Did anyone else find the "resume builder" win questions Russ had for Groce in the post game interview a bit disconcerting?

Yes they were in the context of our NCAA tournament resume. Not Groce's coaching resume.

Spot on thoughts in my opinion Wes.  The only thing I'd add is it's good to have the publicity of the at-large talk if we get it.

Quite frankly, with Ohio's start this year I'd be very disappointed if we didn't make it to the Big Dance. If, and I mean a big if, we can start the conference season at 13-1, win the MAC and it's tournament, could we really obtain a 5th or 6th seeding in the brackets? Way too premature to talk about that now, I know, just fantasizing.

Anyway, even with our start winning the MAC will be very, very difficult. Kent State won last night against St. Peter's on the road and sit at 8-1 themselves. And Akron is deep (but inconsistent right now).

Question: right now, are we the best college basketball team in Ohio? Maybe....

Kent is also a little short-handed right now. Manns didn't make the trip for disciplinary reasons and Porrini saw limited action due to a foot injury.

I like Ohio and all, but Ohio State? Xavier? I like to think we are a solid #3 team in Ohio right now, but even that could be debated. A lot of solid teams this year in our state.

Donuts and Cat4ever:

You are displaying common sense.  There is no place for any of that on this board.  Cease and desist immediately.  You also said something nice about tOSU.  You shall now be hated forever.

We should win our next 3 games.  13-1 would be great.  At that point, throw our record away.  The season begins at 4PM in Bowling Green on January 7th.

With a healthy Jared Sullinger, I agree with you-at that point OSU is Top 5 material. But my point is that right now, at this very moment Ohio's as hot as any team in Ohio and I'd love it if we were to play OSU right now. I think it would be a close game (at least on a neutral court :).

Xavier is outstanding and I love Gary Waters, but Cleveland State is somewhat inconsistent; they should have just beaten South Florida on the road and lost. According to Waters his team just didn't show up for that game. I think we're better than Cinci and Dayton.

I still think our toughest competition will be in the conference. Injuries happen, teams play tougher than it would otherwise appear on paper, etc. The conference season is just an absolute grind. I do think we're up to it and can win it.

Ohio State
Xavier
Ohio
Cleveland State
Kent State
Dayton
Akron
Cincinnati
Wright State
Miami
Bowling Green
Toledo
Youngstown State

Feel free to pick those rankings apart. Only actually seen like half these teams play this year.

An interesting conversation point.  I think there's no question that with a healthy Sullinger, we'd have a real hard time with OSU simply because we would have massive matchup problems.  Reg is the only one who can matchup size wise.  Had this conversation with a buddy that's a tOSU grad the other day.  I believe without Sully, we can hang with them.  The same type of scenario can be shown for a lot of teams in the above "rankings". 

UC and X have a lot of big bodies that would cause us matchup problems.  XU, with their "gangsta" guards, and Freese, are very good no matter how much I dislike them.  UC, while not overly impressive so far, has a lot of size, and good athletes that would give us a tough game. They're better than you're giving them credit for here.  I don't think there's any way that Dayton, Cleveland State or Akron beat UC most of the time.

I know nothing more about Dayton than anyone else here, but they are young this year and on a neutral floor, we beat them most times.  Not sure about at UD Arena though - tough place to play.

On last thing - Miami is better than Wright State based on what I've seen of them both.  WSU doesn't have much without Mays.

6 PM...For the record.

The reason we didn't get a bid that year is partly because Ball State won the tournament and Miami beat us twice - so Ball State got the automatic bid, Miami got an at-large bid and we went to the Post season NIT - at the time people said all we had to do was win the quarterfinal game against Eastern Michigan and we were in but we couldn't even do that - the reason that team didn't get in is because we finished the season something like 10-10 - as much as it sucked we played our way out of the tournament...

Got it, thanks!