Interesting Weekend Ahead

[6-4-3 Jackrabbit]

This will be an interesting weekend for this team. Coming off the nice win on Saturday, can the Rabbits show some maturity and take their show on the road? This team could sweep these two games, or get swept. Which Rabbits will we see? Winning on the road is never easy but considering the relative ease of these trips (KC and Omaha), these games are very manageable. Also, my guess is you'll see some Jackrabbit Blue in the seats at each game. A good weekend on the road could go a long way to this team winning the SL regular season championship.

Go Rabbits!

[da_coach]

You hit the nail on the head, could go 2-0 or 0-2.

If they play like they did against ORU Saturday, I like their chances.

[wcbsas]

KC and Omaha are bottom half teams in the conference.
Winning on the road is hard but 2-0 should be expected.

Need this as the last 4 will be difficult!

[LetsGoRabbits]

KC and Omaha are bottom half teams in the conference.
Winning on the road is hard but 2-0 should be expected.

Need this as the last 4 will be difficult!

bottom half is slightly misleading. they are in a 4 way tie for 5th place along with ORU and Denver. everyone probably recalls we lost to both those schools as the away team. on top of that KC just finished a road trip where they took NDSU to OT and beat first place UND by twenty.

you are correct 5th place technically is in the bottom half of a nine team league, but i am not sure people usually look at a 5th place team as someone you should almost automatically expect to beat.

so anyway, I hope you are correct, but EXPECT seems pretty strong. both KC and UNO have proven that they can beat anyone. UNO beat both UND and Denver by nearly 20 points. KC, as i already said, beat UND by 20 in their last game. I am not saying they are great basketball teams they are both slightly below 500, but I think it is fair to say that they are both competitive

If we win both remaining home games and split the 4 road games, that puts us at 11-5. as long as NDSU loses at least one more game, 11-5 puts us no worse than the 2 seed. IF UND loses one of their remaining games 11-5 would put us in a first place tie with UND. obviously we already have one win against them, so at worst we will split the season series.

can we use the word EXPECT, regarding our chances to go 4 and 2 the rest of the way? I would like to believe that we could, but I am not sure we can honestly say that the fellas have done anything consistently enough YET that we can have a very solid idea what we can expect.

My hope is we continue to play well and we continue to improve every time out the rest of the way.

From my perspective 11-5 almost guarantees first place in the conference. 10-6 has a solid shot to win the conference and almost definitely puts someone in the top 2 seeds

we have a talented team that, so far, has struggled to find a consistent rhythm and identity. that makes us VERY MUCH like basically every other team in our conference. it is safe to say that there is NOT a great team in our conference this year, but there are no pushovers either. you say we are playing bottom half teams. i will say according to the current standings, every remaining team on our schedule is no worse than 5th place in the league


winning both the league and the SLT would be a solid accomplishment for this season. The Jacks or any other Summit team will be big underdogs against any NCAA opponent, but if we can improve every gam the rest of the way and be able to say that we are playing our best basketball of the season at the end of the season, I can live with that! everyone knows that crazy things happen in the NCAA. sometimes teams that dont look great on paper get hot at the right time

[bigticket1]

bottom half is slightly misleading. they are in a 4 way tie for 5th place along with ORU and Denver. everyone probably recalls we lost to both those schools as the away team. on top of that KC just finished a road trip where they took NDSU to OT and beat first place UND by twenty.

you are correct 5th place technically is in the bottom half of a nine team league, but i am not sure people usually look at a 5th place team as someone you should almost automatically expect to beat.

so anyway, I hope you are correct, but EXPECT seems pretty strong. both KC and UNO have proven that they can beat anyone. UNO beat both UND and Denver by nearly 20 points. KC, as i already said, beat UND by 20 in their last game. I am not saying they are great basketball teams they are both slightly below 500, but I think it is fair to say that they are both competitive

If we win both remaining home games and split the 4 road games, that puts us at 11-5. as long as NDSU loses at least one more game, 11-5 puts us no worse than the 2 seed. IF UND loses one of their remaining games 11-5 would put us in a first place tie with UND. obviously we already have one win against them, so at worst we will split the season series.

can we use the word EXPECT, regarding our chances to go 4 and 2 the rest of the way? I would like to believe that we could, but I am not sure we can honestly say that the fellas have done anything consistently enough YET that we can have a very solid idea what we can expect.

My hope is we continue to play well and we continue to improve every time out the rest of the way.

From my perspective 11-5 almost guarantees first place in the conference. 10-6 has a solid shot to win the conference and almost definitely puts someone in the top 2 seeds

we have a talented team that, so far, has struggled to find a consistent rhythm and identity. that makes us VERY MUCH like basically every other team in our conference. it is safe to say that there is NOT a great team in our conference this year, but there are no pushovers either. you say we are playing bottom half teams. i will say according to the current standings, every remaining team on our schedule is no worse than 5th place in the league


winning both the league and the SLT would be a solid accomplishment for this season. The Jacks or any other Summit team will be big underdogs against any NCAA opponent, but if we can improve every gam the rest of the way and be able to say that we are playing our best basketball of the season at the end of the season, I can live with that! everyone knows that crazy things happen in the NCAA. sometimes teams that dont look great on paper get hot at the right time

Agree that anyone in the conference can beat anyone else and it wouldn't be considered an upset, especially on the road. We only need to look back two weeks when last place USD came into Frost and took the game right down to the wire.

[OldHare]

By the end of Saturday we will know if the Jackrabbits can get focused and play a bit better on the road. They need to steal an extra road game to remedy the home loss. 12-4 or 13-3 is the way to finish the year. The end against ORU showed the ability to finish a win. The second half also showed the ability to take care of the ball and avoid turnovers.

[LetsGoRabbits]

By the end of Saturday we will know if the Jackrabbits can get focused and play a bit better on the road. They need to steal an extra road game to remedy the home loss. 12-4 or 13-3 is the way to finish the year. The end against ORU showed the ability to finish a win. The second half also showed the ability to take care of the ball and avoid turnovers.

Are you saying this from the standpoint of establishing momentum going into the postseason? if that is the case then yes i agree with you. we currently have a 2 game win streak. to go 13-3 would mean going undefeated the remainder of the regular season and finishing on an 8 game W streak. obviously 12-4 means ending the regular season winning 7 or the final 8

that type of momentum would seem to be good and give the team and fans some confidence going into the summit and possibly beyond

but from STRICTLY the standpoint of winning the conference, as I said before, there is a very solid chance that a 10-6 record gets the job done. again, I reaize going 3-3 down the homestretch does very little to inspire confidence, but it could definitely get the job done, winning the conference wise

5 of 9 teams ALREADY have 6 losses. so unless you think one or more of them will go the remainder of the season unbeaten, we could lose 3 games and finish ahead of all of them. and I DO NOT think any of those teams will win out. meaning i feel very confident we will finish ahead of all of them

two more teams, St Thomas and NDSU already have 5 losses. we play St Thomas at home. that better be their 6th loss and would also give us the H2H tie breaker in case that is the only game they lose (doubtful) we also play NDSU. that will be a tough game. i am not making any guarantees of a road win in Fargo. we all know the history of these two teams. but i do not believe the bison go undefeated the rest of the way. if they lose one more game, i feel like the best they can hope for is us to lose 3. that puts us in a tie, most likely for the top 2 seeds.

I would say it is very important that we win at least one of the two games in ND the final week

anyway, the point is that over half the conference already has 6 losses and 7 of 9 teams already have 5 or more losses. meaning if we go 4 and 2 the rest of the way and finish at 11-5 we just need STU and NDSU to drop at least one game each and we could finish no worse than second

so if you were speaking about momentum, i am with you!! i would like to win out and start looking like a dangerous NCAA matchup. unfortunately, i still think the SLT is gonna be a crapshoot. even if we get hot and finish 13-3 as you wish, I think if you played the SLT 15 times you have a solid chance of getting 8 of the 9 teams to win it at least once

i think USD is probably the clear bottom team in the league and they can DEFINITELY beat anyone in a one game playoff. i have serious doubts about them getting hot enough to win 3 or 4 in a row, but i am not gonna say it is impossible!!! the other 8 teams have all had at least a stretch of games where they looked like the best team or could make an argument for it.

[Southeast]

KC and Omaha are bottom half teams in the conference.
Winning on the road is hard but 2-0 should be expected.

Need this as the last 4 will be difficult!

True, they’re “bottom half”, but they’re both also only 1/2 game behind NDSU (4th) and just 2.5 away from us.

It’s certainly possible, but this year, “expecting” a 2-0 road trip on the men’s side is nuts. We’re only 4.5 pt favorites at KC and Fidler is a nightmare for a team that allows a lot of 3’s.

6 games to go with 4 on the road. 4-2 should be be good enough for a top-2 seed.

[wcbsas]

bottom half is slightly misleading. they are in a 4 way tie for 5th place along with ORU and Denver. everyone probably recalls we lost to both those schools as the away team. on top of that KC just finished a road trip where they took NDSU to OT and beat first place UND by twenty.

you are correct 5th place technically is in the bottom half of a nine team league, but i am not sure people usually look at a 5th place team as someone you should almost automatically expect to beat.

so anyway, I hope you are correct, but EXPECT seems pretty strong. both KC and UNO have proven that they can beat anyone. UNO beat both UND and Denver by nearly 20 points. KC, as i already said, beat UND by 20 in their last game. I am not saying they are great basketball teams they are both slightly below 500, but I think it is fair to say that they are both competitive

If we win both remaining home games and split the 4 road games, that puts us at 11-5. as long as NDSU loses at least one more game, 11-5 puts us no worse than the 2 seed. IF UND loses one of their remaining games 11-5 would put us in a first place tie with UND. obviously we already have one win against them, so at worst we will split the season series.

can we use the word EXPECT, regarding our chances to go 4 and 2 the rest of the way? I would like to believe that we could, but I am not sure we can honestly say that the fellas have done anything consistently enough YET that we can have a very solid idea what we can expect.

My hope is we continue to play well and we continue to improve every time out the rest of the way.

From my perspective 11-5 almost guarantees first place in the conference. 10-6 has a solid shot to win the conference and almost definitely puts someone in the top 2 seeds

we have a talented team that, so far, has struggled to find a consistent rhythm and identity. that makes us VERY MUCH like basically every other team in our conference. it is safe to say that there is NOT a great team in our conference this year, but there are no pushovers either. you say we are playing bottom half teams. i will say according to the current standings, every remaining team on our schedule is no worse than 5th place in the league


winning both the league and the SLT would be a solid accomplishment for this season. The Jacks or any other Summit team will be big underdogs against any NCAA opponent, but if we can improve every gam the rest of the way and be able to say that we are playing our best basketball of the season at the end of the season, I can live with that! everyone knows that crazy things happen in the NCAA. sometimes teams that dont look great on paper get hot at the right time

If anyone "expects" this team to win conference, at a minimum finish in the top 2 ... if anyone "expects" this team to win the SLT and make the NCAA tournament ... then winning both these road games are a necessity. Especially with the tough 4 game stretch to finish the season.

RIGHT NOW ... what are your expectations?

I am sure that the word "expect" is driving a lot of this discussion ... for me ... I do expect the Jacks to win the regular season conference, I do expect them to be playing for the SLT championship.

Is it possible they do NOT achieve either of those goals ... sure ... but IMO to achieve those two goals it is almost imperative that they go 2-0 on this road trip!

[Southeast]

Right, “expect” could have different definitions. To me, it’s very similar to “predict” - what I expect will happen.

I expect the team will finish 3-3 in their last 6 games, finish 3rd to 4th in the standings, and have about a 45% chance of making it to the finals in SF.

From what I’ve seen, the tiny talent gap between 9th and 1st is not enough to be any more confident than that.

[LetsGoRabbits]

If anyone "expects" this team to win conference, at a minimum finish in the top 2 ... if anyone "expects" this team to win the SLT and make the NCAA tournament ... then winning both these road games are a necessity. Especially with the tough 4 game stretch to finish the season.

RIGHT NOW ... what are your expectations?

I am sure that the word "expect" is driving a lot of this discussion ... for me ... I do expect the Jacks to win the regular season conference, I do expect them to be playing for the SLT championship.

Is it possible they do NOT achieve either of those goals ... sure ... but IMO to achieve those two goals it is almost imperative that they go 2-0 on this road trip!

i feel like there are 2 conversations here

one is what does the word expect mean-
it means you believe something is LIKELY to happen
does that lead to another conversation about what does the word likely mean

obviously every individual can have a different understanding of pretty much every single word in the english, or any other, language

SO what i believe is that the Jacks still can win the league. i believe they can win the SLT also. i also believe winning both of those in the same year is difficult and uncommon!!! and the Summit league this year has 8 teams that are basically going to play coin flip games against everyone else in that group. I think USD is a bit behind the other 8, but they are still definitely capable of beating anyone!!

in a year like that, I BELIEVE it is even more unlikely for one team to win both. NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE i would say

that is what i believe
what do i expect?
maybe a good way to think of it is- if you REALLY expect something to happen, you should be willing to bet something on the outcome that would be uncomfortable for you to lose

well I am not a gambler at all, but I would not bet anything on a single remaining game for the Jacks or any other Summit team this season. OBVIOUSLY, then i would be even less likely to bet on ONE TEAM, the Jacks or any other Summit team to win a 3 or 4 game tournament

the second conversation is how important are the games this week?

both OH and wcbsas have pretty much said that the Jacks MUST win the games this week? if you mean for momentum, it could definitely be helpful. but it is obvious that they can lose both games and remain mathematically able to win the conference

BY THE MATH- 5 teams already have 6 losses
unless you think one of them will go undefeated the rest of the way (almost impossible to beleive) then all of those teams are OUT of contention for league champs

that leaves ONLY 4 teams with a chance to win the league
Jacks 4 losses
UND 4 losses
NDSU 5 losses
St Thomas 5 losses

the Jacks still have games against all 3 of those teams. those are VERY EASILY the 3 most important games remaining for the Jacks. IF we win those 3 then is is already IMPOSSIBLE for St Thomas to finish ahead of us. if we beat them they have 6 losses and even if we lose the other 2 games we also have 6 losses and beat them both times for the tie breaker

that would also give the bison 6 losses. i would be willing to bet a little ( NOT a lot but a little) that the bison will lose one other game also giving them at least 7 losses. if they win ALL their games except the one agains us we still finish in a tie. also split H2H so it comes to the other tie breakers

IF we finish tied with the bison with 10-6 records that AUTOMATICALLY means that they did beat UND. so we would be in either a 2 or 3 way tie for first. i am not going to guarantee it!!! but i am pretty sure we win the tiebreakers in a 3 way tie. we also win the tiebreakers with the bison as long as we beat UND

does that make it clear enough?
if we win the 3 games vs UND, NDSU, St Thomas the only team that really has any chance to beat us in the league race is UND and in that scenario, we still get the 2 seed

so that is why i do not understand why people are saying we HAD TO WIN this week? for momentum? OK but it is absolutely NOT true that we NEED to win these games to win the league

[ND-fan]

Interesting logic on who will win the conference and some I can agree with and some I am troubled with. I think this weekend is going to set who are the teams who will be contention for final games of regular season. I think Und game with ORU is critical for them if they win they are 9-4 with three games left and will be for sure tied for first place with 3 games to go and two of them at home. Definitely in good position win the conference. NDSU if they win gets them to 7-5 and they appear to be peaking again at the right time of the season and there style of playing good defense is how you win championships. Second they play all teams ahead of them down stretch at home good position to be in. SDSU now needs to win also stay with Und and at top of the conference. They like NDSU play all contenders but only play St. Thomas at home but they then have to go on the road but have to finish at both ND schools plus you have to play Denver a dangerous team. I think by far toughest remaining schedule because of playing two of contenders on road and looking at your conference road record. Then there is St. Thomas who plays SDSU and NDSU on the road and having Omaha and Denver at home. This team I have no feeling how they will finish but they are very capable of winning this but I just don’t think they are cable of winning out which I think they have to do. I think that 3 Dakota schools will end up finishing in top two spots with two of them either tied at first or second. But if these teams loose this weekend then anybody could win the conference which wouldn’t surprise me either but I wouldn’t be as confident as some here how this is going to end for conference because I think it’s going to be setlled on court. The conference tournament anyone of nine teams could win the tournament. This conference has reached parity in men’s basketball and by look of it with transfer portal this maybe new normal.

[LetsGoRabbits]

Interesting logic on who will win the conference and some I can agree with and some I am troubled with. I think this weekend is going to set who are the teams who will be contention for final games of regular season. I think Und game with ORU is critical for them if they win they are 9-4 with three games left and will be for sure tied for first place with 3 games to go and two of them at home. Definitely in good position win the conference. NDSU if they win gets them to 7-5 and they appear to be peaking again at the right time of the season and there style of playing good defense is how you win championships. Second they play all teams ahead of them down stretch at home good position to be in. SDSU now needs to win also stay with Und and at top of the conference. They like NDSU play all contenders but only play St. Thomas at home but they then have to go on the road but have to finish at both ND schools plus you have to play Denver a dangerous team. I think by far toughest remaining schedule because of playing two of contenders on road and looking at your conference road record. Then there is St. Thomas who plays SDSU and NDSU on the road and having Omaha and Denver at home. This team I have no feeling how they will finish but they are very capable of winning this but I just don’t think they are cable of winning out which I think they have to do. I think that 3 Dakota schools will end up finishing in top two spots with two of them either tied at first or second. But if these teams loose this weekend then anybody could win the conference which wouldn’t surprise me either but I wouldn’t be as confident as some here how this is going to end for conference because I think it’s going to be setlled on court. The conference tournament anyone of nine teams could win the tournament. This conference has reached parity in men’s basketball and by look of it with transfer portal this maybe new normal.

well if you read what i have been writing, i have never made anything close to a guarantee about the Jacks winning anything. I have said if they go 4-2 in the last 6 they will very likely be the champs. but in the next sentence i said, that we (the Jacks) have been far too inconsistent so far this year to make any promises about the ability to go 4-2

i also said the 3 MOST important games for us are the games against the other teams in the top 4 spots. UND, NDSU, and St Thomas. i did not go into the fact that we play both ND schools on the road, because i already catch enough crap for the length of my posts. i actually do think about things that i do not include in my posts. that said NDSU beat the Jacks in Frost and the Jacks are EVERY BIT as capable of returning the favor in Fargo

both the games of the final weekend will be basically coin flip games. where they are played is not gonna make that much difference, again like we already saw with the Bison winning in Brookings

UND plays by far their most important 3 games of the season beginning tomorrow!! if they win on the road vs ORU they are going to be in a solid position to finish with no more than 6 losses and almost guarantee a spot in the top 2 seeds. that said they still go on the road to Fargo and host the Jacks. you said the Jacks have two tough road games. so does UND

i could absolutely definitely be wrong- and i would NOT put money on the game!!!! but if someone told me i MUST make my pick for UND vs ORU tomorrow, i have to lean a bit toward ORU

if i am honest, it is very easy to imagine UND losing the next 3 games. i am not saying they will!!! but it is a DEFINITE possibility

i will say i totally agree with you, SDSU, UND, NDSU are by far the most likely top 3 teams at the end of the regular season.

[MontanaRabbit]

This conference has reached parity in mens basketball and by look of it with transfer portal this maybe new normal.

I hope not. The conference is terrible this year.

[AZjack]

I only tune in sparingly to the men's games, just not good basketball. This has to be the worst year for SL Men's hoops since we have joined the league.