Third time difficult?

We've all heard the mantra, if you've swept a team in the regular conference schedule, it's so hard to beat them a third time. I'd wondered whether that was true--thankfully, Greg Wrubell and Ralph Sokolowsky did the research for the MWC. Their finding:



"Teams that have swept an opponent in the regular season and met that same opponent in the MWC Tournament have won 63% of those tournament meetings (32-19).



BYU has played 11 such "sweep" games, and is 8-3 (73%) in those games "



Not a given, but not so hard, after all.



More details: http://www.ksl.com/index.php?nid=498&sid=9959393

And if you'll notice most of those upsets were not in the first round.



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Florwood wrote:
We've all heard the mantra, if you've swept a team in the regular conference schedule, it's so hard to beat them a third time. I'd wondered whether that was true--thankfully, Greg Wrubell and Ralph Sokolowsky did the research for the MWC. Their finding:



"Teams that have swept an opponent in the regular season and met that same opponent in the MWC Tournament have won 63% of those tournament meetings (32-19).



BYU has played 11 such "sweep" games, and is 8-3 (73%) in those games "



Not a given, but not so hard, after all.



More details: http://www.ksl.com/index.php?nid=498&sid=9959393

What about 12 times in row? When is the last time we've lost to TCU? I noticed we are 15-3 overall. But I seem to recall a stat that Dave rose is undefeated against them. I think we've got this...

I read this, and agree to a certain extent, but across the MWC board, I'd have thought that if you can beat a team twice in a season, you'd be better than 32-19 against them in the conference tournament. I mean, I'm not cracking on GW here, I think he's about the best thing BYU media coverage has going for it, but you think about it, that's 51 instances of MWC teams going 100% against somebody the first two games, then that percentage dropping to ~60%. I'd actually consider that pretty significant.



I'm not saying you'll see the lower seed WIN every time, but I AM saying that it takes a lot more out of a team to beat the lower seed with nothing to lose, playing loose ball, with a better handle on your style, than it was the 1st two times. Having that much "extra" energy taken out of you really hurts you the next day, if you make it to the next day.



That was the exact scenario we were in with Air Force last year. They played us a LOT tighter than we would ever have IMAGINED. Does anyone think we wouldn't have looked a bit more composed against SDSU had we not been in a dogfight (pun intended) against Air Force the night before? ...This being an SDSU team that ALSO really wanted to take one from the Y after losing the 1st two.



I'm watching the Air Force UNM game now, and it looks like UNM is gonna pull away, but it was within 3 points with under 4 minutes in the game. That's a much tighter game than UNM probably thought they were gonna get before a much tougher matchup against SDSU...



All THAT said, no, I don't think TCU will win. I just hope they don't even find a way to keep it close, because we'll need all that physical and emotional energy for UNLV tomorrow.