Thursday, July 24, 2008

ESPN Proves X better than UC

At least since the NCAA expanded the tournament in 1984-1985. I actually/truly thought X would be behind the 'Cats but (hehe) that didn't happen. X #17, UC #19. Where has the illustrious bearcat poster Dave been anyway? Fair weather you may say? Hey listen you can argue about the formula they are using but it is fairly subjective. If I had to guess I would say Duke is #1 overall. UNLV has yet to be listed and they don't seem all that prestigous anymore. But anyhow back to the grandstanding I am for any poll that puts Lossalle ahead of the cryers. On top of more good news X has reached an agreement to broadcast at least 15 games with FSN Ohio for the next three seasons. They will also televise some A10 tournament action as well. I sure hope Ari Stewart is paying attention (Wake Forest #38 overall Ari in the Prestige Poll BTW). It is great to be a X fan in the city of Cincinnati right now. To be clear we are the highest ranked team in this poll not to reach a final four but obviously that is the next mountain the team needs to climb.

Overall I truly believe what this says is once again we have tremendous college basketball to be proud of in this region. UK obviously will be top 10, U of L scoring high too. IU will not be great this year but historically a top 5 program. I would like to think this shows X is a model of consistency and has alot to be proud of, starting with the coaches who built this program. It seems each guy starting with Bob Staak in the early '80's has set the bar that much higher for the next coach. A legacy of great players who have played in the league and many having success; Hill, Strong, Posey, Chalmers, Sato, Kimbrough (Detroit Pistons look it up you UC haters), Williams, Braggs, Grant and David West. Name me another school classified as non BCS who has produced so many productive front court players in the NBA as the Musketeers over the last 25 seasons.

I am sure this is annoying as hell to any UC fan reading this and it should be. But please 'Cats being in the top 20 in the words of Jim Rome is 'strong'. ESPN has redeemed themselves a bit in my eye for now. At least they gave us something to talk about in late July.

1 comment:

Dave said...

All this silly list proves is that when using this Criteria(flawed as it is)X gets more points than UC.It has no real meaning at all. If I had the time I'm sure I could come up with a metric that would put ALL the teams in a different order. Thanks again ESPN for trying to manufacture watercooler talk about your networks programing. I like the Actual games you broadcast. You can keep the rest.