Depth vs top end talent

[307bball]

It looks like this years team has a better bench then most pokes squads in recent memory. I like the depth ... it's good to have depth. The problem is that MWC titles and NCAA tournament invites do not get handed out to merely deep teams. Top end talent beats depth 9 out of 10 times. Basketball is less of a team sport than Football...Wyoming has had some good years that coincided with some good top end talent. I don't think we have ever had an above average year that just had level ability 1-7 on the team. Take guys like Bailey, Davis, Nance, or Adams off those good teams and they are .500 teams.

Before the season, there was a lot of talk about the incoming transfers and, for the most part, those guys are an improvement over the number 3-7 type of talent that has normally been in Laramie. Great...but just improving that category of player will not get it done. Those guys can finish .500 in conference probably but to win the MWC we need Maldo and Ike to play like all conference players (and I think, barring injury, they will). I watched the SDSU-Ohio St game....SDSU was another team that had a lot of pre-season hype....I didn't want to believe it but they are a legit top-20 team. We might beat them in Laramie...seems like Wyoming can beat good teams at home, but they are at a different level than Wyoming right now. With Ike and Maldo at their best, we are probably in the mix but without them.....it's a middle of the pack finish to the conference race this year.

 

[LanderPoke]

It looks like this years team has a better bench then most pokes squads in recent memory. I like the depth ... it's good to have depth. The problem is that MWC titles and NCAA tournament invites do not get handed out to merely deep teams. Top end talent beats depth 9 out of 10 times. Basketball is less of a team sport than Football...Wyoming has had some good years that coincided with some good top end talent. I don't think we have ever had an above average year that just had level ability 1-7 on the team. Take guys like Bailey, Davis, Nance, or Adams off those good teams and they are .500 teams.

Before the season, there was a lot of talk about the incoming transfers and, for the most part, those guys are an improvement over the number 3-7 type of talent that has normally been in Laramie. Great...but just improving that category of player will not get it done. Those guys can finish .500 in conference probably but to win the MWC we need Maldo and Ike to play like all conference players (and I think, barring injury, they will). I watched the SDSU-Ohio St game....SDSU was another team that had a lot of pre-season hype....I didn't want to believe it but they are a legit top-20 team. We might beat them in Laramie...seems like Wyoming can beat good teams at home, but they are at a different level than Wyoming right now. With Ike and Maldo at their best, we are probably in the mix but without them.....it's a middle of the pack finish to the conference race this year.

Dude, Bailey was taken off the team and they still were a top end team in the conference.

I agree with the rest of it. We don’t have top flight guys. We have a team full of bench players

 

[307bball]

It looks like this years team has a better bench then most pokes squads in recent memory. I like the depth ... it's good to have depth. The problem is that MWC titles and NCAA tournament invites do not get handed out to merely deep teams. Top end talent beats depth 9 out of 10 times. Basketball is less of a team sport than Football...Wyoming has had some good years that coincided with some good top end talent. I don't think we have ever had an above average year that just had level ability 1-7 on the team. Take guys like Bailey, Davis, Nance, or Adams off those good teams and they are .500 teams.

Before the season, there was a lot of talk about the incoming transfers and, for the most part, those guys are an improvement over the number 3-7 type of talent that has normally been in Laramie. Great...but just improving that category of player will not get it done. Those guys can finish .500 in conference probably but to win the MWC we need Maldo and Ike to play like all conference players (and I think, barring injury, they will). I watched the SDSU-Ohio St game....SDSU was another team that had a lot of pre-season hype....I didn't want to believe it but they are a legit top-20 team. We might beat them in Laramie...seems like Wyoming can beat good teams at home, but they are at a different level than Wyoming right now. With Ike and Maldo at their best, we are probably in the mix but without them.....it's a middle of the pack finish to the conference race this year.

Dude, Bailey was taken off the team and they still were a top end team in the conference.

I agree with the rest of it. We don’t have top flight guys. We have a team full of bench players

8-6 in conference that year...finished in third/fourth place and bounced in the first round of the tourney....I don't consider that "top end". With Baily, that team probably is second or first. Regardless...expectations for this years team were pretty high based on the incoming talent being something at the level of Maldo and Ike...turns out to not be the case.

 

[LanderPoke]

Dude, Bailey was taken off the team and they still were a top end team in the conference.

I agree with the rest of it. We don’t have top flight guys. We have a team full of bench players

8-6 in conference that year...finished in third/fourth place and bounced in the first round of the tourney....I don't consider that "top end". With Baily, that team probably is second or first. Regardless...expectations for this years team were pretty high based on the incoming talent being something at the level of Maldo and Ike...turns out to not be the case.

You don’t consider making and winning a game in the NIT top flight ? Lol k

 

[307bball]

8-6 in conference that year...finished in third/fourth place and bounced in the first round of the tourney....I don't consider that "top end". With Baily, that team probably is second or first. Regardless...expectations for this years team were pretty high based on the incoming talent being something at the level of Maldo and Ike...turns out to not be the case.

You don’t consider making and winning a game in the NIT top flight ? Lol k

They weren't a train wreck...but they were not a "top end" MWC team that year. This is probably a disagreement in terms...I personally considered that team to be second tier in the conference. If you consider that team to be "top end in conference" then I think you are including the entire top half of the MWC that year. Maybe you do.

That years team pro and cons:

Cons:
-Lost to BYU and Utah (the top tier that year) by an average margin of 14 points and only one of those games was within single digits. (8 pt loss to BYU at the AA)
-A decidedly average SDSU team owned us that year
-Squeaked out 6 wins vs the bottom half of the conference with two 2 pt victories vs CSU, OT victory at home to UNM, and two close games w/Air Force
-First round exit in MWC tourney to the sheep

Pros:
+Beat fellow mid-tier team UNLV twice
+Won in the first round of NIT to Big Sky member Eastern Washington

For me, "top end" or "top flight" teams are not making NIT appearances.

 

[LanderPoke]

You don’t consider making and winning a game in the NIT top flight ? Lol k

They weren't a train wreck...but they were not a "top end" MWC team that year. This is probably a disagreement in terms...I personally considered that team to be second tier in the conference. If you consider that team to be "top end in conference" then I think you are including the entire top half of the MWC that year. Maybe you do.

That years team pro and cons:

Cons:
-Lost to BYU and Utah (the top tier that year) by an average margin of 14 points and only one of those games was within single digits. (8 pt loss to BYU at the AA)
-A decidedly average SDSU team owned us that year
-Squeaked out 6 wins vs the bottom half of the conference with two 2 pt victories vs CSU, OT victory at home to UNM, and two close games w/Air Force
-First round exit in MWC tourney to the sheep

Pros:
+Beat fellow mid-tier team UNLV twice
+Won in the first round of NIT to Big Sky member Eastern Washington

For me, "top end" or "top flight" teams are not making NIT appearances.

If you win a game in the NIT at Wyoming you’ve had a better season than all but a handful in program history

 

[307bball]

They weren't a train wreck...but they were not a "top end" MWC team that year. This is probably a disagreement in terms...I personally considered that team to be second tier in the conference. If you consider that team to be "top end in conference" then I think you are including the entire top half of the MWC that year. Maybe you do.

That years team pro and cons:

Cons:
-Lost to BYU and Utah (the top tier that year) by an average margin of 14 points and only one of those games was within single digits. (8 pt loss to BYU at the AA)
-A decidedly average SDSU team owned us that year
-Squeaked out 6 wins vs the bottom half of the conference with two 2 pt victories vs CSU, OT victory at home to UNM, and two close games w/Air Force
-First round exit in MWC tourney to the sheep

Pros:
+Beat fellow mid-tier team UNLV twice
+Won in the first round of NIT to Big Sky member Eastern Washington

For me, "top end" or "top flight" teams are not making NIT appearances.

If you win a game in the NIT at Wyoming you’ve had a better season than all but a handful in program history

Completely agree. Sadly for us Cowboy fans...even that mediocre level of success seems to elude us. I merely took issue with you calling the '02-'03 a top end MWC team. I don't think they were. They were decidedly above average for a Wyoming team, but without Bailey....they were not a "top-end" MWC team that year by my definition of "top end".

There are something like 34 or 36 at-large slots for the NCAA tournament and if you get one of those, like the pokes did last year, I would consider that to be a "top end" team. There are probably some "top end" teams that just miss that designation and fall to the NIT but that is where I'm drawing my line. Other people can have differing opinions here. The '02-'03 team....if Bailey stays healthy still had some flaws but would have been at the level of BYU and Utah that year....without him...not so much. This gets back to my point that, despite depth, lack of top end talent will keep you out of the top of the MWC and will keep you from getting an at-large selection to the NCAA tournament.