Curtis Aiken
- Thread starter JRPITT
- Start date
He didn't nail anything. A novice can see we are not elite. That is no kind of insight at all, and even the lowest layman on here knows we are not tough. He offered nothing new and nothing deep. Nothing a casual fan couldn't figure out.
Which makes him a typical paid commentator. Of course, the talking heads just need to fill time. I listened to the Fan a good bit yesterday, as I was in my car several times.....seems like very few listeners call in. As a sponsor, I'd try TV ads with pretty girls, their dogs and fluttering eyelids. Ohhh, never mind.....already in place.
They are an average team. A team above average against the lower level mid teams.
There are 347 D1 basketball teams. Let's say that Pitt is ranked 60. That puts this team in the top 20% of all teams. I would call that "good" and it is certainly much higher than "average," which would be about 170.
The ball is round, when we score more than the opponent we win, our defense is subpar. There, maybe I can get his job now.
Seriously, not an elite team? When was it even suggested we might be? We're not even ranked. Just came off as being lazy analysis, for someone who does this for a living.
Whoa. Let's not categorize all 347 D1 teams as equals. MD Eastern Shore? Delaware State? Coppin State? Robert Morris? Fairlegh Dickinson? Youngstown State? Lamar? Lipscomb? Just some examples.
Take the P5 Conference teams, AAC, Big East, West Coast, A10, and other handful mid majors. You have about 120 "real" teams. So yeah, pretty much average to above average.
Right in the meaty part of the curve, not falling behind, not showing off....
Of course they are not equals, but they make up D1 basketball, follow the same rules, and are eligible to play in the NCAA tournament. And all of the "real" teams play quite a few games each year against these other teams, and those games all count the same in each team's record.
What does that even mean? So Creighton was not a "real team" until it moved up to the Big East. And Gonzaga was not a real team until it got good? So a team is only a "real" team, once it gets good, and if it gets bad, then it's no longer a "real team" and thus doesn't count when doing the averages. San Francisco is no longer a "real team" even though it use to be a power?
So in your world, once teams are bad, then we no longer consider them when figuring out an average team? What wacky math that is.
In the real world, Pitt is a very good team and a very good program. Easily top 20% this year, and as a program top 15%. If you care to measure using Lake Wobegon math, go for it, but you are simply wrong.
Sorry Fredact, but I would have to agree with the general thought that started this back n forth, i.e., we're an average to above average team. I'd lean more to 'above average'. I guess you or the original poster that first mentioned it can use the fact that there are 347 D1 teams to characterize us as better than above average or easily top 20% as you claim. That's your choice. However, I would prefer to measure ourselves against what I would characterize as our 'peers' and I don't consider all 347 Div 1 team to be that. One first natural set of peers is the ACC conference and I'd definitely characterize us as average to above average in the ACC. That's unfortunate currently when you consider that, back when I considered the BE conference our peers, we were definitely in the top level. Those days appear to be long gone though.
Or if you go to all P5 schools, which I don't think is out of line to consider as being our peers, we'd probably still fit into the 'above average' description. About the same if you threw in the handful of top non P5 mid-major conference, or the top 120 or so programs. I think 'above average' still ends up being an appropriate description.
