[CapitolHillCard]

My point was only that the ranking of our 2010 class is overinflated by its size. David Shaw made the exact same point this week regarding football recruiting -- it makes no sense whatsoever to rank recruiting classes by the number of players as opposed to the caliber of players.

In terms of assessing talent, it gets complicated because other schools take junior college recruits or transfers (like Cal with Cobbs and much of Oregon's current team), who aren't ranked in recruiting classes.  We don't take JC recruits or, with the exception of Shiller, transfers. So while PAC-12 teams may lose more recruited talent than we do, they also gain them through transfers and JC players. Again, Oregon is a great example of this.

I think we have a reasonably talented, very experienced team -- a top 4 team in the PAC12 -- which is how we have been playing. Most brackets have us off the bubble, seeded 8 or 9, which is better than everyone in the PAC12 other than AZ and UCLA.  Our RPI is 37 and the advanced ranking systems have us even higher. We have a number of good, not great wins (UCONN (road), Cal (road), Oregon (road), ASU) and no bad losses. We have not lost to any team outside of the top 100 RPI.

Going forward, it would be great if we won at UW, but much more important that we avoid losing at WSU or to USC at home (the two worst teams in our conference).

[CapitolHillCard]

My point was only that the ranking of our 2010 class is overinflated by its size. David Shaw made the exact same point this week regarding football recruiting -- it makes no sense whatsoever to rank recruiting classes by the number of players as opposed to the caliber of players.

In terms of assessing talent, it gets complicated because other schools take junior college recruits or transfers (like Cal with Cobbs and much of Oregon's current team), who aren't ranked in recruiting classes.  We don't take JC recruits or, with the exception of Shiller, transfers. So while PAC-12 teams may lose more recruited talent than we do, they also gain them through transfers and JC players. Again, Oregon is a great example of this.

I think we have a reasonably talented, very experienced team -- a top 4 team in the PAC12 -- which is how we have been playing. Most brackets have us off the bubble, seeded 8 or 9, which is better than everyone in the PAC12 other than AZ and UCLA.  Our RPI is 37 and the advanced ranking systems have us even higher. We have a number of good, not great wins (UCONN (road), Cal (road), Oregon (road), ASU) and no bad losses. We have not lost to any team outside of the top 100 RPI.

Going forward, it would be great if we won at UW, but much more important that we avoid losing at WSU or to USC at home (the two worst teams in our conference).