Jay Bilas Brings the Pain Part II
By jebIf you have Insider you might check out his post on ESPN.com today. It can basically be summed up as Kentucky hasn’t beaten anyone so they shouldn’t be in the tourney. His logic is a bit fuzzy at times.
He starts the whole thing with
I will say this again … the only objective standard in sports is winning.
But later he looks at UK’s margin of victory which totally contradicts the whole “only standard is winning” argument.
In addition, Kentucky’s margin of victory this season has been only +3.4 overall, and in the SEC it is +0.3.
He also writes
Alabama is the only team in the RPI top 250 that Kentucky has beaten by double digits in the SEC.
Agin this contradicts the “only standard is winning” argument.
He then ends his part about UK with this
Consider this: If you accept that the NCAA Tournament is filled with really good teams, shouldn’t a team have to prove it can beat a really good team? The only teams in the NCAA Tournament that get to play lesser teams are the high seeds that are playing against automatic qualifiers. The last few teams in will have to play RPI top 50 teams in the first round. Therefore, isn’t it important to have proven that you can beat that caliber of team?
It would have been nice if he had noted that UK has proven it can beat teams in the RPI top 50 with wins over #1 Tennesse, #7 Vandy, #42 Arkansas, and #43 Mississippi
Related Post: Jay Bilas Brings the Pain
March 8th, 2008 at 6:39 pm
I’ll give Bilas a pass this time, even though I completely disagree with him for all the points listed, because he backed himself in a corner by making a prediction too early and not considering the possibility that the Cats could make a miraculous turnaround.
I have to admit, I thought it was impossible two months ago that UK would win 11 conference games and 11 of 15. But I freely, and gladly, admit I was wrong.