A lot of VU fans are advocating resting Sonny Gray for the second game, in the belief that Vanderbilt can cakewalk all over Illinois State just like we cakewalked all over Murray State.... err, I mean, in the belief that Taylor Hill is plenty good enough to beat Ill State.  If I had to guess, I'd imagine Corbin will stick to the rotation because he usually does (with the exception of 2008, right?).  But what should we do?

I don't know VU's personnel, let alone Louisville's and Illinois State's, enough to have an intelligent opinion, but I can tell how I'd answer this question.

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As you might know by now, Vanderbilt was not selected as a regional host for the 2010 NCAA Baseball Championship.  Connecticut, after an inferior season by any objective measure, was selected.  Should I be outraged?

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I'm still learning my way around here so I'm not sure what the most appropriate way to cross post stuff I write on VandySports is.  Please bear with me.

So, you can read the antecedent discussion here if you wish.  force10jc gives voice to something a lot of us are thinking about this week: "I see Butler playing for a National Championship as a 5-seed and can't help but ask why not us as a 4-seed."   Here's my detailed discussion -- NOT an answer to the question, but rather a discussion of the method I'd use to answer the question -- because at the end of the day, I think it's largely an overreaction to a small sample of data.   (Just because I'm calling it an overreaction doesn't mean I don't wonder this too!)

I think there's some element of luck and some element of merit. However, to keep us focused on the latter, here's a far more interesting question to me: How is that Butler is the 12th most efficient team in the land and Vanderbilt has topped out at 23rd (2004) or more recently 35th (2007, 2010)?

If you're consistently in the top 12 in efficiency over a decade, you're much more likely to make a FF than if you're consistently between 20th and 30th. 

So then, the primary way Butler is so efficient is absolutely awesome defense. In the broad category of defense, they do all the following well (top third of D-I) but in descending order of rank: rebound defensively (14th), make the other team miss shots, cause turnovers, avoid fouling. They're much shorter than Vanderbilt but much better at DReb so I'd start there.

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