last year vs this year

[stever20]

Just looking at the RPI's this year vs last year tells a big story as to why we have a real shot at 7 bids....

There are 8 conferences where the season RPI this year for the conference is at least .01 higher than last year. 4 of them are smaller conferences- Big West(up from .4676 to .4999), Southern, America East, and Patriot. The other 4 are big conferences- us(up the most from .557 to .5914), SEC, ACC, and Big 12.

Similarly there are 9 conferences down from last year by at least .01, and a 10th by .008. 4 of the conferences in this group- A10(down .0078), WCC(down .01), MWC(down .012), and AAC(down .0198).

What is even more profound is the gap from this years 1-6 conference to 7-11 vs last year....
last year- this years 1-6 conferenes(F5 plus us)- had avg RPI of .5638. This year .5773. up by .0135.
last year- this years 7-11 conferences(A10, AAC, WCC, MVC, and MWC had avg RPI of .5337. This year .5257. down by .008
so last years gap was only .03. This year- that gap is .0516. Heck 2 years ago that gap(obviously the AAC not around at that point)- was only .013. Most of that difference attributed to the MWC. They've gone from .5731 down to .5133 in 2 years.

What is also interesting is the gap for conferences 12-17(MAC, Big West, Horizon, Ivy, Patriot, and C-USA) to conferences 7-11. they last year were .4855. This year .4935. So that gap has closed by .0162.

It'll be interesting to see if these gaps remain, and what that does to the tourney bids. Last year 1-6 had 32 spots(26 at large), 7-11 had 15(10 at large) and 12-17 had 6(0 at large). What is interesting is just looking at Lunardi's bracket math he did yesterday- the answer is no real difference. 1-6 has 32 spots and 7-11 has 14 spots. 12-17 has 7 spots(due to ODU not getting auto bid yet). However, you take the "unlikely" auto bid teams out- 1-6 would then get up to 34 and 7-11 would have 13. So yes some difference. And still this year- if you aren't in one of those top 11 conferences- no at large bids for you.