Activity on the Bubble

[stever20]

A huge game today was Wichita State's MVC Tourney title game win.
This removes a second Valley school from grabbing an extra spot.

C-USA's tournament is this week. Outside chance Southern Miss could get an at-large if they lose in their tourney.

The Summit tourney is underway. I think North Dakota State gets a double-bye to the semi's. Not sure... doesn't seem like UNO is participating for some reason? Anyway, North Dakota State has a Top-50 RPI, so has a chance at an at-large if they lose in tourney.

I think the only other tourney that could be trouble for us with at-large bids would be the WCC. Assuming Gonzaga and BYU have clinched bids, that leaves St Mary's and San Francisco as potentially screwing things up. SMC plays Gonzaga and USF plays BYU in the semi's.

I think if say Northwestern or URI somehow win their tourneys, then bubble teams from their conferences will be significantly hurt enough where the result would ultimately be a wash.

Nebraska winning today was realistically just as big. Nebraska is likely in now.

Omaha isn't participating because they're new for D1 still. Think they are out for 2 more years.... They have 7 in the tourney, do it a bit weird. Had the 2/7 QF yesterday, 3/6 and 45 today, then the semi finals are tomorrow...

[billyjack]

UNO is not completely integrated into D1 yet. It's their last season of the transitional period.

Ok, thanks.

[cu blujs]

UNO is still in it's transition period and is not eligible for NCAA or nit until 2015-16 season. Good thing because they are capable of winning conf tourney had they been eligible

(Oops guess I'm a little slow)

[stever20]

UNO is still in it's transition period and is not eligible for NCAA or nit until 2015-16 season. Good thing because they are capable of winning conf tourney had they been eligible

(Oops guess I'm a little slow)

yep(conferences don't allow teams like that because if they won the tourney, they wouldn't be allowed to go, and no team from conference would go to the tourney.

[Bill Marsh]

You can't say that no matter what happens because you yourself said you were using chalk.

From what I see- I don't think RPI forecast is all that accurate with the conference tournaments. I mean, let's take Kansas St. They are RPI 47 right now. They aren't going to drop 11 spots losing to Iowa St, who is ranked 11 in RPI right now. That's just not realistic. Just like if St John's beats PC- taking them up from 56 to say 51, they won't fall that much by losing to Nova.

If Xavier beats Marquette we'll get 3 in easily. It would take either a PC win for a 4th spot or for St Johns or Georgetown to beat Villanova/Creighton. It would take either PC win or St John's beating Nova AND Georgetown to beat Creighton for the BE to get 5.

Steve, why don't you do a projection and tell me what it will look like.

You're over simplifying when you limit the recalculation to simply the results of the K State - Iowa State game. Everything is constantly being recalculated as new results come in. What happens with the team you beat in November affects your RPI today. K State has an OOC RPI of 95, which is not especially strong. So all of those lower ranked teams are playing out the weakest part of their schedules in those lower ranked conferences and all of those games have an impact.

You're also ignoring the fact that teams in the 40's and 50's are packed very tightly together. A small change can in fact change someone's ranking ten spots. For example, K State's RPI that has them ranked #47 is .5839, 4 spots lower at #51 is Minnesota (.5806) with a miniscule difference of .0033, 4 spots below them is Cal at .5746, which is a difference of only 0.0093 from K State.

Finally, wins and losses matter a lot in RPI. That's the point of the whole system. The NCAA chose not to go with traditional power rating systems, which calculate point spreads into their formulas, because they didn't want teams running up scores in order to secure a better ranking. They wanted wins and losses to be what mattered. So when a team loses a game and someone else wins, it matters - especially in the part of the rankings where teams are packed together tightly in the first place.

As for going with chalk, if it doesn't go with chalk, that's only going to help the Big East because the conference has one good team after another in line. It doesn't matter whether PC or St. John's wins. A win will put one of them in position to move up. for example in a conference like the AAC, if SMU loses to Houston, they drop to 60.6 and that opens another spot. In conferences like the Big ten and Pac 12, where so many teams are candidates, if there are upsets, some one else is likely to drop out of contention, e.g. Iowa or Minnesota. I'm sure you can come up with a scenario that hurts the Big East, but largely they are helped by upsets.

a lot of the weak teams they played are done.

I just don't think St John's if they win(PC I think they are pretty much in if they win)- will get high enough off of that. Right now they are 57. If they go 1-1, it's not going to give them a plus 5 boost net from where they are right now.

not going with chalk doesn't necessarily help the Big East at all. The upsets that are more reasonable to expect hurt the Big East- see SEC for instance. Sure SMU could lose to Houston or Iowa/Minnesota could lose to Northwestern/Penn St. But that's not all too probable. But, it's more likely an upset it like tonight with Nebraska/Wisconsin.

Wins and losses matter, but no where near as much as you think. Right now, for one, you have 30 games under the belt so 1 more loss doesn't change as much as you think. Furthermore, the SOS impact is bigger- RPI is 1/4 record, 1/2 opponents record, and 1/4 opp opponents record.

Steve, it's not what I think; it's not my opinion. It's what RPI Forecast shows after they've run the game results through their computer. I'll go with someone who has actually crunched the numbers as they have.

[stever20]

RPI forecast for the conference tournaments is junk. They want to take a team that is 54 in the RPI right now(Providence) and drop them down to 69 if they lose a QF to a top 60 RPI team. It's not going to happen. 1 game doesn't make that huge of a difference, especially negatively.

Also, it's clear you aren't using RPI forecast for everything, because they have St John's at 1-1 being 56.5. Barely up from 58.

[billyjack]

A huge game today was Wichita State's MVC Tourney title game win.
This removes a second Valley school from grabbing an extra spot.

C-USA's tournament is this week. Outside chance Southern Miss could get an at-large if they lose in their tourney.

The Summit tourney is underway. I think North Dakota State gets a double-bye to the semi's. Not sure... doesn't seem like UNO is participating for some reason? Anyway, North Dakota State has a Top-50 RPI, so has a chance at an at-large if they lose in tourney.

I think the only other tourney that could be trouble for us with at-large bids would be the WCC. Assuming Gonzaga and BYU have clinched bids, that leaves St Mary's and San Francisco as potentially screwing things up. SMC plays Gonzaga and USF plays BYU in the semi's.

I think if say Northwestern or URI somehow win their tourneys, then bubble teams from their conferences will be significantly hurt enough where the result would ultimately be a wash.

Nebraska winning today was realistically just as big. Nebraska is likely in now.

Omaha isn't participating because they're new for D1 still. Think they are out for 2 more years.... They have 7 in the tourney, do it a bit weird. Had the 2/7 QF yesterday, 3/6 and 45 today, then the semi finals are tomorrow...

Wait, I forgot to mention the other piece of good news:
Green Bay was upset by UW-Milwaukee, but that loss dropped GB's RPI to 63, basically cutting them from the at-large bid list.
See, good news because the Horizon will only get 1 bid...!

[stever20]

don't think there was ever a chance of the Horizon getting 2 bids. Maybe if Cleveland St had won but I seriously doubt that was a chance...

CUSA is the one to watch though. If it's Southern Miss/Middle Tennessee in the final- MTSU being 25-8 and USM being 28-5, with how the committee let in MTSU last year- you just have to wonder if USM lost, if they don't get in anyways. USM would get a win over La Tech in the tourney which is huge.

[stever20]

one thing I think may have happened is the bracket may limit the A10 to 5(unless someone out of lf wins the title). Dayton/St Joe's may be a play in game. Still 5 for them is really solid. Almost no chance of only 4 now for them I think...

[HoosierPal]

I'm not serious that they're overrated and that if they played the top seven on a neutral court they'd be lucky to go 2-5?

What part of that wouldn't I be serious about?

Let me get this straight. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but this is what you are telling me.

There are 7 teams in the Big East that can beat the 4th best team in the Big Ten. That means that all of the top 7 in the Big East would finish in the top 4 of the Big Ten (had any of them participated individually). So Marquette, Providence, St. Johns, Georgetown, Xavier, Creighton and Villanova - any of them, are top 4 in the Big Ten.

Wow, how would they do in the NBA?