Yetna OUT for year

[StepbackCity]

Feel awful for kid, especially a local. Hope he gets better quick.

But, it does help us move up further in the conference standings. Will get rid of a quality win opportunity unfortunately though.

 

[dannyHAM]

I remember watching him last year and just being in disbelief as to how we let this guy slip from our back yard. Great player, hope he gets well soon.

 

[Phoenixhusky]

Super sad! Great player and I’ll miss watching him play. Hope for a speedy recovery.

 

[bendm]

But, it does help us move up further in the conference standings. Will get rid of a quality win opportunity unfortunately though.

losing to USF is more detrimental than beating USF is beneficial, on selection sunday imo

 

[mauconnfan]

Sucks, hard working kid and he's good for the conference. Hope for a strong recovery for the young man!

 

[McLovin]

But, it does help us move up further in the conference standings. Will get rid of a quality win opportunity unfortunately though.

losing to USF is more detrimental than beating USF is beneficial, on selection sunday imo

If we are jockeying with USF for position in the standings this year, we won't have to worry about Selection Sunday...

 

[HuskyHawk]

If we are jockeying with USF for position in the standings this year, we won't have to worry about Selection Sunday...

They are picked to finish ahead of us. Picked 3rd or 4th by most. I don't think they will, but it isn't accurate to suggest that they won't be pretty good. So, while this is bad news for them and Yetna and I wish him a full recovery, it probably does help UConn.

 

[auror]

If we are jockeying with USF for position in the standings this year, we won't have to worry about Selection Sunday...

They return 76% of their minutes even without Yetna (with him they returned one of the highest numbers in D1), the most in the American, including 3 pre-season all-AAC players (I did quibble with the 3rd, though), from a team that was already top 100 in KenPom last year, with a new coach that had improved them substantially in his 2nd year. The were a pre-season tourney bubble team at least before this injury.

 

[Dream Jobbed 2.0]

Why couldn’t it have been Rideau?

 

[bendm]

If we are jockeying with USF for position in the standings this year, we won't have to worry about Selection Sunday...

this is the aac/usf bias i was referring to

 

[ZachCT12]

Why couldn’t it have been Rideau?

This guy gives us fits too.

 

[McLovin]

They are picked to finish ahead of us. Picked 3rd or 4th by most. I don't think they will, but it isn't accurate to suggest that they won't be pretty good. So, while this is bad news for them and Yetna and I wish him a full recovery, it probably does help UConn.

They returned 76% of their minutes, the most in the American, including 3 pre-season all-AAC players (I did quibble with the 3rd, though), from a team that was already top 100 in KenPom last year, with a new coach that had improved them substantially in his 2nd year. The were a pre-season tourney bubble team at least before this injury.

Unless the AAC is going to be a 4 or 5 bid league (I don't think the league has ever had more than 4 in one year) a 4th or 5th place finish won't give us much reason to hope for an at large bid.

My point wasn't that USF isn't good / wasn't projected to be good prior to this injury news, but that rather we need to do better than battle for 4th or 5th place in the conference to have a shot on selection Sunday. In the first run of "bracketology", Lunardi is only projecting 3 teams from the AAC to get in: Memphis, Houston and Cincy.

Also hoping for the players sake he is able to make a full recovery.

 

[Dream Jobbed 2.0]

This guy gives us fits too.

Yeah but Rideau is a

 

[gtcam]

Yeah but Rideau is a Paesano

Rideau is the punk everyone hates but would love to have play for their team
Kid should be playing fullback on USF football team

 

[McLovin]

so your point is that if we finish in 4th place (which is more realistic now given yetna's injury), we still wouldn't have any hope of being a bubble team because the aac has never had 5 bids and joe lunardi projected 3 bids before the season started???

i'd argue the opposite. finishing in 4th would squarely place us on the bubble as long as we dont get upset in the conference tourney.

Last year Temple finished 3rd in AAC with a 23-10 overall record and was selected one of the "last 4 in"...

I think to have a legit shot, I would think we need to be top 3 in a conference that is weaker in the middle than it was last year.

With a 4th place finish we could be a bubble team depending on how we handle the OOC schedule and how deep we go in the conference tournament.

USF was picked to finish 5 in the AAC this year in the preseason coaches poll, UConn was picked 6. Seeing how little respect the AAC has been given by the selection committee over the years (a top 25 SMU team was LEFT OUT of the tournament one year), we going to have to do better than just finish ahead of USF to have a realistic chance of getting an at large bid assuming the selection committee hasn't had a massive overhaul of their selection criteria.

 

[bendm]

If we are jockeying with USF for position in the standings this year, we won't have to worry about Selection Sunday...

With a 4th place finish we could be a bubble team depending on how we handle the OOC schedule and how deep we go in the conference tournament.

180 degree spin. if we finish 4th then by definition we would have been jockeying for position with USF since theyre projected to finish 5th...not that i put any stock in espns projections to begin with

 

[auror]

Last year Temple finished 3rd in AAC with a 23-10 overall record and was selected one of the "last 4 in"...

I think to have a legit shot, I would think we need to be top 3 in a conference that is weaker in the middle than it was last year.

With a 4th place finish we could be a bubble team depending on how we handle the OOC schedule and how deep we go in the conference tournament.

I get your point about the less than enthusiastic respect from the committee towards the AAC, but consider that Temple was actually tied for 3rd and had a worse overall record and computer metrics (so you could consider them 4th, but they won a random tiebreaker with UCF to get the 3rd seed), and did not beat a single at large team in the non-conference last year. They beat one team that went to the NIT in OT. And they only won 2 games against tournament teams in conference play.

There's no respect, and there's not really winning a lot of big games.

KenPom is currently projecting the league to be about as strong as it was last year. We'll see if that's true. But Memphis, UConn, Wichita, and USF were going to jump up within their tier (if not jump up to a higher one), with Houston, Temple and UCF (dropping two tiers) worse.

Tiers	2019	2020
Tier A (0-50)	Houston, Cincy, UCF	Cincy, Houston, Memphis
Tier B (50-100)	Temple, Memphis, Wichita St, USF,	Wichita St, UConn, Temple. USF, SMU
Tier C (100-200)	UConn (tier B when healthy), Tulsa, SMU	Tulsa, UCF
Tier D (200-350)	East Carolina, Tulane	East Carolina, Tulane

For conference strength, a lot riding on whether SMU and Temple are respectable and how good Memphis is. SMU has a chance to quit on Jankovich, and Temple has a new coach with minimal experience. If UCF can somehow salvage Tier B status thanks to defensive system and the rest of the things don't go worse case scenario, the league should be better.

Edit - USF dropped 16 spots in KenPom because of this injury.

 

[BFieldHusky]

Mayan Kiir (junior 6"9) is out for the beginning of the year for personal reasons for USF and there is talk he may miss the whole year. Didn't play a ton last year but with Yetna already out would have played more.

 

[McLovin]

I get your point about the less than enthusiastic respect from the committee towards the AAC, but consider that Temple was actually tied for 3rd and had a worse overall record and computer metrics (so you could consider them 4th, but they won a random tiebreaker with UCF to get the 3rd seed), and did not beat a single at large team in the non-conference last year. They beat one team that went to the NIT in OT. And they only won 2 games against tournament teams in conference play.

There's no respect, and there's not really winning a lot of big games.

KenPom is currently projecting the league to be about as strong as it was last year. We'll see if that's true. But Memphis, UConn, Wichita, and USF were going to jump up within their tier (if not jump up to a higher one), with Houston, Temple and UCF (dropping two tiers) worse.

Tiers	2019	2020
Tier A (0-50)	Houston, Cincy, UCF	Cincy, Houston, Memphis
Tier B (50-100)	Temple, Memphis, Wichita St, USF,	Wichita St, UConn, Temple. USF, SMU
Tier C (100-200)	UConn (tier B when healthy), Tulsa, SMU	Tulsa, UCF
Tier D (200-350)	East Carolina, Tulane	East Carolina, Tulane

For conference strength, a lot riding on whether SMU and Temple are respectable and how good Memphis is. SMU has a chance to quit on Jankovich, and Temple has a new coach with minimal experience. If UCF can somehow salvage Tier B status thanks to defensive system and the rest of the things don't go worse case scenario, the league should be better.

Edit - USF dropped 16 spots in KenPom because of this injury.

Good points and as you said a lot riding on the performance of those middle of the pack teams and the conference winning big OOC games. Hopefully the AAC surprises and can move a few more teams up into that top tier (including UConn).

The thing to remember about any rankings like Ken Pom when talking placements in the Big Dance is that 36 teams get auto bids. Of those, 28 are most likely to teams outside of the top 50, meaning only 40 spots are left for major conference winners and at large bids.

Assuming every major conference champ is in the top 50 (another 8 bids), then you need to be one of the top 32 teams at large teams remaining. If a major conference champ falls outside the top 50, then that 32 number is reduced.

This means you really need to be top 40 at the end of the season to feel safe.

Somehow Temple made it last year as an at large with a Ken Pom of 69, which is surprising especially for the AAC.