He's really, really not. This player is literally the only person I graduated off my New Mexico team in Iba last season. With him on the roster, surrounded by a bunch of juniors, we went 26-5 (against the #79 schedule) for a final RPI of 28 and a second round NT appearance. This year? Blauser is gone, the team is full of seniors, and UNM is 18-9 against the #81 schedule. Our RPI is 55, and there's no way we're even making the dance, let alone winning a game.

For a while, I just thought it was a couple unlucky sims in games against top 100 competition. I don't play that many great teams, so one or two bad sims can really hurt things. But the more the season goes on, the more I think we're just bad. We're 2-5 against the other top 100 teams in the MWC. Last year, against the same group, we were 7-2. It's too late to do anything about it at this point, but I really don't understand why this team is so bad. I didn't expect a Sweet Sixteen, but I really thought we'd be an NT team with a good chance of making the second round at least. Blauser was good, sure, but I thought that between Maloney and Slawson, I could replace him no problem. What happened here?

In about half of your games you ended up losing, you had the lead at halftime, but still decided to switch up your defense. You went from -3 to -1 usually, but somehow the other team took advantage of that in the second half. It's possible playing a 3-2 zone left the inside exposed, whether through a weaker defense or offensive rebounding.

It appears the teams in your conference had a lot of returning players as well, which also means better perimeter shooters to tear up that zone. A younger player from another team with a 68 perimeter rating to go along with a lower offensive IQ as opposed to have a perimeter rating in the low 80s and a year to develop that IQ can make a huge difference when it comes to 3 point shooting. In at least half of your losses the other team shot at least 39 percent from three.

Also, you could've had some good fortune last season, where you weren't as lucky this season. It happens.

I doubt losing that one player made that much of a difference, especially considering everyone from your team was returning, that definitely should've outweighed losing that one player.

It's hard to know, considering I can't see the results of the games from last season.

Yeah, I don't remember getting especially lucky last season, but I may've. I just don't see this team as particularly unlucky, yet at the same time I thought they were a shoo-in for the NT. Not dominant at the MWC level or anything, but definitely NT-quality.

Same thing with my Wooden team lost my elite offensive PG Earl Wright, at least for a non major running a triangle.

Also I did a much better job scheduling last season played all sims and 1 human with all sim recruits until the NT, compared to all human teams or human recruited teams in non-conf and of course my rpi/sos is much worse than last season.

I like your team Tarv, I think you needed two to three more wins. You did not have that bad a season, but you were a borderline NT team. And it did not go your way. Sometimes, it happens.

"That rug really tied the room together, did it not?"