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Would it have been better to lose vs. Wiscy?

Jetfreak

Banned
Hey all, I am new here but I had a question. My friend and I were discussing the Wiscy game a week and a half ago when the polls came out. Each team had a #1 ranking and it was pretty much going to decide the Big10 champ. Additionally, we assumed the winner would get the #1 seed for the MW. However, we were also concerned that OSU struggled so much with PSU and, we had a bunch of freshman living in a dream world where they had never been ranked outside of the top 10.

The main argument in our conversation was that it would benefit the team to lose. That is, a loss now might re-focus the team, give them some drive for the conference tourney, and provide some momentum for the Big Dance.

Still, after MSU beat Wiscy I thought it was great that we won the game and back to back Big 10 championships. It will look great on our resume and overall record but I still worry about being over-inflated. Just like last year when we got but probably didn't deserve a #2 seed, I worry about losing to a lower ranked team who might be on the upswing while we are on the downswing (or staying level). Thoughts?
 
Do you honestly think we're on a downswing or flat level right now jetfreak? You don't think this team is improving? Seeing as we're on a big win streak in our conference and lost all our games early while on the road against top 10 teams. I don't see how you think we're on a downswing. Have you watched the other "elite" teams go down lately such as Florida, UNC, Georgetown, Pitt, and Wisc?

I see absolutely no gain to losing to Wisconsin, especially the fact we would have little chance at a #1 seed in the tournament.
 
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Jetfreak;766072; said:
we had a bunch of freshman living in a dream world where they had never been ranked outside of the top 10.
I don't feel like our freshmen are a liability heading into march. Ron Lewis still concerns me more than Oden, Conley, and even Cook (who has his issues, but shoots better and looks to pass much more).

Rather than lose a game, I wish Matta would bring Lewis off the bench again. He played a lot harder/smarter vs Minnesota, and looked to assist to someone besides Harris.
The main argument in our conversation was that it would benefit the team to lose. That is, a loss now might re-focus the team, give them some drive for the conference tourney, and provide some momentum for the Big Dance.
It would also give them a march harder path to the Final Four. If OSU makes the B10 title game, they should be blessed with a lesser #2 seed.
Just like last year when we got but probably didn't deserve a #2 seed, I worry about losing to a lower ranked team who might be on the upswing while we are on the downswing (or staying level). Thoughts?
I don't think we were overconfident last year. I think we played well above our ability, with a PF at center, no other strong players down low, and wore out down the stretch (due to a thin bench). Then we ran into an extremely long Georgetown team, which was a nightmare matchup.

If we had been a 5 seed and ran into G-town in the 2nd round, I don't think there would have been much difference.
 
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Well, thanks for stating the obvious "its never good to lose," but my point was that we haven't really won a single game we shouldn't have won. We play in a fairly week conference and are lucky we didn't have to play at Indiana this year. We lost every big road game outside of MSU. While our record looks great and we won the conference I question how we will handle ourselves in the Big Dance with no home court advantage.

Does anyone remember Jan 8th '07? How our players (and fans) listened for weeks about how good they were, how Florida didn't belong, and how we were going to run them. Don't any of you think this could be the same type of cycle? Sometimes our offense looks so scared and inept it is embarassing. How many times do we try to get the ball to Oden and can't...or turn the ball over?

Lets not be so myopic here because that surely made us all look bad last time.
 
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the only good thing that could have come out of a loss would have been the guys having a chip on their shoulders, but that said - it could have also caused them to press too much in the upcoming games to prove that they belong.

The guys on this team have always been winners, its good for them to keep winning and playing with confidence.
 
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Strange...

Sky is temporarily banned for trolling bball threads with the chicken little thoughts of losing Matta...

Sky's alias (used for rep) is banned also...

You start a thread discussing the bball team and possibly being flat going into the tourney...

All of your IPs match...

Coincidence or is the AFB just full of chicken littles lately?
 
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No. I do not think losing to Wisconsin would have served any purpose at all. We have had enough wake-up calls this year that if the team is not awake by now they never will be. In addition, by winning the game we won the Big 10 championship outright for the second year in a row and not many teams can say that.

We deserve the #2 seed last year because we were the Big 10 champs. We just got stuck in a bad bracket with Gtown last year.

I also think that if we would have lost it might have cost us the #1 seed and we might have to go further away from home to play.
 
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Jetfreak said:
we had a bunch of freshman living in a dream world where they had never been ranked outside of the top 10.

These freshmen have a history of playing for winning programs in high school. This is no dream, but a reality.

Jetfreak said:
We play in a fairly week conference and are lucky we didn't have to play at Indiana this year.

We are the ONLY team in the Big Ten to win at Purdue and at MSU. IS that worth nothing?

Good grief...
 
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jwinslow;766132; said:
That's a pretty broad statement, care to list which games you're talking about?

Maybe...as soon as he registers a new alias.

This one is

toast.jpg
 
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