Best regular season on the books?

[tacitus]

With NCAA Tournament runs.

https://i.imgur.com/SLQCCXw.jpg

[xu koop scoop]

If best regular season includes Conference Tourney I would say no. As a matter of fact, too many seasons are too close for me to pick one. Some might say NCAA Committee says Best because of 1st ever #1 seed. I say this season simply didn't have 4 good contenders for 1 seed, yet seems national audience is making this our best season based on seed. Best Total Season needs to include a Final 4.

[tacitus]

Have to disagree on a couple points.

1) Winning both the conference outright and the conference tournament is a lofty goal. Few teams have ever done that and then also made a deep run in the NCAAs. We have only won both 4 times ever. Gillen did it three times when X was dominating the MWC and when we typically needed an automatic bid. Matta did it once in the A10, but at a time when the A10 had two conference champions each year (West and East). Prosser once tied for first in the West (where Temple won the East with the best overall conference record) and then won the tournament. We've gone a combined 2-5 in the NCAAs, making it to the second round only twice, across the five aforementioned years.

2007-2008 was our best year overall to-date in my opinion, and while we won the regular season, we lost to St Joes in the semi-finals. Providence is a better team this year than St Joes was that year.

Winning our first Big East conference is accomplishment enough in its own right.

2) Making the Final Four would be our best performance in the tournament, but I would argue that simply making it to the Elite 8 would make this season the best overall on the books. We will have matched our best NCAA run, on top of all the other accomplishments: highest final ranking in all rankings and most metrics, most weeks in the AP top 10, highest seed ever, most regular season wins (27), most overall wins (31), first Big East championship, etc.

Don't get me wrong. I really want to go to the Final Four this year.

[tacitus]

3) Stop buying into ESPN's BPI. We were number 3 in the RPI, and won the second best conference outright. We deserved the 1 seed.

[mumuskie87]

With NCAA Tournament runs.

97-98 was the best year before this season?
22-8 record overall.
Lost in the 1st round in the NCAA Tournament.

[tacitus]

With NCAA Tournament runs.

97-98 was the best year before this season?
22-8 record overall.
Lost in the 1st round in the NCAA Tournament.

Who said that? Certainly not what the data says. I suppose the addition of records would make it clearer, but I (falsely?) assumed that most of us more or less know those.

SRS is like Kenpom or BPI, but is a bit simpler. Without Kenpom's attempts to quantify unquantifiable variables and without ESPN's attempt to better market their bread and butter leagues. It is essentially the point differntial of a team + (average point differentials for opponents - the average point differential of all teams). Like the others, a score of zero implies average. So a team that blows out a lot of mediocre and decent teams, and then loses by a small margin to some good and great teams, could have a pretty high SRS. This is exactly what happened with the 97-98 team. The A10 was stacked that year, sending 5 teams to the Dance, and we fielded one of our most talented overall teams ever that year. We lost 5 games in conference and still tied for first in the West. We then won the conference tournament to get the auto bid. We were ranked most of the season and we were ranked in the final AP poll. We then choked in the tournament... as so many of Prosser's teams did.

97-98 was one of the best teams we fielded. And it was one of our most hyped seasons at the time until we lost in the first round, but it was not even close to the best season overall.

Looking at this data (and taking W-Ls into account), best season overall was easily 2007-2008.

A quick go at it...

1) 2007-2008
2) 2016-2017
2) 2003-2004
4) 2015-2016
5) 2014-2015
6) 2009-2010
7) 2008-2009
8) 1989-1990
9) 1996-1997
10) 2002-2003
11) 1997-1998

This ranking could be adjusted for some of the milestones in our collective memory as fans: 1989-1990 (first S16), 2003-2004 (first E8), 2007-2008 (first 30 win + E8), 2015-2016 (first 2-seed, best regular season before this year).

If we make it to the Sweet 16 this year, I would rate this year as tied for second. If we make it to the Elite 8 or beyond, then this will be the best year overall.

[mumuskie87]

With NCAA Tournament runs.

97-98 was the best year before this season?
22-8 record overall.
Lost in the 1st round in the NCAA Tournament.

Who said that? Certainly not what the data says. I suppose the addition of records would make it clearer, but I (falsely?) assumed that most of us more or less know those.

I'm referring to graph that is shown,
The 97-98 season has a rating of 19.46.
Is that not correct?
Based on the graph, that season is the 2nd best season - just behind the current season.
Just reading the numbers on the graph.

[mumuskie87]

3) Stop buying into ESPN's BPI. We were number 3 in the RPI, and won the second best conference outright. We deserved the 1 seed.

I totally agree with this.
ESPN's "talking heads" promote the BPI constantly.
Guess it's part of their job description to do so.