youre right they did. but as said before the hoosiers are dackich's team and are a broken team with the firing of sampson. I too am an IU fan but greenspan needs to GO. IMO if sampson would have been left to finish the season the boys would be in a different place right now.
Of course, you can also say that if Sampson had been allowed to finish the season, we might incur more of the NCAA's wrath. At this point, given the way things have gone to heck in a handbasket, I'm just hoping we can beat Arkansas and then get on with hiring a new coach.
Surely (knock on wood) if we've already self-penalized and run Sampson out, we won't get too much heat from the NCAA, and surely (knock on wood) we'll make a good hire this time. I'd dismiss Greenspan, like you say, appoint Dakich AD and go after Tony Bennett, Sean Miller or Jamie Dixon. I like all of those coaches, they all appear to be clean, and notice all of them have their teams seeded higher than IU. Sounds good to me!
Things do look bad on paper and because of the top 25 etc. But if you look closer at who the other top seeds are and then look closer at the ones you are talking about it does make some sense.
Butler was ranked most of the year, but they played ONE -- count it -- ONE team that is also in the NCAA tourney -- Drake -- and they lost. Their opponents RPI average was 144 -- not very good. Their SOS is 128 because of who they played and how those teams did.
Indiana played 9 games against NCAA teams -- Xavier (lost), KY, Coppin St -- both wins but nobodies, Wisky 2 times, both losses, Purdue one time (win), Mich St 2 times (split), Uconn (lost) -- and then they lost their last 2 games to teams with RPIs over 100. So they won games against NCAA teams, with RPIs of 60, 219, 15 and 47. Their own SOS is 58 -- doesn't make them appear as a really top team for an at large. I feel really sorry for them and think Sampson should be strung up -- but you can't take away form other teams that played through the year and ended up better.
Purdue played 7 games against NCAA teams -- they lost to IN, they split 2 with MSU, they beat Wisky for both, they lost to Clemson, and they beat Louisville, but the committee also knows that was with an injured team so it's not as good as it appears on paper. Then they lost late games to Illinois and OSU, neither of whom are very good. Their opponents average RPI is 114 and their own SOS is 114 -- so not that great. They hurt themselves at the end by losing to lower level teams.
Which is WHY MSU looks better. THey played 9 teams, and even though they only won 4, the losses were to high level teams so they didn't kill them. Losses to UCLA don't look bad. Wins over Texas, Purdue (when they played good), and Indiana when they played good. The last lost was to Wisky, with a high RPI so that doesn't hurt. They only have 1 bad loss the entire year. The loss to OSU is not great by then they turned around and beat them -- so it kind of cancels out. Their RPI is 15 and their opponents is 114, but their own SOS is 42 -- considerably better than Purdue.
Sometimes it just all seems crazy but you can't go by top 25 rankings to say who gets what seed -- UL was the #4 team in the country in 2005 -- you would think a #1 or at worse a #2 -- -instead they got a #4 and sent out of the area. They had a very high RPI too, and had won like 19 or their last 20 games. Everyone here blew up too -- but we just went out and beat everyone in the way -- up to the team that got our #1 ranking.
You'll never totally figure out the committee because it's not all logical the way we want it to be.
I agree with you that totally figuring out the committee is impossible, so I'll only offer three things about what I think is under-seeding for Indiana.
First, when we played Kentucky, Eric Gordon was out injured. So beating them by 19 is worth more because we did it without a guy who average 22 pts/game over the year.
Second, we beat Ohio St. twice. If San Diego hadn't won the West Coast Conf. tourney on its home floor; and/or if Georgia hadn't won the SEC tournament; and/or if Temple hadn't won the Atlantic 10 tourney, that would be two more wins over tournament teams, as Ohio St. would appear to have been one the last 2-3 teams out of the tournament. We also beat Illinois St. by about 13 on a neutral floor, and they were the 2nd-highest RPI left out of the tournament. So you can also say that if the teams I mention above hadn't gotten automatic bids, even one or two of them, that would be another win over a tournament team. Adding those 3 wins over tournament teams makes IU's resume look considerably better.
Third, one of our losses to Wisconsin was on a 24-foot banked in 3-pointer by Brian Butch. It was at best the third option on the play for the Badgers, and if he hadn't hit that, we would have finished in a 3-way tie for first in the Big Ten (IU, Wisky, Purdue all 15-3 in that scenario) and possibly been the #1 seed in the tourney depending on tiebreaks between us and Wisky. I could also mention that if the guy for Minnesota hadn't hit that last shot in the Big Ten tourney, we'd have at least one more win on our resume, but then, if we'd hit our free throws in the last minute of that game, we would have won, so I won't count that.
Given all of these things, I think we got underseeded, and what I really think is that this is the first bit of punishment from the NCAA for the Sampson affair, which makes me agree with you also that Sampson should be strung up!!
