Archie Miller has exactly one top 25 offense or defense in his entire coaching career. Hes been gifted some talented players at Indiana: Juwan Morgan, Romeo Langford, two years of TJD. He basically just sucks as a coach. He is Shaka Smart on drugs - one great run in the tournament has carried so much weight for him when he's been terrible most of the time.

Drake made top 25 (just barely, but in) today. It's been a long time. Probably won't be there long, look quick.

Big news

Props to Gonzaga for stepping up and continuing to play all comers while wrecking all of them as well

+1.

Yes and not only once, but twice

That's insane if it happens. Same day back-to-back, wow.

Edit: How is it possible that both teams have enough non-conference games available to play twice? Didn't the NCAA sharply limit the number that could be played this year, or did that go away?

lol the 5th best 3 point offense in the country (40.1%) is Cal's opponents

UK, Duke, and Michigan State are going to start a new NCAA tournament! With blackjack and hookers!

In lieu of the NIT likely being cancelled this year they should just double down and make next year's Champions Classic also the NIT

There's basically zero doubt left that Garza > Kaminsky at this point, right?

Drake won again last night. My friend who still follows things closely tells me he thinks Loyola-Chicago is actually the better Valley team.

With Zimmer's post above and the Valley being a one-bid league, Drake will probably lose to Loyola in a couple weeks and not make the big dance despite having a historically great (for them) season.

Sigh.

Drake may be so-so on Kenpom (51st) vs Loyola Chicago's impressive 13th, they're still in a better position in the lolNET ranking - Drake 12, Loyola 14. Neither team has a Quad 1 win, but Drake has an edge in Q2s - 4-0 vs 3-2.

If they can at least split the back-to-back against Loyola and take care of business otherwise - no bad losses - I think they get in regardless and so does Loyola. If they go 0-3 against Loyola maybe not.

Thanks for the info, Booker. My friend didn't go into details why he was favoring Loyola. Maybe it's just our natures, having seen so many truly terrible teams over the years.

Kenpom is always pretty dicey for top notch teams in bad conferences. Usually underrates them because their scrubs are so bad, the bulk of their games are against garbage teams where their scrubs play a lot, so they end up beating garbage teams by 15 where somebody like UNC beats them by 25 since their bench is still so good, but if they played their starters they also would have won by 25. I remember this vividly with Steph Davidson.

Loyola was ~50th through the first 12 games of the season, and then leapt to 13th by dropping atom bombs on sub-100 teams (15 and 42 over UNI, 36 over Valpo, 13 and 7 at Bradley, 26 and 20 over Missouri State)... which, like, is what good teams are supposed to do, but they lost to the only 2 decent teams they played.

Drake has lots of closer calls and hasn't played a single top-100 team, so idk

Kenpom says 7, will be interesting to see what the actual line is

Has anybody written anything yet about what they are doing for the tourney other than just putting it in Indy and hoping for the best?

I am gonna be crushed if they cancel again this year. I can't see how 64 teams in a non-bubble with close to zero flexibility to reschedule games is gonna go well.

Are teams just gonna have to forfeit if they get exposed to COVID? What if you win your first game, then your opponent has a positive test afterwards and you've done nothing wrong?

Doubt they would ever do it, but building in some dead time to allow teams to fall behind and then catch up seems not crazy

nice poast GB

FWIW torvik has Drake #42

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Good info, GB, thank you. Hope the Pups can manage not to collapse.

In terms of the tournament, it's not just Indianapolis. Using Mackey and Assembly Hall in the early going too. Bubble-like, in that teams will be in a hotel, have "secure" practice facilities and transportation. NCAA link.

No mention of your point about later COVID exposure. I can't see any other solution than forfeit. As ligastar points out, TV is going to drive it.

Eamonn Brennan said this today in the Athletic:

Drake (15-0, 8-0; NET: 13, SOS: 226): All hail the masters of the NET … your 2020-21 Drake Bulldogs! The last time we thought this much about Drake was probably high school, when our team qualified for the mock trial state finals hosted at Drake’s law school. This is a refreshing change of pace.

No, the Bulldogs are not the 13th-best team in the country, as the NET somewhat mysteriously seems to think, but Drake is a high-quality team in the Missouri Valley, one that not only hasn’t lost but also one capable of beating Illinois State, 95-60, as it did Monday night. (On Sunday, Drake beat Illinois State in overtime, 78-76. Still a win!) Drake’s nonconference schedule was bad. It still hasn’t beaten anyone we’d call “good.” But it is unbeaten, and playing good basketball, and one of two potential at-large teams in the Valley. That’s enough for us.

Kinda crazy to think Drake lost Liam Robbins to Minnesota and are still undefeated. Imagine how good they'd be with him?

It's Tuesday, as good a day as any to Boiler Up and see if Zach Edey is playable against Maryland's mob of midsized mediocrities in the middle.

Incredible fight by Butler getting back into this game against Marquette. Marquette was up 18 about halfway through the second half, made something like 14/15 shots at one stretch. 2 point game with 18 seconds left.

lmao illinois running a football play from out of bounds

all 5 players OOB and qb says hike and 4 dudes run patterns

Drake's most famous contribution to March Madness was from the one year in middle school where Pepsi would print team names on the inside of their soda tops and if that team made the F4 you would win a bunch of money, and they printed tons of DRAKE caps so people would open them and be like "ZOMG DUKE! wait, what's a drake?"

Great troll. Samford was on a lot of them too if I recall