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Friday, December 01, 2006
Reader’s Forum: Is Air Force for Real?
Predictions are up. Yes, they’re crazy, and not too meaningful right now. You really don’t have to e-mail me about it. I know Butler is not going 30-1. Check back in a couple weeks on this stuff.
Speaking of e-mail, let’s try a new feature. I give you something to think about for the weekend, and you send me e-mails about it. (I’ll do anything to get you to stop e-mailing me RPI questions.)
For today’s exercise, let’s compare the resumes of two teams…
Team A (7-1)
Noteworthy wins
Stanford by 34 (road)
Colorado by 38 (road)
Texas Tech by 14 (neutral)
Wake Forest by 36 (home)
Ugly wins
Long Beach State by 1 (neutral)
Losses
Duke by 15 (neutral)
Team B (8-0)
Noteworthy wins
Cal by 7 (home)
Ugly wins
Murray St. by 3 (neutral)
St. Mary’s by 1 (road)
Seattle Pacific by 3 (neutral)
UCSB by 4 (road)
San Diego by 3 (home)
It’s not too hard to figure out that Team A is Air Force since I gave it away in the title of the post. The Falcons have been humiliating teams left and right, and while they probably don’t have a win over a future tournament team, they do sport the best offense in the nation by my computations.
I realize the error bars are big this time of year, but that figure includes the goose egg laid against Duke, the absolute worst matchup in the nation the AFA offense could face. Sure enough, against Duke they had their worst 3-point shooting performance in 42 outings. Of course, you could argue that the historically undisciplined Wake defense was one of the best matchups they could find.
Team B is San Diego State, which is still the golden child of the MWC. Watching the first 35 minutes of their games is pointless, because it seems like no matter whom they play, the game comes down to the last shot. The Aztecs have more votes the Falcons in each opinion poll, and are amazingly on the cusp of being ranked in the coaches’ poll. The polls were taken before Air Force’s romp over Wake and SDSU’s nailbiter against San Diego, but I have no doubt the Aztecs will still have the upper hand in the next poll.
The question here isn’t whether Air Force is better than San Diego State, because I think sensibly, you have to say yes to that regardless of all the “potential” you see in San Diego State. The question is, how good is Air Force? A legit top 20 team, or another MWC squad fighting for a 12 seed? You make the call, with some decent reasoning, and I’ll print the best e-mails sometime next week.