’s eight games:
- Xavier looked just fine against Pitt, but given who Pitt is, it’s only that: Just fine. If I was going to make a troll graphic re-seeding the Sweet 16 while professing myself as the face of college basketball journalistic and/or analytical excellence, I would put Xavier 16th. Really? They’re believable, but everything would have to go correctly against Texas, and then they’d really want Houston to lose to Miami.
- Speaking of Miami, credit to them for dominating Indiana. Indiana wasn’t as good as its seed, but it takes a lot to win that convincingly, and one potential explanation for the team’s success is that it’s meshing and getting right at the right time. I don’t personally really buy that, but it’s an angle.
- Kansas State got the chance to show the broader sports world what Big 12 fans and many national college basketball fans learned months ago, which is that they—and specifically Markquis Nowell—are tons of fun. No shame in that loss for Kentucky, but that’s kind of the problem for Kentucky right now.
- Marquette did the Cinderella thing in the Big East regular season, which makes the upset even smaller than its three-point line. Still, heartbreaking for that team, and no doubt frustrating, given they’ve shown they can play so much better. Michigan State, like Miami, redefined their entire season in one game.
- Creighton and Baylor played the game we expected, with the difference coming down to Creighton’s shooting. And therefore maybe Baylor’s defense.
- I’m not unimpressed with FAU. It is hard to play a 16-seed. The Owls didn’t look good, but they get a chance to regroup now, and that’s key.
- Don’t buy too much Gonzaga stock. That TCU team has quietly been reeling.
Cooley et al.
The coaching carousel heated up today, with Georgetown announcing Ed Cooley’s hiring and Rick Pitino confirming he’s leaving Iona for St. John’s. Beyond those, Georgia Tech hired Damon Stoudamire last week, Western Kentucky’s picked up Steve Lutz from Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, Mississippi of course hired Chris Beard, and Will Wade popped up at McNeese and was promptly suspended. Lastly, Mike Brey is reportedly going to South Florida.
With Cooley and Georgetown, the question is how good of a job Georgetown actually is. There’s been a lot of talk about an administration stuck in the past, and the program was very good under John Thompson III, but it wasn’t excellent, and the tide has shifted a lot since then. The ten non-DePaul Big East schools are probably all big enough brands (combined with the Big East brand) to always have a path to national power if the coach is good enough, but how good of a coach is Ed Cooley? He’s a really fun guy, he does a great job, he’s close to iconic, and…
And he’s never had a team finish in the KenPom top 25.
KenPom isn’t everything, but never finishing in its top 25 says a lot, and it says specifically that Ed Cooley’s Providence’s ceiling wasn’t that high. Everyone would take him over Pete Gillen and Keno Davis and Tim Welsh, but Georgetown isn’t getting a coach who’s proven he’s good enough to elevate this program to great status. Ed Cooley didn’t make Providence a great team. He changed their national perception a lot, but he wasn’t transformational. Will he lift Georgetown past where he took Providence? Maybe. Georgetown’s a big name, but it’s getting smaller, and from our limited familiarity with D.C., our impression is that Georgetown students are as uninterested in basketball as they’ve been since before John Thompson Jr. arrived. Those are two bad trends which need reversing, and the program was such a mess this year that the likeliest approach for Cooley is to try to poach a full roster of transfers and get them to play together well. He might be able to do that—my impression is that Cooley’s the kind of guy who has a kind of guy—but it’s the sort of thing where a lot of little pieces have to go right. I’m not criticizing Georgetown with this, and I’m not even really criticizing Cooley, who may have reached the same conclusion we did and decided he couldn’t do better than a bubble average in Rhode Island. I’m just trying to point out that this might not work.
Rick Pitino going to St. John’s has a better trajectory. It’s a lower-prestige program, but it’s operated more successfully in recent years, and Pitino is definitively a better coach than Cooley. I still don’t know how high the ceiling sits, and if I had to guess, St. John’s won’t get better than a 4-seed under the guy. St. John’s being good is a very fun idea, which makes people talk about St. John’s as a better job than it is, just like Ed Cooley being a top coach nationally is a very fun idea, which makes people talk about Ed Cooley as a better coach than he is. Realistically, neither is all that true. They aren’t complete lies, but they’re wrong by a few degrees.
I don’t blame McNeese for hiring Wade. They’re McNeese State. What do they have to lose? Worry about dignity when you’ve earned promotion into the SEC in 2046.
I don’t love Mississippi hiring Beard, but someone was going to do it. Hopefully they have clear terms of conduct, and hopefully Beard and his fiancée or ex-fiancée are in a better place. Again, though, I’m not sure Mississippi is all that good a job. That school’s athletic department seems to be getting better, using football and baseball as our bellwethers, but it’s not at the top of the SEC heap, and the SEC’s getting bigger.
Mike Brey? Again, we shouldn’t expect much. Hopefully we’ll get at least one great run, but there’s a reason he and Notre Dame parted ways, and Notre Dame should be an easier place to succeed than South Florida is.
I know little about Lutz beyond that AMCC’s been good in the Southland these last couple years, and I know little about Stoudamire beyond that Pacific was getting better under him year over year, for the most part, when he left for the Celtics. Each seems like a reasonable hire, and both Georgia Tech and Western Kentucky are fun to have in the mix, so hopefully both work out.
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Plenty more to reflect on tomorrow. We’ll see you there.
