Commit 24 turnovers against a desperate and dialed-in team, and the law of unintended consequences can kick in for an entire conference. The Gryphons, with Jonathan Wallace scoring 27 on 85.7 per cent effective shooting while Daniel Dooley had 19 points and nine assists with 70% eFG and Ahmed Haroon had the 20-point, 12-rebound double-double with 61.5% eFG, stunned the nation's top-ranked team. Ryerson's starting five gave the ball away with 19 times; only Adika Peter-McNeilly, who scored 37 to lead a comeback attempt, was immune for the slippery-fingeritis.
The upshot, though, is that this will only hurt the Rams' place in the 'RPI playoffs' if the Gryphons surmount Lakehead (9-6) for the third playoff spot out of the OUA Central. Only games against playoff teams count, after all.
The Gryphons likely have to win at least 2-of-3 to invoke their tiebreaker advantage against Lakehead and get that playoff berth. Meantime, McMaster's loss to Lakehead will count in the seeding, but this Ryerson loss likely will not.
Guelph's remaining games are all at home against Toronto and two top 10 teams, Brock and McMaster.
Lakehead hosts Ryerson and Toronto on Friday on Saturday, then finishes up with a Western/Windsor road trip. One has to have a little empathy for whichever team finishes fourth in the Central. They will surely have a better overall record than either the third team out of the East, whilst playing in a division with two Top 6 teams.
As the oracle of the orange ball says:
"Plenty to think about given the unique format of using a ranking tool designed for 300+ teams that count each and every game and applying it to 12 teams with only games among those 12 teams counting in the ranking."
What Mr. Wacyk said. Using an analytics-based format was a bold and welcome idea, but the application clearly has bugs in it that come up when a top team gets caught in a trap game.
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