hype
- Thread starter SoapyCy
- Start date
Exactly. This is not a traditionally or even recently good football team losing in an upset. It is another symptom of a losing pattern. The bball team could lose to a horrible team and still have a great season (remember losing to Texas Tech a couple years ago?).
Unfortunately I do remember that. Aaaaaaand the early season Drake loss with Royce's squad.
I think most people covered the reasons why losing to GSU, while disappointing, isn't crippling:
-basketball rosters are smaller (swinging on 1-2 men oftentimes) and the talent differential between mid-major teams high-major teams is not that different... in a word, if you were to rank across all Division I, you'd have a ton of mixing between MM and HM (even power conference) teams with basketball, but very little of it in football (NDSU>ISU, though, obviously)
-the basketball season is longer and has more intermediate goals... losing to GSU at home early in the season would suck (defend the home court, I'd like to see us go undefeated in Hilton again one of these years) and count as a "bad loss" to the selection committee, but in the end that's the difference between a #4 and a #5... it matters, but it's not crippling, you still have to win your games come March
-Fred has to navigate 10 (if not 15 with the tomato cans in the conference like TCU and TTU) of these "gimme" wins a season, which means more chances to slip up... he didn't last year (save maybe WVU on the road, but even that wasn't a "bad loss" on the whole, just a badly played game), but several came really damn close (UNI, Boise State), so some of them are going to get us eventually no matter what we do
-"not making excuses," but we might be down one starter/one rotational player or two rotational players (depending on if Nader becomes a full-time starter or not) at that point, which will affect how we play and put more pressure on the "top tier" guys in Niang, BDJ, Hogue, and Morris without the extra support and ask more of role players and freshmen very early into their careers (most likely Naz, freshman Custer and Tsalm)*
*I figure our lineup to star the year will be Morris/Long/BDJ/Hogue/Niang... Thomas/Nader/McKay unavailable for various reasons, which means our bench at the start of the season is Custer/SDW/Edozie/Tsalm, which could lead to some roughness if we get in a dogfight or have foul trouble and have to rely on a lot of minutes from guys without much experience or quite as much talent as our normal rotation would offer
-like everybody else said, track record--Fred has made the postseason three years in a row, won the conference tournament, beat Top 10 teams repeatedly, always plays tough (save WVU last year, the odd fluke), brings in stars, develops players (i.e. Ejim [raw talent as a freshman that built into a conference player of the year], Naz [huge freshman/sophomore leap, hopefully more to come]), wins big games, and (honestly, no homer here) had a team last year with enough talent, chemistry, and in position to make a national title run--granted, many more teams in basketball can say that percentage-wise as can football programs, but there's a clear difference
I fully expect us to lose 2-3 games in non-con next year--we have about the same schedule, if not an easier one, but there's no way we can dodge so many bullets again. Some teams will get us. That's just the way it is. I'm not going to meltdown on Fred when it happens.
-basketball rosters are smaller (swinging on 1-2 men oftentimes) and the talent differential between mid-major teams high-major teams is not that different... in a word, if you were to rank across all Division I, you'd have a ton of mixing between MM and HM (even power conference) teams with basketball, but very little of it in football (NDSU>ISU, though, obviously)
-the basketball season is longer and has more intermediate goals... losing to GSU at home early in the season would suck (defend the home court, I'd like to see us go undefeated in Hilton again one of these years) and count as a "bad loss" to the selection committee, but in the end that's the difference between a #4 and a #5... it matters, but it's not crippling, you still have to win your games come March
-Fred has to navigate 10 (if not 15 with the tomato cans in the conference like TCU and TTU) of these "gimme" wins a season, which means more chances to slip up... he didn't last year (save maybe WVU on the road, but even that wasn't a "bad loss" on the whole, just a badly played game), but several came really damn close (UNI, Boise State), so some of them are going to get us eventually no matter what we do
-"not making excuses," but we might be down one starter/one rotational player or two rotational players (depending on if Nader becomes a full-time starter or not) at that point, which will affect how we play and put more pressure on the "top tier" guys in Niang, BDJ, Hogue, and Morris without the extra support and ask more of role players and freshmen very early into their careers (most likely Naz, freshman Custer and Tsalm)*
*I figure our lineup to star the year will be Morris/Long/BDJ/Hogue/Niang... Thomas/Nader/McKay unavailable for various reasons, which means our bench at the start of the season is Custer/SDW/Edozie/Tsalm, which could lead to some roughness if we get in a dogfight or have foul trouble and have to rely on a lot of minutes from guys without much experience or quite as much talent as our normal rotation would offer
-like everybody else said, track record--Fred has made the postseason three years in a row, won the conference tournament, beat Top 10 teams repeatedly, always plays tough (save WVU last year, the odd fluke), brings in stars, develops players (i.e. Ejim [raw talent as a freshman that built into a conference player of the year], Naz [huge freshman/sophomore leap, hopefully more to come]), wins big games, and (honestly, no homer here) had a team last year with enough talent, chemistry, and in position to make a national title run--granted, many more teams in basketball can say that percentage-wise as can football programs, but there's a clear difference
I fully expect us to lose 2-3 games in non-con next year--we have about the same schedule, if not an easier one, but there's no way we can dodge so many bullets again. Some teams will get us. That's just the way it is. I'm not going to meltdown on Fred when it happens.
That is a scary strong starting line up. The bench scares me a little though for a different reason.
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95-99% of the power 5 conferences that scheduled FCS teams not only won they crushed the FCS team which is what should happen.
That's what's funny. You'd think people would be less surprised by a team that went 3-9 the previous season getting pounded by a team that has won 3 straight FCS titles. Georgia State is going to be a very good team so it would probably take a 20 point loss to a team like Lamar or Southern for any type of meltdown to happen.
The only time that's going to happen is when expectations get totally out of hand.
The last 3 years have been fine and will continue this year.
I think it's more of disappointment in the fact we have a football team we can hold any hope in for another seasons then it is shock or anger.
As others have said the difference between midmajors and high majors is much smaller in basketball than in football. You're comparing teams of 12 guys to teams of 85 guys, it just takes one or two really talented players to make all the difference, you need a lot more than that in football. Georgia St has that in RJ Hunter and Ryan Harrow, Hunter will be one of the top players we go up against all year.
