You're right. It's a silly thing to get hung up on in a victory thread. I agree and didn't expect to get so much push back (though I should have). My last rebuttal.
I wanted to see if the opponents we struggled against (Marquette, Cincinnati, UTRGV, AZ, Nebraska) had any shared characteristics. Except for the anomaly that is Cincinnati, they're all inside Kenpoms top 50 for AdjT. I found that interesting. But I guess I'm the only one. ATS was simply used as a quick way to objectively quantify "struggle". You can pick a different metric to do that, but I don't think it'll change the outcome. In my opinion, if you want to pick at that data, rather than taking issue with ATS, you should bring up the point that one of those games was played without our best player. Or that one of those games we actually played a really solid 38 minutes despite losing. Or that 5 games might not be a sufficient sample size. But it's not a hot take to say we have struggled against AdjT top 50 teams. If you choose to believe that's just a coincidence, that's fine.
Some people watch sports like it's a firework display or like it's their favorite sitcom and just want to be entertained. That's cool. I, like many sports fans, enjoy looking at the stats. Why? Curiosity, I suppose. Some people are naturally curious, some aren't.
I expect Illinois to win the B1G and feel they have just as much of a chance to go to the Final Four as any team in the country. That's with or without Belo. How's that for negativity?