The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly Troy Game

Didn’t see the game but heard it on the radio.

The Good: Another complete game by our young men. 12 players played and 11 scored. Good for Macon and Beard showing out in their home town.

The Bad: Turnovers. It just seemed from what I heard was we were sloppy with the ball. Can’t afford that against better teams.

The Ugly: The officiating. This seems to be a recurring theme, but when you hardly make a call the first half, but call just about everything the second, the refs control the game and the players can’t adjust properly.

I’m curious to see how the rankings will shake out this next week.

Arkansas’ RPI is 9th and SOS is 4th.

Some top 25 teams lost to some inferior teams this weekend. Biggest for us is Oklahoma beat #3 Wichita State. Oklahoma has only 1 loss and it’s to the Razorbacks, so our RPI will get a nice bump because of this game. Florida lost to Clemson. Seton Hall lost to Rutgers. Florida State lost to Oklahoma State(which will help us in a few weeks). Indiana beat Notre Dame. All those teams that lost are ranked.

It’s possible we might actually get into the top 25, but I doubt it.

We’ve got 3 non-cons left with Ok St. a few weeks away. So it’s completely reasonable for us to finish 11-2 or 10-3 in our non-con, which would be really good.

The next BIGGEST game will be against Tennessee to start conference. Tennessee is in the top 25 and it’s a home game for us. So fans need to show up and show out. We win that game and we will be in the top 25.

Added bonus: our bench outscored Troy’s bench 33 to 12. WOW!

That is one of the problems listening to the radio only. You hear something and draw a conclusion. I was at the game. We had just 6 turnovers. That is abnormally low for the Hogs, given the pace at which we play. When Chuck it got a bit sloppy in the second half, that is relative no almost no turnovers in the first half.

Adrio Bailey is coming on fast. I had predicted this type of play from him next year. He is literally playing above the rim.

Also every time I see Gabe O play whatever few minutes he plays, I get the impression he is one of our better athletes. He will contribute significantally next year.

Holmes hitting a three no longer surprises me. You should watch him warm up. Too bad God didn’t bless him with length.

Fair enough on the turnovers.

Yeah, Bailey is coming along nicely.

The Paperclip win at Wichita really didn’t affect our RPI; in a season where we play 31 games against teams that also play 28+ games, one result in December just ain’t that meaningful to those numbers. Our win last night affected our RPI and not in a good way. RPI went from 9 to 10 in spite of both those results, because Troy is not good. Strength of schedule is now in the 30s instead of top 5. It will drop again Tuesday; ORU is headed toward the 300+ RPI range.

Partially true, our RPI did go down, but the Oklahoma win will mean a lot come decision time for the tourney. When you beat a team with arguably the best player in college basketball, then that will mean something down the line.

I didn’t say it wouldn’t be important when the committee sits down in March. I just said it didn’t help our RPI. And it didn’t. That’s exactly the kind of game the committee looks at and says, “Arkansas beat a really good team in Portland.”