It looks like Xavier will be without their leading scorer on Wednesday night at the Dunkin’ Donuts Center. Chris Mack told FanragSports.com’s Jon Rothstein that Trevon Bluiett is “doubtful” against the Friars tonight. This news comes a few hours after the betting line opened late with Providence showing as a 3-point favorite, which didn’t line up with the analytics sites like Kenpom.com who was predicting a 70-69 Xavier victory. A 4-point difference in the Kenpom number and Vegas is rare and was a clue that Bluiett would at best be limited in this game. Since this news broke the line has climbed to Providence being favored by 5 and even 5.5 points in some places.
This is the first RPI update post of the season and it will now be a weekly update. Once the season progresses this will return to the daily post that I began doing a season ago.
After 7 months of “way too early” preseason projections it’s now pretty timely to be making preseason projections — if for no other reason than the preseason ends tonight. This week has seen lots of different publications come out with their preseason bracketology — something that people might argue is still way too early — and there has been a bit of a dichotomy about where Providence stands in regards to the NCAA Tournament following the 2015-16 season. It appears that dichotomy stands between the human based projections and those generated by data and computer programs.
Ken Pomeroy — or Kenpom as he and his website are more commonly known — came out with his preseason rankings for the 2015-16 season on Sunday night. While these rankings aren’t meant to be 100% accurate they do give a decent guideline and perspective on how teams compare within each conference and how the conferences compare to each other. Before I get into the rankings, here is an excerpt from Pomeroy’s blog post October of 2013 after he released the 2013-14 preseason rankings:
Early August means preseason bracketology, because why not? ESPN’s Joe Lunardi has released his preseason bracket and the Big East has 5 teams in the field of 68. The Friars are not currently one of those 5 but they are right on the cusp, according to Lunardi. The ACC leads the way with 9 teams in the field followed by the SEC, Pac 12, Big 12 and Big Ten getting 6 teams each. The American (4) and Atlantic 10 (2) are the other multi-bid leagues in Lunardi’s bracket.
Here are the notable Big East results from Lunardi’s preaseson bracket:
There were 4 games yesterday that could help boost the Friars’ RPI in addition to their own road game at Seton Hall. The result was 3-1. Notre Dame used a big first half to defeat Louisville at the Yum Center, 71-59. Albany dispatched Bob Walsh’s Maine squad in the first round of the America East Tournament, 83-66. UMass fell at home to Richmond, 56-53. Miami (FL) went on the road and got a win against Pittsburgh at the difficult to play at Peterson Center, 67-63.
pcbb1917.com - Providence College Basketball 