Valpo in the National Rankings 2015-16 edition

[a3uge]

Couch had Valpo 23 and 24 in the first few weeks.

[chef]

Graham Couch is a long time Michigan State guy, who works for the Lansing State Journal. I assume he's keeping a close eye on Oakland since they nearly beat the Spartans. The easy victory over the Grizzlies likely got us a #24 vote from him.

[SanityLost17]

Valpo is 6-3 in true road games.  7 of those teams that currently have an RPI fairly close to 150 or better.  I looked up the actual numbers earlier, but don't have them in front of me at the moment. 

Kentucky is 1-2 in true road games.

I don't blame Seth Davis for ranking us ahead of them.  Grow a pair and hit the road for a few games and see how it feels. 

[FWalum]

http://collegepolltracker.com/basketball/

Anybody notice that they have our old proboards http://valpofans.proboards.com/index.cgi? site as the message board link.  Is there anyway to change that?

[bbtds]

Zach Osterman is all IU which fits into the biker type. He is a south side Indy guy (like certain IU guys). He seems to like dogs.

http://www.lakako.com/photos/1500234442

No real connection to Valpo except in same state as IU.

[wh]

Valpo has moved up from 4th to 2nd in the newest College Insider mid major poll:

http://www.collegeinsider.com/mens-mid-major-top-25.php

[agibson]

Valpo has moved up from 4th to 2nd in the newest College Insider mid major poll:

Nice!  Nice to see that a few think we're above the Zags. A home and home this season would have been a lot of fun...

[talksalot]

Ken Pom Ratings through half of the games on Thursday, Valpo still #1 in Defense; up to #18 overall !!

[justducky]

Gonzaga losses at home to BYU. That should temporarily put us at the top of the mid-major poll.

[agibson]

Gonzaga losses at home to BYU. That should temporarily put us at the top of the mid-major poll.

Interesting!  Computer numbers, even RPI?, have preferred St. Mary's for a while.

Three pretty good looking teams in the WCC.  And some pretty bad looking ones.

[justducky]

Interesting!  Computer numbers, even RPI?, have preferred St. Mary's for a while.

St. Mary's was one of the last (like us) to release their schedules. I would not be surprised if there was some scheduling attempt, but they don't like to hit the road much either. I watched them some earlier in the year and they are playing Pacific on ESPNU as we speak. Numbers aside my impressions are that we are the better team.

[Valpower]

The AP poll had Utah 10, Texas Tech 10, Saint Mary's 8, and Wichita St 7 ahead of us.  We were tied with Oregon with 6 votes, and ahead of Hawaii 4, St Bonaventure 1, Oregon State 1, Akron 1, and Dayton 1.  Utah has already since dropped a game to Oregon and will play Oregon State.  If Oregon State beats them and we beat Green Bay it will be interesting to see how we and Oregon move.  Oregon State may lose their vote for having lost at Colorado, but who knows.

If Texas Tech loses to Baylor, they will have lost 4 in a row.

[talksalot]

So with almost all of the Saturday games in the books, the Valpo RPI stands at 19

KenPom Defense has us at #3

The Valpo win tonight was the 500th win attributed to a Drew-Coached team...

Speaking of Drew... looking at the standings...

19..Valpo
20..Iowa State
21..Baylor

tee hee...

[chef]

Even higher now in the RPI than KenPom. An RPI of 17.

[talksalot]

looking at the list now...(with SOS ranking)

14 West Virginia  (69)
15 USC  (39)
16 Iowa State  (18)
17 VALPARAISO UNIVERSITY  (77) 
18 Florida (5)
19 Miami (FL)  (44)
20 Kentucky (34)
21 Duke (20)
22 Pittsburgh (70)
23 Monmouth (75)

[a3uge]

[tweet]688898795313229824[/tweet]

https://twitter.com/SethDavisHoops/status/688898795313229824

Seth Davis has Valpo at #20 on his ballot. If Valpo beats YSU, Valpo could have 20 some points on Tuesday.

[ValpoHoops]

The poll will come out before we play on Monday night (usually around lunchtime). There are already a few other people out there that we have picked up points from.

It generally takes about 100 points to get to #25, so hopefully we are well on our way.

[a3uge]

The poll will come out before we play on Monday night (usually around lunchtime). There are already a few other people out there that we have picked up points from.

It generally takes about 100 points to get to #25, so hopefully we are well on our way.

Woops, I'm an idiot... Yes, always on a Monday.

[agibson]

Seth Davis has Valpo at #20 on his ballot.

Wow.  I really didn't see that coming.  I thought it'd be more incremental.  And, nationally, it may still be... But, the highest we've appeared on any ballot this season.

Last week Graham Couch and Seth Davis were two of the most "extreme" (atypical) ballots, overall.  So, hard to know how far out on the edge Davis is. But, posting on twitter well ahead of the deadline, maybe he's a taste maker...

Could be interesting viewing tomorrow afternoon! 

Looking a bit more closely at Davis' ballots.

He really doesn't like teams that lose at home!

He dropped Pitt on their loss that cost us #1 defense in Ken Pom, pushed us ahead of Virginia (lost on the road at FSU), he dropped Providence eight places on their home loss to a pretty good Seton Hall, pushing us ahead of them, dropped UCLA like ten places on their home loss to USC, pushing us ahead of them, and must have done something else extreme besides.

Crazy talk.  Really shaking things up.

[agibson]

Arkansas-Little Rock is picking up at least one point.  They had at least one in the coaches poll last week.

A number of voters talk about the difficulty of voting this week

[tweet]688910553721475072[/tweet]

[agibson]

With Davis' six points, if everyone from last week at least allows us to tread water, we'll eclipse last season's best AP ranking (for points at least, almost certainly ranking too - but we'll see), which was our best ever.

[govalpogo]

I read on twitter that 16 of the top 25 lost this week, so the shakeup could really help Valpo make some strides.  I think building a big league winning streak will do more than we originally thought at getting us somewhere in the polls.  Consistency seems rare even among the top teams.  Still, I would think our ceiling would be 24/25. 

[agibson]

I read on twitter that 16 of the top 25 lost this week, so the shakeup could really help Valpo make some strides.

Once we're on people's radar then "just keep winning" will help a lot.  Maybe we'll find out tomorrow how many writers have us on their radar.  (The couple of others I've seen posted leave us off; so I don't think we're looking at a wholesale revolution: a majority of ballots will likely _not_ include us; we're not at all likely to jump straight in to #25.)  I don't know that receiving a few votes is enough for major conference beat writers to take us seriously... We'll see!

[govalpogo]

Yea, I'm certainly not expecting that the team will crack the top 25 this week or really even for quite a while if at all.  Although, I didn't expect to see Valpo with 6 and 5 points in the respective polls this past week either.  Fun to watch!

3 more points as Chris Dachille lists Dear old Valpo at #23!

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CY-VUhxWwAAUwDj.jpg

[agibson]

[tweet]688933453102993408[/tweet]

Hey, what do I know?  If a quarter of voters do something like Dachille and go from not listing us at all to #23...