Come On, Lunardi

Every so often, I like to check out Joe Lunardi's Bracketology to see what seed Bucknell is likely to get come tournament time. This week I scanned the 15's and didn't see them. Then I looked at the 14s and didn't see them. Then I went to the 13s, a seed that I think might be a bit too high, and didn't see them. So (gulp!) I looked at the 16s and saw a weird name - the American Eagles representing the Patriot League...

I'm sorry Joe, I know there are over 300 teams in D1 basketball and I know you know more about each team than 99.9% of the world, but I'm sorry...you are an idiot. I'd like to admit that I am being a homer here, but it's not the case. I don't care about their record, but American is NOT a better team the Bucknell. They will not win the Patriot League title this year. It is just not going to happen.

It's clear that Joe really does all his homework on the big leagues, spending his time deciding whether the Big East gets 10 teams in or not. He doesn't have time to carefully study the small leagues, so he goes with record. So let me do the work for him and go over the two seasons to date.

With a 26 loss to #17 Georgetown, American is now 8-4 on the season. As of his last update, they were 8-3 with their 3 losses coming to Richmond, Maryland-Eastern Shore and St. Francis. RPI's for those three are 77, 279 and 310 respectively. They have a quality win against RPI 22 St Joseph's (and non other than Joe Lunardi's employer). They had only played 4 teams with RPI's <200. Three of their wins were against Howard (313), Maryland Baltimore County (336) and Hampton (335).

Prior to Bucknell's win at home against Richmond (a team that made the Sweet 16 last year) they were 5-4 against D1 schools with their losses all coming on the road to Minnesota (RPI 21), Vanderbilt (RPI 7), George Mason (RPI 182) and LaSalle (RPI 132). While they had no signature win, they had no terrible loss to a team in the 300s. Oh, and their losses to Minnesota and Vandy were by 12 points. This isn't Maryland Eastern Shore- these are two teams from power conferences.

If that isn't enough, they have two common opponents - St Francis and now Richmond. Bucknell is 2-0 and American is 0-2. With a high profile game against #1 Syracuse on Wednesday, I expect to see their RPI surpass American's and I expect it to stay that way for the rest of the season.

The Bison returned 4 starters including League POY Mike Muscala and league Defensive POY Brian Cohen from a team that went 13-1 in conference. American lost 4 starters from a team that went 11-3 in conference, but didn't even make it to the PL Tournament final. I could have handled it had Lehigh been the prediction - at least they have the leading scorer in the league - but American? Come on. That is a joke.