Pomeroy Predicts 17-11, 8-6 in WCC

And also, just to piggyback on what Trumpet wrote... our strength of schedule has been pretty difficult early on. We've got tough games ahead with the likes of GU and SMC, but we've also got some "cupcakes" with Pep and LMU. I put us, USF, USD, and Santa Clara kind of in the same boat... what remains to be seen is which team(s) from that "middle four" steps up and holds serve at home and goes out and picks up some wins on the road. It'll definitely be a tough road ahead to reach that 17-18 win mark... Santa Clara has been playing a lot better, plus they add Decensae White (a transfer from Texas Tech) at the end of this semester. USF is looking good too - just picked up a real nice road win at Boise State. San Diego is the wild card... how much will they miss Brandon Johnson? But they still have enough to go and beat Oregon here in Portland.

But look at it this way... if we go 4-4 against GU/SMC/Pep/LMU like we should... really where we end up in the WCC is going to depend on our games against USF, SCU, and USD. Winning at home will be crucial. Sneaking one away on the road will be huge. And as of now Pomeroy is predicting us to win all three of those home games and to sneak away one of those road games. That doesn't seem all that unreasonable.

Anyway, I love all the stat stuff in baseball... I don't believe in it blindly and still think that in-person scouting is a crucial step (makeup does matter, know matter how much it irks the statheads), but I think it's so important to look past the box scores and really get into the numbers. Definitely a good way for teams that are otherwise disadvantaged to gain an edge.

I would also add T.J.'s GARP (Grit Above Replacement Player) is a WCC-leading 14.3665.

Ha ha... oh FJM, how I miss thee.

Grit, grinder, gamer, scrap, hustle, heart...

I'm not sure that I really buy that our schedule starts getting easier once we start play against the WCC. Are there examples of times when our early season record was actually worse than our WCC record in recent history? I can't think of any. It seems like it's always the opposite for us.

Plus, there are people like Bobby Knight who state that teams in the early part of the season are only 75% of what they are going to become by the end of the season. I'm not sure we beat UW when they were at their peak; we just gave them a nice early season wake up call. Not that there's anything wrong with that; it was still a great victory. But, beating them in January or February would mean more in my opinion...

I noticed that our projected record went down to 16-12.

athleticjames wrote:I noticed that our projected record went down to 16-12.

And our RPI dropped 30 slots with the win