[ED--Our good friend (and my freshman year roommate) weloveum looks at the numbers behind the Bianco era.  He does a good job of explaining this himself.  I thought his work deserved to be frontpaged.  This is not an endorsement of Bianco nor a cry for his dismissal.  Weloveum just looks at the numbers]

There is a mantra among Bianco-lovers that he will make it to Omaha soon enough. He's had bad luck, we've had bad draws, et cetera. And once we get there, our program will be among the elite for good. But do the numbers back this up? Are there examples of coaches who took this long (over a decade) to make it to the College World Series, but then reached it multiple times? I researched this very question. 

I looked at all the coaches who have reached the College World Series since 1993 (arbitrary cutoff, but large enough sample size) and found out how many years of coaching at that school it took them to make it to Omaha. The numbers are below. Coaches who made it at two different schools are listed separately for each school. 

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I know that it's a little for all the decade celebrations and such, but I've been going over in my mind recently who has most defined Ole Miss sports since the 2000s began. I've always been an Ole Miss fan and went to all the sports for years, but my cognizance first grew during this time. So who are our greatest Rebels, our most influential, most defining? My opinions are below.

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I could not get the image to paste very clearly, so please click on the link to look at it big. This is based on data as of Sunday afternoon. These 22 teams are Lunardi's bubble teams, and there are supposedly 11 spots available for these 22 teams.

via img696.imageshack.us

So what to take from this:

• The number on the right is the number of green (good) minus the number of red (bad) characteristics. This is only a rough estimate of overall profile because it (incorrectly) assumes that all factors are equal and does not account for extremes.
• We are right in the middle. Pretty average across the board, but that is better than a lot of teams which are bad in many spots.
  
• Georgia Tech is at the top, but they are 7-9 in conference. In past years, that has been a killer.
  
• UConn is above us, but their 7-11 conference record is surely too much to overcome.
  
• State is pretty much living off their wins over us. They have nothing else that gets them in the conversation.
  
• Most think that Illinois is in due to their good wins, but the rest of their resume is severely lacking. 
• It doesn't really make sense for a team to only be green in RPI, but several are. San Diego State has not done much, but they're sporting a very good 33 RPI. 
• If we were to beat Tennessee, we'd go green in Top 25 W and Top 50 W. I believe that would put us in a very favorable position.
• Since I made this chart, Wake Forest beat Clemson. This ends a four game losing streak for them, gets them to 9-7 in the ACC, and gives them another quality win. They are likely off the bubble and in the tournament. So make that ten spots remaining.

The Ole Miss women's basketball team was on a whirlwind romance with the top spot in the SEC, but now the two have likely broken up for good after a 64-50 loss at South Carolina. But my thinking here is: that's okay. I don't think anyone expected the Lady Rebels to be SEC champions, and for this group that hasn't made the NCAA tourney since Armintie's departure, that's not really the goal.

Games like last night happen in the SEC. South Carolina is a decent team with a not so decent record. Their RPI is 35 and they have four top 50 wins. If we go on the road to a decent team the least bit out of sync, we've got a good chance to lose. Especially when our star is sickly and only scores 8 points.

This is when the Lady Rebels have to show us what they've got. This is the time that we'll see if their success was a nice, two-week Cinderella story or if they're actually a legitimate contender for the NCAA tournament. And it starts Sunday. I will give a little rundown of the rest of the season, indicating what our chances are to make a run the rest of the way.

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I am probably about as big a women's basketball fan as you'll find in Ole Miss fandom (Armintie Price got me on board). Even I had little hope for our season when it began or when we were 6-4 having squandered leads against every decent team we had played.

But I have to give a lot of credit to Renee Ladner and her staff (including new member Armintie Price) for ushering in some major growth since that time. We have won 8 of our last 9 including victories against two top fifteen teams (#12 LSU and #8 Georgia) and beat a good State team for the first time in a couple of seasons.

So that brings us to now. We're 14-5 (5-1) and on top of the SEC. Unfortunately it doesn't get any easier. We still have to play Tennessee twice, make return trips to State and LSU, and visit a very good Kentucky team. Road games at Arkansas and South Carolina are our best shots at stealing a couple more on the road. We would probably be favored to win home games against Auburn and Florida, while Vanderbilt is a tossup. I feel like we need to win 5 of the remaining 10 to make the NCAA tournament. Four might do it, but we'd be solidly on the bubble.

I am not yet expecting an NCAA tourney invitation, but at least we are in the conversation. This is a case of a team doing more with less, and that's always refreshing to see in Ole Miss athletics, where we too often witness the opposite.

We all knew that Varnado was going to be the beneficiary of extreme preferential treatment by officials, and this has obviously proved true. We are actually supposed to believe that he played 35 minutes against Arkansas Thursday and racked up 12 rebounds and 10 blocks but only fouled once the entire game. That's utterly ridiculous and  I think everyone knows it. But what has transpired that is even more disturbing is the overall disparity in officiating between State and their SEC opponents. Check out these numbers:

To put that into words, in three games they have been called for 26 fewer fouls (8.7 per game) and have shot 52 more free throws (17.3 per game).

Keep in mind that all three games were down to the wire, and had margins of victory of 5, 2, and 3. How is any team supposed to beat State when they are given such an unbelievable advantage at the line? Sure, there might be an aberration of this type of disparity in one game, but when it has happened for three consecutive games, we have to start wondering what's happening. What did all three of State's opponents do so wrong?