A Sea Of Red

We were chosen as the favorites to win CUSA in the preseason poll. Is it strange that I would've preferred to not have those kind of expectations in year 1? We have a lot of talent but have never played this tough of a schedule before so who knows how we will handle it.

Ill flame wrote:

We were chosen as the favorites to win CUSA in the preseason poll. Is it strange that I would've preferred to not have those kind of expectations in year 1? We have a lot of talent but have never played this tough of a schedule before so who knows how we will handle it.

I agree, although it seems like the top four were probably a bit of a tossup. Four teams with first place votes. Liberty has five of those, but still isn't a clear #1 - meaning they were likely #3 or below on at least several ballots. With portal volatility especially present on small rosters like basketball, I'm not going to put any stock into preseason polls.

Ill flame wrote: ↑October 13th, 2023, 1:00 pm

We were chosen as the favorites to win CUSA in the preseason poll. Is it strange that I would've preferred to not have those kind of expectations in year 1? We have a lot of talent but have never played this tough of a schedule before so who knows how we will handle it.

BPI has us far ahead of the rest of the conference to start the season. We sit at 76 whereas MTSU is at 113. The average ranking in CUSA is 167 whereas the average ranking of the A-Sun is 198. That being said, both FGCU and Eastern Kentucky are projected to be better than any of our CUSA peers.

It's not going to be so easy to put up a gaudy record for us as there is only one team in the 200s (Jax State) in CUSA whereas the ASUN has half the conference in the 200s.

BPI has us finishing 20.7-8.3 with a 63% chance of winning the conference. It'll be interesting to see how we adjust in the post Darius era. A lot more ball to go around.

Liberty receives 7 votes in AP.
https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-25-colleg ... tball-poll

Early season projections in the portal era are close to meaningless aside from the elites. But I am loving seeing how we are stacking up already this season.

Kricket wrote: ↑November 6th, 2023, 4:43 pm BPI has us far ahead of the rest of the conference to start the season. We sit at 76 whereas MTSU is at 113. The average ranking in CUSA is 167 whereas the average ranking of the A-Sun is 198. That being said, both FGCU and Eastern Kentucky are projected to be better than any of our CUSA peers.

It's not going to be so easy to put up a gaudy record for us as there is only one team in the 200s (Jax State) in CUSA whereas the ASUN has half the conference in the 200s.

BPI has us finishing 20.7-8.3 with a 63% chance of winning the conference. It'll be interesting to see how we adjust in the post Darius era. A lot more ball to go around.

Let's hope Liberty finishes better than 21-8 on the season. Would love to see a 25-win season with only 4 losses. That would be impressive. Where would those losses come from? Some of our most challenging opponents we faced were in the Myrtle Beach Tournament.

Would love to know from the basketball junkies on this board where they believe the losses will come from on our schedule.

Geraldos Mustache wrote:

Kricket wrote: ↑November 6th, 2023, 4:43 pm BPI has us far ahead of the rest of the conference to start the season. We sit at 76 whereas MTSU is at 113. The average ranking in CUSA is 167 whereas the average ranking of the A-Sun is 198. That being said, both FGCU and Eastern Kentucky are projected to be better than any of our CUSA peers.

It's not going to be so easy to put up a gaudy record for us as there is only one team in the 200s (Jax State) in CUSA whereas the ASUN has half the conference in the 200s.

BPI has us finishing 20.7-8.3 with a 63% chance of winning the conference. It'll be interesting to see how we adjust in the post Darius era. A lot more ball to go around.

Let's hope Liberty finishes better than 21-8 on the season. Would love to see a 25-win season with only 4 losses. That would be impressive. Where would those losses come from? Some of our most challenging opponents we faced were in the Myrtle Beach Tournament.

Would love to know from the basketball junkies on this board where they believe the losses will come from on our schedule.

Because it's a slow Monday... Liberty is now 5-0 and those projections have changed. We now are 52 in the BPI, and have a projections of 25.1-5.9. We also now have a 84.7% chance of winning the conference. There's only one game that BPI doesn't predict us being favored in (@FAU). We actually show greater than 50% in beating #17 Alabama, so it all comes down likelihood of losing rather than simply looking at who we'd be underdogs against.

Great job pulling up those numbers. FAU & the Tide are the obvious challenges on our schedule. But once you get in conference action, any road game has the potential to be an L if we aren't bringing at least our B-game.

Sly Fox wrote: ↑November 20th, 2023, 4:05 pm Great job pulling up those numbers. FAU & the Tide are the obvious challenges on our schedule. But once you get in conference action, any road game has the potential to be an L if we aren't bringing at least our B-game.

Exactly, winning is hard, even against teams you should beat. That's the reason that our SOR is #12 already in basketball and #15 in football. There are a lot of teams that are better than every team we had on our schedule but not many would execute being undefeated thus far.

Did I not read somewhere we played JMU in a secret scrimmage prior to season starting and won? If so, pretty dang impressive considering how good JMU looks too. I swear I read that somewhere haha

Liberty22 wrote: ↑November 23rd, 2023, 2:06 am Did I not read somewhere we played JMU in a secret scrimmage prior to season starting and won? If so, pretty dang impressive considering how good JMU looks too. I swear I read that somewhere haha

That is correct

That was in the rumor mill so I don’t know that it ever was publicly discussed. Now that the cat is out of the bag, I think it said that we not only won but looked dang good doing it.

We will let this be an advertisement for those who don’t subscribe to ASOR to do so!

Was it ever that secret? We also played one against Virginia Tech.

https://burnerball.com/secret-scrimmage-list/

Ill flame wrote: ↑November 23rd, 2023, 10:06 am Was it ever that secret? We also played one against Virginia Tech.

https://burnerball.com/secret-scrimmage-list/

Well, you did just post a link to a “secret scrimmage” list, so I suppose it depends on how you define secret?

Too bad that scrimmage wasn’t public as an actual game. We’d be the ranked team right now. Beating the team that beat MSU.

Imagine if Liberty beats FAU...
Then wins the remainder of their games ahead of the Alabama game. Liberty would actually be 13-0 going into the Bama game. How awesome would that be!

Even if we lose to FAU, going 12-1 into the Bama game would still be impressive! What a great season this is shaping up to be!

We didn't just beat JMU, some would say it was a blood bath

Man I’d love to know that score haha

Update to BPI is that we are 77. This is where we started the year at. Of course our resume is on the 120s meaning our record is much worse than the team is, but basically this team has performed as expected.

The BPI predictor has us finishing second in conference and a decent shot at making the tournament although La Tech is the favorite slightly over us. (They are 76 in the BPI).

Kricket wrote: ↑February 11th, 2024, 8:42 am Update to BPI is that we are 77. This is where we started the year at. Of course our resume is on the 120s meaning our record is much worse than the team is, but basically this team has performed as expected.

The BPI predictor has us finishing second in conference and a decent shot at making the tournament although La Tech is the favorite slightly over us. (They are 76 in the BPI).

This post did not age well. That's not your fault, Kricket...

Liberty is now 6th place in a 9-team conference. Not good. The loss in our most recent game to last place FIU is a bad look. Liberty has won just one of seven road games in conference. Yikes!

I have no reason to believe the Flames will perform well in the conference tournament. My only hope is that the players and coaching staff learn a lot from this season and use the disappointments to catapult to success next year.

The season isn’t over. We dropped to 90 in the BPI. We can’t finish 2nd at this point but 3rd is a possibility and maybe a probability at this point.

The sky is a bit cloudy but not falling.

Geraldos Mustache wrote: ↑February 27th, 2024, 11:13 am

Kricket wrote: ↑February 11th, 2024, 8:42 am Update to BPI is that we are 77. This is where we started the year at. Of course our resume is on the 120s meaning our record is much worse than the team is, but basically this team has performed as expected.

The BPI predictor has us finishing second in conference and a decent shot at making the tournament although La Tech is the favorite slightly over us. (They are 76 in the BPI).

This post did not age well. That's not your fault, Kricket...

Liberty is now 6th place in a 9-team conference. Not good. The loss in our most recent game to last place FIU is a bad look. Liberty has won just one of seven road games in conference. Yikes!

I have no reason to believe the Flames will perform well in the conference tournament. My only hope is that the players and coaching staff learn a lot from this season and use the disappointments to catapult to success next year.

1-7 on the road in conference is certainly not what we are accustomed to, but it is not at all atypical in the ASUN this year. Toughest conference in the NCAA to win on the road.

As far as the tourney is concerned, keep in mind, it is on a neutral court. While the final results have not been what we would want, we have demonstrated we can compete with the top teams. We also have more experience in neutral court games than most because of all the tournaments/classics we played in pre-conference (and did very well in).

This team is getting worst. I like the two guards that LU has. They are good for what they are but unfortunately, they are undersized and cannot keep up with the bigger players in a D1 competition. We have seen this all season. It is time for a huge change next year. The team needs taller, bigger, and better athletic guards to actually defend the opponents. The team cannot go on with these guards in the next two years.

I'm glad someone is acknowledging a change is needed. I love mccay as a person and coach, but change in recruiting is needed or this will continue to be the normal. Football is recruiting at a much higher level and producing results.Mccay also needs to take risk recruiting kids that have greater athletic abilities and height. I believe Salter is a good example, he was a kid with character issues and was still recruited to LU and has had great success for football. We have a much larger budget than these schools we continue to loose too.