Pac-12 Tournament First Round CU vs ASU

[PlainsUte]

Colorado defeats Ariz State 97-85

[PlainsUte]

Halftime: Stanford leads Cal 39-28

[Rick]

Does this help our chances of being one of the 4 PAC 12 picks?  The conference season should count way more than non-conference.  If ASU was such a juggernaut in November and December but has a losing record in our conference and gets dropped in the first round by a team they were favored to beat, then how can their pristine record against “quality” teams from other conferences mean anything?  Also two of Kansas’s 7 total losses came from two PAC 12 teams that are playing in the first round of their conference tournament.  So how good is  Kansas anyway?

[Utah]

I get that ASU had some impressive nonconference wins. BUT, those shouldn’t count for anything if you have a losing conference record, because that means you are losing home games. It’s ridiculous. 

[Stone]

Good point. When a team does well in non-conference, but not in conference, there are two ways this is spun, depending on the viewpoint: (1) the team collapsed after non-conference; (2) the conference is really, really difficult.

If it is football season and the team at issue is the SEC, then the answer is always number 2. If it is basketball season and the team at issue is in the ACC, then the answer is also always number 2. If the team at issue is in the Pac 12, well… the notorious east-coast bias and lack of a major partnership with ESPN would suggest that the tendency would be go to with answer number 1.

[Tony (admin)]

What was ASU ranked at one point? #3 or something? Now they may miss the tournament.  Crazy.

[PlainsUte]

ASU and Oklahoma are both in about the same situation – really looked strong in December, and in the case of Oklahoma, a good chunk of January.  Oklahoma has star power with Trae Young, but they finished 9th in a 10-team league and both ASU and OU got knocked out in the first round of their respective conference tournaments.   On paper, according to RPI, BPI and all that neither of those teams should have lost, but the predictive ability of RPI is clearly lacking.