Joe Lunardi's never too early bracketology.
http://espn.go.com/mens-college-basketball/bracketology
Kentucky, Duke, Arizona, and Michigan St at the 1 line
Michigan and Ohio St - 2 seed
Indiana - 4 seed
Wisconsin - 5 seed
Iowa - 7 seed
Illinois - 11 seed
Okay, so I know we are still 11 months away from Selection Sunday, but I still find them interesting to look at.
WTF.. Holy smokes a little early. Hell, we dont even have a clue whose gonna stay.. But, Ill take a 2 seed anyday.
In Milwaukee?? LOVE IT. Sweet 16 at least!!!
Just kidding folks.
A number 2 seed might be a stretch with THJ and Burke both gone.
The freshmen could come in and be really good, like they were this season. Add the fact that Spike revealed himself to be a pretty good player, and Michigan might not suffer from the losses of Burke and Hardaway as much as many of us think.
I hope fans truly appreciate what happened this year, though, and don't see next year's team as a disappointment if they don't get to the title game.
National Championship or fire Beilein
Just fire him now and start rebuilding sooner.
I don't think you can expect Irvin and Walton to give you more than Burke and Hardaway gave you last year.
That said, the rest of the team will be better. However, we didn't even get a 2 seed THIS year. Do we really expect the team to be BETTER next year?
We were a 4-seed 2 years ago and a 4-seed this year. I think next year's team will be somewhere between the two. I'll say a 4-seed would be an appropriate predicition.
I guess Lunardi is assuming McGary, Robinson (maybe Hardaway) are coming back? No was we are a 2 seed if all 4 of them leave.
This bracketology is the equivalent of posting a comment that just says "first."
How can anyone possibly make any reasonable guess at future success when you don't have any idea what half the starting lineup for some teams will be? When Lunardi made this, he didn't know whether our starting lineup would be Walton/Hardaway/Stauskas/Robinson/McGary, or Walton/Irvin/Stauskas/Morgan/Horford.
Lunardi has the best job in the world. You only work a few months out of the year, nobody pays any attention to what you do until the last month, and you don't even have to be right. Sign me up.
Here's my Final Four: Northwestern, Nebraska, Penn State, Iowa. As good a guess as anybody's at this point.
lol MSU is always at the 1 or 2 line to start the season and then they lose a few games. Then on Selection Sunday, the analysts predict them to go to the final four and they lose to the first real team they play. 2 years ago it was UCLA, last year it was Louisville, this year it was Duke.
you're only going to make yourself look bad. Tom Izzo's six Final Fours, national championship, national championship runner-up, seven B1G championships, and sixteen straight NCAA tourney appearances will clown on you if you keep talking. MSU is a basketball powerhouse. Hate them, as you should, but respect them.
Since '99, MSU has been to 6 Final Fours. Duke, KU, UCONN, and UNC have been to 4 each. Programs like UCLA, Louisville, Kentucky, Florida, etc. have been less often.
If Izzo is a perpetual disappointment in the tournament, what does that make every other program in the country?
have nowhere to go but down.
A few years ago, a reporter for one of the major sportsites--my GoogleFu fails me--put out his list of most overrated and underrated teams by summing the raw number of positions teams moved up or down in the final poll versus the preseason poll.
The overrated teams consisted of the "Who's Who of College Football" and the underrated teams consisted of a bunch of nobodies. Hmmmmnnn.
...revel in what will be an unbelievable year of Michigan Athletics. There's a good chance of a B1G title in every major sport for the first time since...maybe ever. (Well, especially hockey since there's never been a B1G, but you know what I mean.)
Football: B1G and national champs
Basketball: B1G champs
Hockey: no conference yet but NCAA champs
Baseball: B1G champs
'88 - '89 was pretty sweet: Football Big Ten and Rose Bowl champs, Basketball National champs.
'92 - '93 was pretty sweet too: Football undefeated Big Ten and Rose Bowl champs, Basketball National champ runner up.
And '97 - 98: Football undefeated Big Ten, Rose Bowl, and National champs, Hockey National champs.
Yeah, consider me surprised that Lunardi has us so high, seeing as there is a very good chance we lose all four starters.
Or maybe he is just very bullish on Walton and Irvin.
All 4 won't leave. A team of McGary, Irvin, Walton, GR3, Donnal, and Stauskas is easily a 2 seed.
Weakness doesn't correlate to wins if you don't show up, look at the Penn State game. Anyone can lose to anyone in the Big Ten.
Also, what is with spelling "be"... "b" half of the time? If you're going to spit on the American language, at least do it with some consistency.
~Herm
McGary already said that he was coming back for sure and I would guess that Glenn is coming back because he went to the Spring game. Usually guys who are leaving don't participate in university events like that and I also believe that McGary is roomates with GR3.
He initially said he was coming back but he back peddaled a couple days later saying that he hasn't made a decision yet. I think he stays but it isn't out of the realm of possibility he leaves.
If GR3 and McGary come back, I would be disappointed with anything worse than a 2-seed caliber team next year. Key words being "2-seed caliber", as we looked more like the former #1 overall team than the 4-seed designation we received in the tournament this year.
Just imagine (minutes in parens):
PG: Walton (25), Spike (15)
SG: Stauskas (30), Caris (10)
SF: Irvin (35), Caris (5)
PF: GR3 (35), Morgan (5)
C: McGary (30), Morgan (5), Horford (5)
Spikes minutes double. GR3 / Stauskas stay the same. McGary sees a bump from 20 to more like his tournament average. Caris gets about 5 more per game.
Stauskas will play S
((ducks for cover))Strong or weak safety?
Illinois is not making the tournament next year.
This is what happens when you are employed year-round for a job that lasts a month.
Does he just sit in an office twiddling his thumbs? Does he work on his Summer Early But Not Too Early Spring Cleaning Bubble Watch?
I hope not, but would understand and respect his decision. He has given a lot to this university and handled his benching/demotion with nothing but class.
Just playing like a state fan.
It wasn't even fun.
Even State fans realize being a State fan is not the least bit fun.
True but in the last three years MSU has been severly overrated either at the start of the season in 2010-11 when they were ranked # 2, or last year and this year when national analysts claimed they were going to the final 4 and lost in the sweet 16. I agree what Izzo did between 1999-2010 was impressive though. We'll see if he can get them back on track this year.
We had other players besides him. In the NCAA tournament, I believe there were only 2 where he gave us over 20 points. No player is greater than the program and freshmen have performed very well under Beilein. We have 2 4 stars and a 5 star coming in.
I'm talking about since 2010. I agree wholeheartedly that he was amazing in the last decade but his teams have been consistently overrated for the last 3 years and I'm not being a biased homer sayng that. The results speak for themselves.
They've been to the Sweet 16 the last two seasons. It took us nearly 20 years to get back to that point in the tournament. If that is a "disappointment", your standards are totally out of touch with reality.
The only other programs to match or better MSU in the tourney each of the past two years are OSU, Florida, Louisville, Syracuse, Marquette, Indiana, and Kansas. A criticism that amounts to "The media thought they were a top-5 team but really they were only a top 10-15 team, LOL!" isn't much of a criticism at all.
They were predicted to go to the final 4 and they lost in the sweet 16 both years thus being overrated.
http://statsheet.com/mcb/rankings/report_most_overrated Someone did a study on this and MSU was the most overrated team since 1990 and 2000. To be fair, I think we'd come up quite high in football recently.
I checked MSU's preseason rank vs. seed vs. tourney run over the past several years. If I remember right, the pre-season rank correlated with their tournament result FAR more than their seed.
I'm looking forward to the release of his 2015 bracket.
The big ten was murderous this year. It should be easy enough to get us a 2 seed with all of the players gone and Irvin could be better than Hardaway. Hardaway didn't really do much this year and Irvin was Indiana's mr. basketball.
This is untolerable! I demand to that Joe Lunardi have this up before the national title game! Who's with me?
Too much info to still try and process after the NCG. I guess this was way too early for me.