Beat Oregon State by 8. While that in and of itself may be true, the committee will definitely care about statistical rankigs such as Kenpom and Sagarin. These rankings are both going to be our strongest argument for inclusion, so the higher we can finish in them the better. We dropped from 31 to 43 in Kenpom after the OSU game.
Style points matter in these statistical rankings, and we are going to rely on them heavily for inclusion in the tournament. Larry HAS to see this.
I’m not going to spend my time worrying about whether we beat an opponent by 27 rather than 10. If that’s going to be the difference between us making the tourney or not, I’d just as soon accept a bid to the NIT. RUTS is bulls**t.
Look, everyone sends in the end of the bench in a blowout, so over the season it works itself out. Not many of your big wins will accurately reflect the difference in the two teams. But putting in a full bench/walk on unit with 12 minutes left is something WE cant afford, and it hurt us. The standard anti RUTS stuff is fine. This was over the line and had tangible consequence, imo.
Cal is at least a must split, we’ve already beaten USC. We take care of all the games we should win, and at least split with Cal, which means just two more losses, Oregon & Cal, then I think we finish 4th and get in. However if we get 2 of those 3 (Cal home/away, and Oregon away) AND take care of the bottom of the PAC, we will definitely be in. The path forward is clear, no bad losses, and just one more decent win, then we are home free.