I'm Looking At You: You're On Thin Ice, Rivals

B-dowd posted this link on Twitter last night, which is Rivals' current college basketball Top 25. Now, obviously, a college basketball Top 25 in May is always fraught with uncertainty, as well as conjecture. Sure, that's normal and completely acceptable.

But then you have rankings like this nonsense and, well, it begins to make me angry.

For thos of you too lazy or uncoordinated to click through and read the story, here are the rankings:

1. North Carolina

2. Kentucky
3. Ohio State
4. Duke
5. Syracuse
6. Vanderbilt
7. Louisville
8. Pittsburgh
9. Memphis
10. Arizona
11. Kansas
12. Florida
13. Connecticut
14. Wisconsin
15. Baylor
16. Alabama
17. Michigan State
18. Xavier
19. Temple
20. Texas A&M
21. Gonzaga
22. California
23. New Mexico
24. Wichita State
25. Mississippi State

Notice anyone missing? How about the team that was in the top 15 all season in '10-'11 and was one of only two teams to take down OSU in the regular season? Isn't this not only disrespectful to Purdue, but also to Matt Painter? And as we've mentioned before, if losing Robbie Hummel last season cost the Boilers 20-ish spots in most polls, shouldn't his return be good for, say, ten?  No? Oh, okay.

Seriously, who wrote this? My wife? Wait, bad example, she won the BS Bracket Extravaganza. So she probably could have done better!

So Wichita State is a better team going into 2011-2012 than Purdue? Is that what you're saying, Rivals?

And if you want to get down into the weeds, it's not just about Purdue being disrespected (again). How about these gems?

Wisconsin at #14 -- You  guys know Leuer is gone, right? I know Jordan Taylor is good, but hey, still having some talented players isn't enough to get the Boilermakers ranked.

MSU at #17 -- This is inexcusable. Absolutely brain-dead ranking. I think even most Spartan fans would acknowledge that with the way this past season went, MSU should have to prove they're not a paper tiger going forward. I agree that you should never count out Izzo and company. But last season was an unmitigated disaster. The Spartans barely made the NCAA tournament and then got immediately bounced in the first round. But they're 17th right now? Disgraceful.

Memphis at #9 -- Memphis barely won their conference tournament. That's Conference USA, for those of you wondering. The conference they finished fourth place in. I know it sounds snooty to look down on C-USA, but hey, it's warranted. The Tigers owned this conference under Calipari and I guess people simply want to rank Memphis high because of muscle memory. They went 10-6 in a truly mediocre conference, then eked out a one point win in the conference tourney final (the only time they led) and then went down in the first round like B-Dowd on a Saturday night. Everyone in the media so badly wants Josh Pastner to succeed and be the boy wonder they all anointed him when he took over. This just in: He's not Brad Stevens, folks. And if Memphis doesn't squeak out that one-point win over UTEP in the conference tourney, they don't make the NCAAs and maybe people do start questioning Pastner. But since they did make it in, here they are at #9. And don't give me recruiting class garbage -- they need to start proving it on the court before any sane person can say they're the 9th-best team in the nation. I don't give a damn if it is May.

Alabama at #16 -- Here's another one where the media just really wants a guy to succeed, so they're going to help him. Anthony Grant has done a decent job there, no doubt, but his next NCAA tournament game will be his first. He couldn't get his Crimson Tide into the tourney, despite playing in the horrendous SEC West, which is basically Conference-USA East. 'Bama's last NCAA foray, in fact, was 2006, six seasons ago, back when Davis was only 12 years old. (I kid, I kid.) Regardless, this Alabama team that everyone wants so badly to see succeed got into the NIT and went all the way....to the finals, where they lost to Witchita State. So yeah, they're still the same team they were. Wake me when they make a tourney.

We also see Gonzaga checking in at 19, still coasting off their upstart success more than a decade ago. Seriously, what has that program ever done? They're not a Cinderella anymore...they don't play in a big time conference...and they don't make Final Fours. But hell yeah, let's keep ranking them year after year because sportswriters like to recycle stories about Mark Few and his upstart band of castoffs from the west.

The top 10 is otherwise basically the usual suspects, although I do find Vandy at 6 kind of hilarious. When last we left Vandy, they were doing what they always do -- not performing up to expectations. The Commodores put together a stellar 9-7 SEC conference record, then flopped on their faces against 12-seed Richmond, which everyone in the world saw coming. Also, just to continue poking with a stick, their last three tourney appearances? First round losses to Siena, Murray State and Richmond. Well-done, Commodores. And for your continued success, let us here at Rivals award you with a top 6 ranking. Enjoy it! May is the only time you'll be ranked this high!

And yes, for those of you trolling our site to hate on Purdue, the Boilers also lost early in the tournament, for which we were quite hard on them. They did not perform up to expectations, for reasons that are still perplexing. However, that said, they lost -- once again -- to a Final Four team. Michigan State, for example, lost to UCLA.

But hey, they have Tom Izzo! He pleads with officials a lot! And he's short and scrappy! And he's a good interview, right media? Yay!

When I rant against the media, I'm sometimes told by readers to not let this stuff bother me, etc., yadda yadda. Well, for one thing, I've already explained why I have an issue with lazy, terrible sports reporting. And in this particular case, we're not talking about Andy Katz' poorly informed opinions, or Dick Vitale's brainless, neuron spasms. We're talking about Rivals, a site that many of us respect for the careful work they do. This top 25 should be put into a trash compactor and then the house the trash compactor is in should be burned down. It's that effing stupid.

Even for May.

Respect and Silence...Wednesday Gumbo

Oakland has decided to follow the Butler model and play some absolute monsters in their pre-conference schedule. The debate will perpetually be is a good loss better than a bad win- I'd argue that any win is better than a loss in this day and age. But, no one can deny that a win versus a ranked team is very helpful to a mid-major in the long run.

Our boilers struggled for about 25 minutes with Oakland before putting them away. MSU barely scratched out a win. But last night, Oakland got over the hump versus Tennessee.

For those keeping score at home, that's Tennessee's second loss versus a common opponent with Purdue. Granted, one of those doesn't count, but that doesn't mean I'm forced to forget it. Tennessee is 7th, Purdue is 19th. And I understand the point about Purdue's lack of difficult opponents. But, let's look at a few other ranked team's schedules, shall we-

Villanova has only played one ranked team- they lost. They've only played one other big conference team (UCLA)- The Wildcats are 10th.

UConn skyrocketed up the charts by beating a then-undefeated MSU team (now has three losses) and followed it by beating an undefeated UK team (now has two losses). So they went from un-ranked to top-10 in two weeks. If you watched Kentucky, you can see they're a typical SEC team (read as not very good). MSU will be good, but Izzo's gotta tear 'em down first. UConn's 4th.

Illinois is 12th. Their quality wins, I guess, are against unranked, 3-loss UNC, and unranked, 5-loss Gonzaga. They beat Oakland by 11...Purdue beat them by 15. They beat SIU by 21 at home, Purdue beat SIU at a neutral (and empty) site by 19.

In all seriousness, look at the top-10. Outside of Duke's dominance of nearly all of its opponents, everyone's looked shaky at times this season...and very few teams have played more than 2 major conference opponents. Much like in football, it'd probably behoove everyone for rankings not to come out until a month into the season. But, unlike football, it'll all come out in the wash as they actually decide who's the best on the court.

Purdue's schedule is definitely detrimental, but, they Boilers have beaten their opponents by an average of around 20 points. And, their one loss comes to a team that is now receiving votes and will most-definitely be ranked in the next few weeks. I'm sure Purdue's permanent place at 18 or 19 in polls won't be affected though.

Silence

If you haven't seen this, here is one of the most-unique, if not cool traditions in college sports. The small Christian college, Taylor does something that most of the lower bowl in Mackey would like to do each game- watch in utter silence (at least for part of the contest).

Check it out.

A Watershed Moment?

(Note to the reader: This post is longer than normal...but read it in chunks if you don't have time to read it in its entirety...Then, let us know your thoughts...I think we're witnessing a critical period of time for Danny Hope's coaching staff)

In 2009, Purdue fans were in an optimistic mood. Almost everybody, including Joe Tiller, was ready for a change following the '08 season. We all knew Hope was an emotional guy...a high-energy guy. We all liked that too. After years of watching a stoic coach hold a stop watch, crunch on ice chips, hold his nose at the refs and complain about the disparity between Purdue and the cream of the conference, it was good to see something fresh.

And we saw something new last season. We saw a team that was a seemingly-manic as its coach. Coach Tiller was never too high, never too low. Coach Hope is a red ass when angry and happy like a little kid after a big victory. Football should be an emotional game...I like that emotion. I still think that personality type was what the program needed, especially after the last few seasons of JT's time in West Lafayette.

That said, I have to be fair and look critically at what we've been witnessing the last two seasons...and it's worse than not good. Possibly more disparaging, Things are going backwards...and it has little to do with injuries, in my opinion. The optimism for this coaching staff among the fan base seems to be waning.

Offensive Woes
Everyone reading understands the painful reality the Purdue football team's attrition has probably brought to the coaching staff. But, injuries to skilled players have no effect on the offensive line. This offensive line, at times, has looked as bad as any I've seen since Akers was coaching at Purdue. Colletto's lines were generally powerful...but slow. Tiller's lines (even the least talent-laden) were generally lean, but very skilled at protecting for the spread system. But Coach Hope's second offensive line seems to be months away from being ready. On paper, they're formidable- tall, long arms, great strength and weight. But, in person, versus less-than stellar competition, this unit seems to be manhandled regularly. The problem starts there...the OLine is Hope's baby...and his baby is kinda ugly right now.

Make no mistake, I'm not blaming Robert Marve's current injury on that line. But he was hit a ton the first few games. Granted, some of that was because he refused to get rid of the ball...but some was because he was simply running for his life as soon as the ball was moved. Today in the second half, they seemed to wear down Toledo and blew open some substantial holes...but this wasn't aOSU or Wisconsin they were facing. In the BT, it wearing a team down as the game goes on will become less and less likely. I have friends that say Bolden and Smith's losses are a difference of two or three games. They might be right, might be wrong. But, experts say that games are won in the trenches...in that case you can see why Purdue's offense is struggling to find an identity and has not yet found a rhythm.

Atop that, the play-calling has been horrible. The draw has been the mainstay this season from Coach Nord, next, a ton of reverses to the short side of the field...and for the life of me, I can't understand why the coaching staff keeps going to these dry wells. These plays have yielded very-limited success...and more-notably, have helped Purdue become one of the less-potent offenses in the nation. The 1-2-3-4 First Down Chant might need to be shelved for a while, in my opinion. The whole point of that was to demonstrate the frustrating nature of the way Purdue's offenses would rack up yards and first downs a they'd march down the field. This simply doesn't happen with regularity this season. Purdue has had more three and outs than their competition this season. Let that sink in- that's versus UND (who can't seem to stop anybody but Purdue), a 1-AA opponent and two MAC teams. That's flat-out awful. Do you think things will get better as the BT season commences?

Defensive Concerns
Defensively, Purdue is struggling mightily to stop third down conversions. Some other Achilles heels seem to be the dreaded tight end dumps over the middle, delay draws and running backs who simply bounce their runs outside. These problems are officially a theme...and by the way, those plays don't take a genius like the Manatee to draw up or even a wise offensive sage to spot. This was a struggle last season too. People tried to blame it on a young/unhealthy LB corps then...now, according to Hope and others, this is supposed to be one of the best units on the team...it simply doesn't look that way though.

When Purdue has needed stops most this season, they simply haven't come. When a tackle has to be made, it almost never is as opposing running backs and quarterbacks seem to have Teflon-coated jerseys on when they're needed to be brought down. These same problems have seeped into the kickoff coverage units...Mercifully, Purdue doesn't have to kickoff all that often (read above for an answer why).

Recurring Special Teams Problems
Speaking of special teams, here's what we've seen- no consistency from the punters, a pre-season all BT kicker miss routine field goals and a kickoff coverage unit that seems to wilt when needed most. Versus UND, Ball State and most recently, Toledo. This kickoff team (that's filled with starters) exhibits poor spacing and worse tackling more often than not. This gives an already beleaguered defense a short field to defend, time and time again. Keep in mind, Purdue hasn't been playing teams with deadly kick returners or Beamer-coached ST units...they've faced a mediocre UND team, a D1-AA team and two MAC teams (yes, I'm repeating for effect).

There's an old football adage that I've found to be true- bad teams always seem young. They're always awaiting the arrival of a RS player or recruit to complete the team. Good teams seem to have underclassmen who are frustratingly good and seem to start for 5 or 6 seasons. Purdue isn't the latter right now...nor were they in '09.

There's Always Something
In much of the last season, I can remember thinking,
"if only the defense could stop the run..."
"if only the DBs could stop the pass..."
"if only the quarterback could make a few deep throws and be more-consistent..."
"if only the punt and kickoff units could keep their spacing and cover more-consistently..."

"If only this team could put together a complete game."

Ahhh, wouldn't it be great? And they did a few times last season toward the end...it seemed some of the lessons learned might carry into 2010. But, we seem to be experiencing Groundhog Day all over again. Versus Notre Dame, the defense held UND relatively in check (23 points)...but the offense was a no show (12). Today versus Toledo, Purdue's offense put it together in the second half (20 points in that half alone), but the defense allowed the statistical-worst offense in the nation to make plays when as it needed to assure victory. In the middle two games both the offenses and defenses struggled at times...particularly, allowing nearly 300 yards passing against W. Ill, then going scoreless for two-straight quarters against BSU.

As a rule it seems, Danny Hope's teams have struggled mightily to make "big" plays when their backs are against the wall in the first halves of each season he's been at Purdue.

Why?
Perhaps Hope's camps haven't been as effective as they've needed to be. Perhaps the coaching staff simply doesn't game plan aggressively early on as they don't have confidence in the individual units at the beginning of the season. But whatever the case is, something needs to be done. If the offense can't score a ton of points and force opposing teams into a high-paced game that leads to mistakes...or the defense can't consistently come up with turnovers and stops as needed...or the Special Teams units cannot make tackles or produce enough points, something's gotta give. It's a team game, and since none of the individual parts seem to be dominant, the collective unit must compliment the sum...it hasn't happened yet.

What can be done?
As J said in his post-game wrap-up, we're not proponents for people calling for the firing of Hope at this point as the season should be judged in its entirety, in our opinion. But, there might be some things that can be done to send a message to everyone on staff that there will be accountability and he simply expects more from his staff. Plus, I've never been a fan of people who just talk about problems and never have any proposed solutions...sure, my solutions aren't flawless, but in my opinion, something needs to be done.

Last season, Hope spoke of the importance of the Special Teams units as he named J.B. Gibboney as the ST Coordinator. The kick coverage was bad last year...but Hope blamed that on the fact that they couldn't put the guys on the field they needed/wanted to. This season, the kick coverage is still lousy...and starters are out there playing on those units. I'm not a fan of a mid-season firing...but think Gibboney needs to be relieved of his duties and shifted within the staff...perhaps to a position's coaching role.

The next potential change would be removing the "Co" from in front of Gary Emanuel's title and make him DC...then moving Landholm into the LB coaching role. Hagen would then become ST coordinator and would also coach the DLine.

Above, you can see how critical we are of the play-calling by Nord- it's been as vanilla and uninventive as I can remember. That said, I think his hands are tied more than any other coach's due to the losses of key players.

Granted, the chance of these changes, or changes like these, happening is extremely-slim as Hope seems to be staunchly-loyal. But, the margin for error of how to attain a winning record or respectable bowl has just gotten slimmer and slimmer...and with it, the leniency among alums, the general fanbase, and ticket holders/buyers might be disappearing.

Just as the Toledo loss back in 1997 became a defining moment and rallying cry for the Tiller's team and coaching staff, we could be witnessing a similar period of time right now, if some positives can be gleaned from it. If Hope's program is to take a collective step forward it will be because of the hard lessons learned thus far, and the difficult, if not aggressive decisions made during the upcoming bye week.

A Bleak Outlook
Purdue is currently last in scoring offense, second-to-last in passing, last in kickoff returns, and tied in seventh for scoring defense all while playing the 8 most-difficult schedule thus far.

This week alone, Wisconsin scored 70 points, aOSU scored 73, UM scored 65 & MSU scored 45. Without major changes, could Purdue see one of the most lop-sided losses in recent memory in BT play? Or worse yet, could the Boilers end up in the cellar of the conference?

Games that looked like gimmes don't look like it anymore as Illinois is playing respectably and IU is flat-out playing well...Finding (at least) 4 wins in the remaining schedule, at least at this point, seems to be a bit of a pipe dream

The odds of having a winning season, or even going to a bowl game decreased drastically today following the loss to Toledo. Hope and co. simply can't wait until the end of the season to make a move...The time is now.

I'm Looking At You, Brock

Last November, I got tired of everything and finally said I was on board with a change -- it was time for old Joe Tiller to go. Sure, maybe it was partly due to the sting of losing to IU, but really, I was ready. I'd been convincing myself for years that Joe could recapture some of the magic he once had early on... but winning 7-8 games no longer felt/feels magical.

And the athletic department seemed to be on the same page with us here at BS, and announced Danny Hope would be taking over next season and that 2008 would be Joe's last. So, yeah, I decided to hop onto the train with Joe at the controls one more time and be supportive... be a good fan... I figure we owe Joe a nice send-off after what he's given us.

But yesterday's embarrassing debacle against Notre Dame has enraged me once again. As I said earlier in the week, losing to a lousy team like the Irish is far harder to stomach than losing to a talented OSU team (as we often do) or even to a team like Oregon earlier this season. Make no mistake -- Notre Dame is not good. Pickles tosses up jump balls and gets rattled easily. Our boys had two leads in the first half and clearly should have had even more. The offense wound up putting up a measly effort, but at least they moved the ball and, at times, made us feel like we had a chance no matter how poorly the defense was playing. After all, if we got into a shootout, one might expect our defense to eventually accidentally catch an errant Pickles pass and maybe that would be the break we needed.

Instead, the defense did absolutely nothing. Not one significant stop, especially in the second half. Twenty-one points allowed in the third quarter?? Inexcusable, especially against that offense. I don't care that the linebackers are inexperienced or the line isn't as big as we'd like them to be. You need to have some urgency out there and you need to make stops. ANY stops. And our defense made absolutely none. Even when Curtis and the offense brought us back a couple times, the defense immediately folded each time and allowed easy drives and nearly uncontentested touchdowns. Once again, I say, inexcusable.

I don't know what Danny Hope's plan is with regard to the coaching staff in 2009 and beyond, but I'd be 100% on board with a cleaning of the house. We don't need Tiller loyalists, for lots of reasons. We need a coaching staff that believes the way the die-hards believe. A coaching staff who will coach the personnel they get and make them believe they can accomplish big things. I don't see this defense believing that. And I'm tired of Brock Spack's mediocre defenses.