Basking in The Prestige

When ESPN is bored, it loves to rank things... mascots, titletowns, whatever. Since there's nothing college basketball-y going on now, they decided to rank the "prestige" of every D-I college basketball team.

Nobody knows what the hell this means. It might mean how successful the team has been over the past couple decades, but then why don't they just say that?

Anyway I'm not gonna complain about it because BU somehow scored startlingly high on the prestige scale.

America East:
108. Boston University
159. Vermont
T-256. UMBC
270. Hartford
T-278. Maine
297. New Hampshire

Others of note:
69. Siena
T-70. Boston College
93. Drexel
100. George Mason
T-111. Providence
T-115. Holy Cross
T-118. Northeastern
123. George Washington
T-145. Delaware
T-183. Hofstra
T-210. Towson
T-284. Harvard

Highest of the America East (Albany, Bing and Stony Brook haven't been D-I long enough to qualify), higher than 4 out of the 5 teams that left AE for the Colonial, higher than all but 1 team from the MAAC, higher than most of the A-10, Pac-10 and Conference USA.

Most importantly, higher than our main rivals NORTHEASTERN and VERMONT.

How did they come up with this? Well, the system put a high premium on winning the regular season title (higher than winning the conference tournament even). And it gave just as many points for an NIT berth as it did for an NCAA berth. That means those 3 years in a row where BU finished #1 in the regular season but lost in the tourney were BETTER than winning the tourney and going to the NCAA. It also subtracted points for losing seasons, of which BU has not had many.

So, all hail BU, the most prestigious team in the America East (AKA the tallest midget in the world).

The 08-09 schedule is out... and I'm already excited about making Notre Dame jokes

Here's the list of teams we hope to belittle in this space after the Terriers beat them during this upcoming season:

11/14 - vs. George Washington
11/18 - @ Bucknell
11/22 - vs. St. Peter's
11/25 - @ Northeastern
11/29 - @ Mount St. Mary's
12/3 - @ Harvard
12/6 - vs. Marshall
12/10 - vs. Yale
12/13 - @ Notre Dame
12/21 - vs. Delaware
12/29 - @ Cornell
1/2 - vs. Holy Cross

It's an interesting list. Much weaker than last year's; we effectively swapped out St. Bonnie, St. Joe's and UMass in exchange for Mount St. Mary, Bucknell and Cornell. We replaced the A-10 with the NEC, Patriot and Ivy - significant downgrade in talent.

But you know what? It's fine with me. Last year we only won 3 out-of-conference games, and if this schedule helps us win more than that, I'm all for it. I was really excited about last season, and that losing streak at the beginning of the year was a real turd in the punchbowl. And there is probably only one game on that whole list that is a near-certain loss (ND). The rest are eminently winnable.