Doggydaddy's Den: Doggy's Doghouse 12/3/19

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Image result for not pretty has to be gritty

It's not gonna be pretty, but it's got to be gritty!

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"Uh.....now what???"

Worlds Smallest Snowman

Either that or Logan is really big!!

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BUT....................................................

Here is a Yahoo Sports article asking whether or not UConn deserves their lofty No. 4 ranking after this big shakeup in WCBB this past weekend. Not only does the headline ask if they should be No. 4, but do they deserve to be in the Top 5.

Wow.

Her entire thesis is based on using the AP Top 25 rankings. That's it.

She does a lot of team comparisons on who teams have played in the top 25. Stanford is better because they played No. 10 Mississippi State and then beat No. 18 Gonzaga in OT and then played and beat then ranked No. 18 Syracuse. The Cuse is no longer ranked.

Let's start here. You can't have it both ways. Either a team is ranked when you played them like Syracuse or they were ranked after you played them like Gonzaga. One or the other. You don't get credit for both.

If you want a difference maker, Mississippi State is the one. They were and still are ranked.

However, using rankings is silly. Unlike Massey, Nolan and RealtimeRPI, rankings don't really look at SOS when determining how good a team and their opponents are.

If you are going to rank teams by who they play and how they did against them, then looking at the Stanford vs UConn schedules clearly has the Huskies on top.

I like to use RealtimeRPI and based on that, Stanford has played the No. 5 RPI team in Mississippi State and the No. 25 RPI in Gonzaga and was taken to OT. Their next toughest was Buffalo with the No. 93 RPI.

UConn, on the other hand, has faced the No. 14 RPI Ohio State. Their next toughest was Virginia at No. 28 RPI. UConn beat Ohio State by 11 and Virginia by 39 points. And California, Vanderbilt, and Temple all have a lower RPI than Buffalo.

Oh yeah, UConn has the overall No. 5 SOS and Stanford has the No. 59.

She went on to use Oregon State as another example. Her ending comment "And there are other teams below UConn that likely feel similarly to Oregon State". What exactly does she mean by that? That Oregon State thinks they should be ranked higher than UConn? I doubt they give a crap about that. That other teams feel that way? Really? What teams?

It's all a silly exercise, but it rankled me a little with the gist of this article. Don't go picking on my Huskies!!!

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Here is another article putting UConn down for not being...well......UConn.

They are not perfect but they are still Geno's UConn

Full credit to a UConn poster "YetanotherWilliams" who had this to day about this article.

This could be the worst sports article you'll read all season.

Here are just 3 of the author's what-were-you-thinking-when-you-wrote-this-moments:

"She (Megan) had her chance for a breakout this year against the Buckeyes but only left 19 points and eight rebounds on the court, a decent statline but not quite as gaudy as expected"

That’s crazy – only five players in UConn’s storied history have ever averaged 20 pts/game for a season (Moore, Bascom (3X), Sales, Collier (2X) and Samuelson. Breanna Stewart never averaged 20 ppg. Diana Taurasi never averaged 20, and Maya Moore only did it once. He’s complaining about a 19-pt game?    As for the 8 rpg, Napheesa Collier was the first player since Rebecca Lobo to average 10 rpg. for a season. In what universe is 8 rebounds per game a shabby performance?

2) "Walker followed up with a double-double in conference against Dayton on 23 points and 12 defensive boards, but it was hardly the same test she faced in the Ohio State defense."

And now he’s complaining about a 23-pt, 12-rebound game --- and saying that Dayton is an in-conference opponent?

3) "The staff demands all five bodies on the court to be active playmakers, and so far, senior Kyla Irwin isn’t answering the call."

     Kyla Irwin isn’t answering the call?? She was leading the nation, or close to it) in fg % a couple of games back, and didn’t miss a 3 until several games into the season. She's still leading the AAC in 3-pt fg%. If he's referring only to her playmaking/passing, he's way off base there too. Since the first two unproductive games, Kyla has had a slew of pretty assists.

Sheesh!!   Anybody can make a typo or get a stat wrong, but this writer's outlook is totally skewed.

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