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Post by Thrill of the 'ville on Aug 10, 2014 16:40:03 GMT -5
Should I do my West Coast griping here or wait for Thrills annual excellent thread? I will here so as to not contaminate Thrills always excellent effort. The SEC having only 18 conference matches, with 13(?) teams, leaves concerns about SEC teams getting bubble spots and seedings. Lots of us weren't wild about the 4-5 seeds going to Missouri and Florida, and results seemed to match the concerns. With the diluted conference schedules, are the SEC teams playing representative OOC schedules so the Committee has something to compare them to? The Big 10 has the same concern, but a much stronger track record for comparison. Of the usual contenders, Florida certainly has one of the most difficult OOC schedules in the country, with Southern Cal, FSU, Oklahoma, Texas twice, San iego and Marquette. The Gators will earn whatever seed they get, even with playing LSU, Kentucky Missouri and Alabama only once. Kentucky is also representative, with USC, N. Iowa, N. Carolina, Louisville, Wichita St, et al. And LSU plays San Diego, Purdue, FSU, Baylor, but again, Florida, Kentucky, Alabama, Texas A & M only once. The two teams that did not schedule hard are Missouri (Xavier and Miami, Fl the big tests) and Alabama (N. Iowa, Clemson, and San Diego State and Virginia the big tests) Alabama plays Florida, Kentucky, LSU and Missouri, arguably the top 4 in the conference, only once. Win a couple of those and then get a top ten seed? I hope not; sort of the same for Missouri. (Somebody was pushing Alabama as a third place candidate). So Florida should be strong; as stated elsewhere, LSU was very impressive v. Washington last year and Mimi Eugene should give them the offense to transition some of those digs into points. Just hope we don't have Alabama/Missouri shoved in front of good Pac 12 teams again with one or two fewer losses on the SEC side. First, thanks for the compliments. Secondly, I agree with your scheduling concerns. I could add a little to what you said, but its unnecessary as you've already covered some important points as to how the system is broken. Unfortunately, I can't figure out a system of how to fix it and, even if we could, we don't have the power to do so. While I want this conference to rise in the ranks and make a name for itself, I don't want teams sneaking in the tournament by way of luck and then quickly dropping out. That doesn't do much for the growth of the conference and is very unfair to other deserving teams.
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Post by Thrill of the 'ville on Aug 10, 2014 16:41:48 GMT -5
My annual SEC thread should be up later today...It's been a busy summer. Glad to see the conference is already being discussed evn though I've been slacking. Best part about the SEC this year is the TV and online streaming coverage. SEC TV coverage will be 4x as much this year with ESPNU and SEC Network. The online streaming SEC Network+ will also have a plethora of matches. I was wondering where you are, your one of the non condescending, nice posters, i've missed you. I made my annual month-long pilgrimage to enemy territory and when I returned my young niece and nephew came to stay with me so I've had my hands full.
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bluepenquin
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Post by bluepenquin on Aug 10, 2014 18:16:30 GMT -5
Should I do my West Coast griping here or wait for Thrills annual excellent thread? I will here so as to not contaminate Thrills always excellent effort. The SEC having only 18 conference matches, with 13(?) teams, leaves concerns about SEC teams getting bubble spots and seedings. Lots of us weren't wild about the 4-5 seeds going to Missouri and Florida, and results seemed to match the concerns. With the diluted conference schedules, are the SEC teams playing representative OOC schedules so the Committee has something to compare them to? The Big 10 has the same concern, but a much stronger track record for comparison. Of the usual contenders, Florida certainly has one of the most difficult OOC schedules in the country, with Southern Cal, FSU, Oklahoma, Texas twice, San iego and Marquette. The Gators will earn whatever seed they get, even with playing LSU, Kentucky Missouri and Alabama only once. Kentucky is also representative, with USC, N. Iowa, N. Carolina, Louisville, Wichita St, et al. And LSU plays San Diego, Purdue, FSU, Baylor, but again, Florida, Kentucky, Alabama, Texas A & M only once. The two teams that did not schedule hard are Missouri (Xavier and Miami, Fl the big tests) and Alabama (N. Iowa, Clemson, and San Diego State and Virginia the big tests) Alabama plays Florida, Kentucky, LSU and Missouri, arguably the top 4 in the conference, only once. Win a couple of those and then get a top ten seed? I hope not; sort of the same for Missouri. (Somebody was pushing Alabama as a third place candidate). So Florida should be strong; as stated elsewhere, LSU was very impressive v. Washington last year and Mimi Eugene should give them the offense to transition some of those digs into points. Just hope we don't have Alabama/Missouri shoved in front of good Pac 12 teams again with one or two fewer losses on the SEC side. I agree with this to a point. Missouri and Florida deserved high seeds last year no matter what they did in the tournament - however I didn't like them in the same quad (4-5 seeds). Missouri had a very easy non conference schedule last year, but they also didn't lose a regular season match - they didn't even get pushed to 5 sets. I know of no metric that didn't have Missouri and Florida among the top 8 teams after the regular season.
I was very much opposed to the number of SEC teams that made the tournament - and certainly the WCC was the likely victim.
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Post by goldpants on Aug 10, 2014 19:47:19 GMT -5
I agree with bluepenguin's thoughts 100%. I understand the criticism of the SEC to an extent, but going back I still firmly believe that Florida and Mizzou were seeded properly. Mizzou was 34-0 and had not been taken to a fifth set all year.
Looking forward to the 2014 season. I am actually excited as a Mizzou fan that even though we will certainly take a step back without Henning and Kreklow, that we won't have to deal with Penn State fans going out of their way to visit our message board and tell us how overrated we are. Good stuff.
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bluepenquin
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Post by bluepenquin on Aug 11, 2014 8:51:04 GMT -5
LSU was impressive last year in beating Michigan and giving Washington a real run, in the tourney. And don't they get a flashy frosh OH, to give them some offense to go with great D? I don't know how many contributors LSU graduated, but i can see them doing well. I don't think anyone has responded to this. LSU graduated just one player from last year's team (Desiree Elliott). Elliott was one of the MB. She played in 85 of the 115 sets hitting .211 with 2.21 kills per set. She only had 65 blocks for the season. She was probably their 3rd or 4th best hitting option. I think they are a team that could do very well this year. Holman is a star.
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Post by mclvbdad on Aug 11, 2014 9:06:21 GMT -5
LSU was impressive last year in beating Michigan and giving Washington a real run, in the tourney. And don't they get a flashy frosh OH, to give them some offense to go with great D? I don't know how many contributors LSU graduated, but i can see them doing well. I don't think anyone has responded to this. LSU graduated just one player from last year's team (Desiree Elliott). Elliott was one of the MB. She played in 85 of the 115 sets hitting .211 with 2.21 kills per set. She only had 65 blocks for the season. She was probably their 3rd or 4th best hitting option. I think they are a team that could do very well this year. Holman is a star. Agree that LSU has the potential to be very good. They should have been better last year. Their issue seemed to be the inability to play at a high level consistently. There seemed to be a lot of emotion on the court and it wasn't always good emotion.
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Post by baywatcher on Aug 11, 2014 11:15:19 GMT -5
As Thrill says, the conference scheduling is an issue without a ready resolution. With 13 teams the SEC can't realistically schedule each team twice, and holding down to 18 matches gives teams ten dates to fill in OOC. With 12 and 14 teams the Pac 12 and Big 10 face similar issues. I don't know how many teams the ACC has now, but I know the count is similar. And I get the impression that teams do not find out their IN CONFERENCE schedule until well into spring or early summer. Thus Missouri, or Ohio State, or North Carolina may not know who they play in conference until much of their OOC schedule is set. Or, maybe they do. Pac 12 rotates, and has done so for 3 or 4 years now, so all the teams should have a good idea of who they play once in the schedule.An end of year tournament sounds good, but my impression from other sports is that a tournament can boost one team, but doesn't particularly punish a good team that loses early.
Concerning Missouri, Colorado State was very close to going 30-0, and would they have gotten a four seed if undefeated? Hawaii usually flirts with perfection, annually plays some very good teams in their tournament, yet rarely gets mentioned for a top five seed. And along the same lines, Wisconsin plays Penn State and Nebraska once, at home, I believe, this year. Their OOC schedule is tough (Washington, USC, Louisville, Colorado State) so there will be other results for the Committee to look at. I think SEC teams need to think similarly when scheduling, as the LSU win over Michigan was the only big one I thought the SEC had in the tourney last year. From your perspective, that gave the SEC as many wins over the Big 10 as the Pac 12 got in last years tourney.
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Post by LovePennState on Aug 11, 2014 11:41:15 GMT -5
LSU is the only team in the SEC who can challenge Florida from going undefeated.
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