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Message: [QUOTE="champs99and04, post: 2017497, member: 488"] "Caliber of ball player" is a slightly different discussion, no? I don't doubt that ECU, South Florida, and Tulane recruit at a higher level than the teams in America East, but teams at the bottom of their leagues are ripe with roster and coaching turnover to the point that you'd almost rather have lesser players. I currently attend UNH, so I've also seen a bit of America East ball. It's a sizable step down in talent, for sure, but I've been watching the same core of four players at UNH - all of whom start and are upperclassmen - for three years now, and they've tracked to 20 wins in each of those seasons. Save for a 60 point loss to West Virginia, they represented themselves better OOC than either South Florida or Tulane did. They beat Temple, played Providence tough, and split with another couple potential tournament teams in Winthrop and BU. It's not really a money ball type thing because the rankings are virtually just an aggregate of the results, and those results - with point differential being an important factor - are what the spreads derive from (and I trust those more than anything else). So I do agree with you to an extent - a Tulane or ECU probably has a higher ceiling than a Stony Brook or an Albany. But even by the eye test, I'm hardly convinced that there is much difference at all between the teams. Vermont lost to Houston by one point. Albany won @ Penn State. Stony Brook beat the Northeastern team we lost to and UMass Lowell beat the Wagner team we lost to. Go through all of the games and tell me where you think Tulane or South Florida is doing better. Even the losses (Albany lost to Cincinnati by 23 and SMU by 18) are better than what the three aforementioned AAC schools mustered against the Mustangs, and two of those were home games. You can't make a total apples-to-apples comparison because SMU is probably more locked in for a conference game than they are a December tune-up, but all things being equal, I think the best three teams in the America East play us better than the bottom three in the American. It's a fair debate, though. [/QUOTE]

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