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[QUOTE="RF2044, post: 5724584, member: 40"]
Do you remember Drake last year [in 2025]?  They had a fantastic head coach -- Ben McCollum, who many compare to Scherz in terms of upside.  McCollum parlayed his one year at Drake into moving to Iowa.

Prior to Ben McCollum's first year at Drake, he'd been tremendously successful at the D2 level.  Brought a bunch of D2 players up with him when he took the Drake job, and they ended up playing key roles.  They play in the MVC -- not a top conference.

Drake was supposed to be the type of team that P4 schools schedule to get an easy non-conference win, a tomato can.  But with a bunch of D2 players playing big minutes, they beat Miami, Vanderbilt, and Kansas State all on the road.

They beat Missouri in the first round of the NCAAT.  And they played pretty even with #3 seed Texas Tech before folding late.

They were ranked about [and please note, this might not have been the final rankings, just what I quickly looked up] #62 in KenPom in 2025.  But they weren't held back by their conference, or their players.  They were an example of a lower conference team playing FAR above their station, and rising in the rankings accordingly.

GMac did a nice job at Siena this year.  But if you look at the winning percentages of the MAAC teams, most of them have losing records.  He only beat 2 or 3 teams over .500 all year.  He finished third in that conference.  And then had a depleted team playing hard, and put together a great final week of the season.  That is impressive.  But it doesn't offset other things that are cause for concern, because empirical data is objective.
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