Friday, September 22, 2017

Bucknell Dominance of Patriot League Hoops Should Follow Army-Navy Classic

The Army-Navy football game classic wraps up regular season football, and their basketball teams appropriately play in the PATRIOT LEAGUE, where everyone chases a Bucknell team that boasts four of the top six players in the conference, according to Value Add.

Value Add projects Bucknell a heavy favorite to build on their 13-seed from last year's March Madness. Navy, with the best football team of any school in the Patroit League for basketball, could compete with Loyola and Boston University for the best of the rest. While most schools do have a non-FBS football team, Boston University remains an excited target for a Big East that desperately wants back in the Boston market and might go with an 11-team league to preserve a round robin format.

Here is where Value Add ranks each Patriot League team for the season, and the Massey Rankings rank the football teams against all other schools (including the 129 FBS schools. Updates will be provided here.


Team - 2017 SeedHoopsFootball
Bucknell 1349259
Loyola MD132
Boston University137
Navy15162
Colgate185178
Army19089
Lehigh218214
Lafayette292314
Holy Cross314181
American341465

Here are the top 15 projected players in the conference in order.

Top 15 Patriot PlayersValue AddSchoolHt
Nana Foulland 207.01Bucknell`6-09
Zach Thomas 236.78Bucknell`6-07
Cam Gregory 226.11Loyola MD`6-08
Kahron Ross 16.10Lehigh`5-11
Stephen Brown 26.06Bucknell`5-11
Kimbal Mackenzie 15.30Bucknell`6-01
Shawn Anderson 205.10Navy`6-04
Sean O'Brien 05.04Colgate`6-02
Andre Walker 24.70Loyola MD`6-00
Cedric Hankerson 214.50Boston University`6-05
Karl Charles 14.45Holy Cross`6-06
Will Rayman 104.20Colgate`6-08
Jordan Fox 303.94Army`6-01
Tom Lacey 13.65Navy`6-07
Tyler Scanlon 23.54Boston University`6-07

Ken Pomeroy ranked the Patriot League 23rd of 32 Division 1 basketball conferences, which will all be previewed here with notes on which schools are now "basketball" or "football" schools based on which program is stronger this season. Football revenue is much higher, but programs are much more expensive between equipment and the requirement of matching enough women's scholarships in other sports. Therefore some programs forgo FBS football programs to focus on low cost basketball programs as their biggest revenue sport.

Sports IllustratedFox Sports and ESPN have lauded Value Add Basketball for estimating the number of points each college basketball players is worth to his team above a replacement player - similar to baseball WAR (Wins Above Replacement). Massey Ratings is used for the football rankings above.

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