the path to 5 conference bids

[DudeAnon]

This is a bit off topic, but i haven't seen it mentioned anywhere ---

Creighton's athletic director will be on this year's NCAA selection committee. That has to help, right?

Yea it does actually. Xavier's AD was on the committee forever and was even chair the last few years. Always seemed like X got the half-cup full treatment during selection time.

[Friarfan2]

Hall,

It is not so much about "beating bad teams", but rather our top 5 avoiding losses to non-tournament teams.

What is better for xavier to make the tournament: (a) beating a "bad" team, or (b) losing to a "not so good" team?

What makes you think that having 8 or 9 schools finish in the top 100, but only a handful of top 50/tournament caliber teams is a good thing? That is worst case scenario.

What is best for the league is for the top 5 to distinguish themselves from the bottom 5. Better to have xavier gor 13-5 and seton hall go 4-14 than it is for xavier to go 10-8 and seton hall go 8-10. Because in the first scenario, xavier is dancing. In the second scenario, nobody dances.

We need 5 bids this year. Maybe not "need", but it would be very good to earn 5 bids this year. Our teams screwed up already, we dug our own graves, doesn't mean we should root for the league to fail. And yes, parity this year means fail. Because we don't want our top teams to be viewed ith an eye of parity along with teams that lost to mercer, st peters, fdu, illinois state, or seton hall.

[JOPO]

In a perfect kumaya moment, our entire conference would do okay and we would all be top 100 teams (at the expense of having no top 50 teams).

I would rather have 5 top 40 teams and the bottom teams finish in the 120's than a bunch of teams in the 50-100 range. Why? Because having 7 teams 50+ means we are a mid-major 3 bid league.

We need the top 5 to distinguish themselves.

Hey, if seton hall beat fdu, beat mercer, beat st peters, then perhaps we could root for them to be one of those top 5 teams. Before providence tanked their season on nye, I hoped they would be a top half team.

But now we need to look at the greater good. And the greater good means providence and seton hall finish rpi 100-150 while xavier and butler finish in the top 45, rather than have all of them finish in the 60-100 range.

Parity = mediocrity when certain teams failed so bad in the out of conference portion of the schedule.

And this isn't a knock on seton hall. If seton hall won their ooc games, I would root for them. They did this to themselves by losing to real bad teams.

You need to come to terms with the fact that PC lost to SHU and that despite you praying for SHU to roll over and die to help your self esteem it isn't going to happen. Don't they miss you on the benchwarmers board?

[Friarfan2]

You need to come to terms with the fact that nobody wants seton hall to roll over and die. We want what is best for the conference. We want to be a 5 bid league, not a 3 bid league.

You know what, I rooted for seton hall 13 times prior to tuesday. I rooted for them against niagara, and kent state, and monmouth, and oklahoma, and virginia tech, and long island, and rutgers, and njit, and eastern washington, and lafayette.

Problem is, when I rooted for them against mercer, and fdu and st peters, they lost.

You need to come to terms with the fact that losses to mercer, fdu and st peters are season enders. Seton hall beating bubble teams from here on out means bad losses for those bubble teams, and decreases the ability of our conference to maximize bids.

You really don't grasp that concept?

And providence is now in the same boat. The conference needs providence to lose to the competitive teams.

[JOPO]

Call me crazy but I have a real tough time believing you are a Providence fan (or a fan of any Big East team quite honestly).

[xavierfano8]

This is a bit off topic, but i haven't seen it mentioned anywhere ---

Creighton's athletic director will be on this year's NCAA selection committee. That has to help, right?

Yea it does actually. Xavier's AD was on the committee forever and was even chair the last few years. Always seemed like X got the half-cup full treatment during selection time.

This was always brought up when Bobo was on the committee. He was not allowed in the room when they discussed anything regarding Xavier.

[XUFan09]

Ah, Mercer continues to be lumped in with FDU and St. Peter's, as if they're some awful loss. Here are some numbers:

Team A: Current RPI 77, Projected RPI 113, Kenpom 85, Sagarin 91
Team B: Current RPI 70, Projected RPI 84, Kenpom 94, Sagarin 82
Team C: Current RPI 122, Projected RPI 86, Kenpom 64, Sagarin 81
Team D: Current RPI 95, Projected RPI 96, Kenpom 78, Sagarin 79
Team E: Current RPI 106, Projected RPI 87, Kenpom 69, Sagarin 72

The teams listed, in order, are Wake Forest, Mercer, Alabama, Providence, and Maryland. Wake Forest and Alabama are viewed as decent wins for Xavier, Providence isn't viewed as being a bad team (though their tournament chances are running low), and Maryland isn't viewed as a bad loss for Providence. Yet Mercer has the highest projected RPI of this group, and though they have the lowest Kenpom ranking, it's still a top 100 rank and they're right there in the middle of the range of Sagarin ranks listed. They have an 83.49% chance of finishing with a top 100 RPI, and they are nearly twice as likely to finish with a top 70 RPI than they are to finish anywhere in the 100+ range.

Fairleigh-Dickinson and St. Peter's are god-awful teams and horrible losses. Mercer is an alright team against whom it would have been nice for Seton Hall to secure the win.

[BillikensWin]

This is a bit off topic, but i haven't seen it mentioned anywhere ---

Creighton's athletic director will be on this year's NCAA selection committee. That has to help, right?

Yea it does actually. Xavier's AD was on the committee forever and was even chair the last few years. Always seemed like X got the half-cup full treatment during selection time.

This was always brought up when Bobo was on the committee. He was not allowed in the room when they discussed anything regarding Xavier.

It was rumored that he wasn't allowed in the room for any A-10 teams being discussed.

*That was the tinfoil hat version.

[jayball]

JOPO

If you don't agree with Friar's point, then how do you expect the committee to give the BE 5 at large bids if we all beat each other up?

We don't have a lot of elite teams, we have several really solid teams. I don't know anyone outside of Villanova that can feel comfortable on the bubble with losses to the lower RPI teams in the conference. In order to get solid teams in, they have to limit any losses to 100+ RPI teams.

I think the calculus for getting bids in the NCAAs is different this year from what the BE is used to. There aren't 4 top 25 teams this year to give mid level teams chances at really high quality wins and help pull them into the dance. So in effect we need teams to avoid "bad" losses and create more separation from the lower rated teams in the conference.

Warren Nolan projections show only 2 top 50 teams at the end of the year. These are just projections but they show the dangerous possibility of having lots of teams in the 50-100 grouping. Many could be just outside at large territory. I think there is too much parity for that to happen and right now don't expect 5 bids is likely.

I thin Friar is trying to be realistic regarding what it will take to get maximum bids for the Big East.

[stever20]

totally agree with you about Mercer- however I would caution looking at their RPI forecast, 1-2 unplanned losses would tank their rpi pretty quickly...

21-7 79.9(projected)
20-8 93.0
19-9 107.6
18-10 125.1