LOSSES ARE BETTER THAN WINS

The daily double is “Teams that are Not Computer Friendly” And the answer is…

According to the computers, if the season ended today this team would have no shot at at-large consideration to the NCAA tournament. A 21-5 record looks nice, but after further calculation they don’t measure up as one of the 65 best.

Who is Oral Roberts?

Correct. Should they fail to win the Mid-Continent Conference tournament, which begins on March 5, the Golden Eagles’ chances of an NCAA at-large bid won’t be in jeopardy. They just won’t exist at all.

Here is the problem. You shouldn’t need a calculator, mathematician or a course in bracketology to tell you what you can see if pull up a chair and watch the Golden Eagles. It’s not a shot at the various ranking systems. It’s more an indictment of the overall process. Perception -- as they say -- is reality and it’s become all about the numbers.

“It’s frustrating,” says Oral Roberts head coach Scott Sutton. “We have a realistic chance of winning 25 or 26 games and still not making it to the NCAA tournament. Our RPI is not as good as some others so it will come down to winning the conference tournament.”

That is the reality that Utah State had to face last season, after being upset in the semi-finals of the Big West Conference Tournament. The Aggies were ranked in the AP and ESPN/USA Today polls for the final few weeks of the regular season, but they were not invited to the dance.

Yes Utah State was ranked, which makes for a difficult comparison. But let’s compare the Golden Eagles to the media’s favorite mid-major, Vermont.

Tom Brennan’s final season in Burlington has been fun to watch. The Catamounts, who never went to the NCAA tournament prior to 2003, are in search of their third such trip in as many years. Recently Vermont’s RPI ranked among the top 20 in America. Make absolutely no mistake about it. It’s great for college basketball. But are they that much better than Oral Roberts?

Given their current spot in the RPI, ORU would need binoculars to catch a glimpse of the Catamounts. The Golden Eagles can boast wins over Saint Louis and Tulsa, but neither team has enjoyed great success in conference play so that doesn’t help them. Neither does the fact that Georgetown lost to St. John’s over the weekend.

Sutton’s bunch ripped the Hoyas, by 18, in the Rainbow Classic, lost on a buzzer-beater to host Hawaii and went toe-to-toe with UAB in the consolation game. They closed the calendar year with a one-point loss, on a questionable call, at Indiana. And this past weekend they beat one of the hottest teams in the Missouri Valley Conference, downing Southwest Missouri State in an ESPN Bracket Buster matchup.

That’s the brief summary of the ORU resume, which is highlighted by wins over C-USA, Missouri Valley and WAC opponents.

Arguably Vermont’s most impressive non-league win came at Holy Cross, currently in first place in the Patriot League. The Catamounts did play Kansas down to the wire in Lawrence. They also lost to a really good Nevada team and they were blown out at North Carolina.

A win over Nevada would have put them in great position, should they fail to win the America East Conference tourney, despite not having any super significant non-league wins. It’s the two losses to Carolina and KU that have Vermont miles ahead of ORU.

The ice is getting thin and I am not encouraging the Catamount faithful to begin tapping around the area where I stand. Vermont is in the midst of a magical three-year run and they are not simply a good team in an average league. But the question remains, are they that much better than Oral Roberts?

No.

The Taylor Coppenrath-T.J. Sorrentine combination is as good a one-two punch is there is in college basketball. But Oral Roberts can boast a comparable duo and one of the best trios west of the Mississippi.

Sophomore Caleb Green (right), who tied his career-high with 33 points in the win over SMS, is just nine points shy of 1,000 career points. In the history of the program, 26 (soon to be 27) players have scored 1,000 or more points. This year’s team will have three of them. Fellow sophomore Ken Tutt (above) and senior Luke Spencer-Gardner have already eclipsed the 1,000-point plateau.

Undoubtedly I will get some arguments, but there isn’t a better sophomore duo in America, at the mid-major level, than Green and Tutt.

Funny thing is, nobody has ever heard of any of these guys.

Forget the fact that ORU has already tied a school record for most wins away from home (11) and put aside all the other impressive little stats. Like Coppenrath and Sorrentine; Green, Tutt, Gardner and junior college transfer Larry Owens can play for a lot of teams. Individually and collectively they are very good.

“They could play in any conference in America,” says Sutton. “We have put a really good product on the court. It’s just that a lot of people haven’t had the opportunity to see it.”

Perception is reality. Vermont gets a lot of national attention, which is well deserved. Oral Roberts deserves national attention, but gets none.

To be fair, Sutton’s team did grab some headlines early on, but those quickly vanished after the one-point loss at Indiana. They lost their third league game of the season, at Western Illinois, and a four-game winning streak was halted, by visiting UMKC.

But an 11-2 conference mark is not too shabby. And they are peaking at the right time. Winners of six straight and ten of eleven, the Golden Eagles are living up to the pre-season hype. But unless they win out, the NIT will be the final destination.

The margin for error at the mid-major level is so thin it’s damn near invisible. You simply cannot afford one stumble. Those are only afforded to the high-profile programs. As if a loss counted more. It does.

It’s very simple. Oral Roberts is as good as any mid-major team in college basketball and it’s been proven that they can play with the big boys. The numbers in the equations may not support that, but the old-fashion pull-up-a-chair approach will give you a much different final result.

It all comes down to scheduling. Vermont can boast Kansas and North Carolina and Oral Roberts cannot. Start taking notes coach. You might have to re-work your approach to scheduling. Like say, that of Vermont’s Tom Brennan.

“I will look closely at what the [Selection] committee does with mid-majors,” says Sutton. “We may have to change our approach. It’s an uphill battle trying to schedule opponents because a lot of people don’t want to play you. That’s the reality. We deal with it and see if we can change our approach. It’s become one of the most challenging things for coaches at the mid-major level.”

Sutton isn’t complaining at all. Sure he’s frustrated, but if you don’t get frustrated once in a while then you are satisfied with where you are.

In a perfect world both Vermont and Oral Roberts will be two of sixty-five to receive invites. Unfortunately the words “perfect” and “college basketball” rarely accompany one another in the same sentence.

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