ESPN Early top 25

[Hoyas]

If xavier lost in the first round of the big east tourney, I think they were still comfortable in the dance. I think that was because the conference was viewed as so strong, not because xavier lit it up with a 10-3 out of conference record. It wasn't the Murray state, cincy, Alabama and Murray state wins against the long beach st and auburn losses ooc that saved the day for xavier. It was the strength of the big east.

Xavier was safe even with a first round loss in the big east tourney. But if the big east were the 5th rated conference, I'm not sure a team with a similar profile (provided they lost in bet) was getting in.

Often times it is the strength of conference in rpi that puts one team over the top or another team out. Xavier's ooc effort this past year was not the type of barn burning performance that set them apart and got them in.


Also, the overall conference rpi being better (based on ooc portion) helps make sure that the middle of the pack teams maintain top 50 status rather than drop to the 60'is or 70's. The difference between rpi #45 and rpi #65 is not that great in terms of computer numbers. But the difference between a top 50 win versus a win v #65 can be significant for bubble teams.

The key though is they have to keep the same profile. You are looking at it because they were a 6 seed. The 2 BET wins probably got them up 3 seed lines quite frankly- they were #24 so to put them down to at least #33 is very possible(say 5 spots per game). The 10-3 OOC record then means a lot. 9-4 would mean they're 18-14 and very much on the bubble. 8-5 would mean they're 17-15 and out.

Just looking Xavier was #27 OOC RPI with the #37 SOS. That's #4 OOC RPI in the Big East- with the #3 OOC SOS in the Big East. That's actually a very good OOC schedule.

I look at Stanford who was 9-9 in the #6 Pac 12. They won 1st rd P12 game(vs #11 Washington) then lost in the 2nd. They went 9-3 OOC with only the 36th RPI and the 70th SOS. I think it's probably very fair to say, if they beat DePaul or BYU OOC they are in the tourney.

Bottom line Xavier did get the wins over Cincy, Murray St, Alabama, and SF Austin(2 top 50's and 2 top 100's) and did well enough OOC. Stanford didn't. Can't get much simpler than that.

[gtmoBlue]

NBCSports has 5 BE teams in their early poll.

http://collegebasketballtalk.nbcsports. ... on-top-25/

[Jet915]

Lunardi has 5 Big East teams in for next year: Villanova, Butler, Georgetown, Xavier and Providence.

http://espn.go.com/mens-college-basketball/bracketology

[XUFan09]

The thing with Xavier is that also matters how a team gets to that record. Most, if not all, Committees rate good wins significantly more important than bad losses. Though Xavier had its collection of bad losses, they had more good wins than most teams in D1, coupled together with a solid top 100 record. With that many good wins, it would be really tough to keep them out. Add in a good non-conference SOS and membership in a very strong conference, and that's even more true. Essentially, not all 18- or 19-win teams are the same. This year, Xavier was an "exceptional" 19-win team heading into the BET; there's a reason Lunardi was highly confident that they were in the tournament before even beating Creighton. Last year, they were a middling 20-win team heading into the BET. The respective seeding reflected that.

By the way, 18-win Oklahoma State got a 9 seed. The win benchmarks are much more indicative of correlation than anything in terms of causation.

[stever20]

The thing for Xavier though, if they had even lost 1 more game OOC(and not won the 2 BET games)- they are squarely on the bubble. I mean the most obvious game they would have lost would have been to Cincy. Instead of them having what was at the end 8 top 50 wins, they would have had only 5. Considering you guys were #24, the lowest of the 6's, Think it's fair to say with 2 more losses and 3 fewer wins- that things would have been a lot different.

The seedings reflected that this year, Xavier was a 21 d1 win team with 8 top 50 wins in the RPI. Last year Xavier was a 20 d1 win team with 4 top 50 wins. You can't look at Xavier's 6 seed and think for a second that they would have gotten that 6 seed had they not won those 2 games. They'd have been lucky to be a 8 seed w/o those 2 wins in the BET.

Really conference RPI doesn't mean much here. What helped Xavier was instead of the 2 top 50 wins in conference play, they got 5 this year. This is where the conference having better teams really helped a lot. Not really in the overall conference RPI(a metric the committee never sees). DePaul being #276 OOC RPI didn't hurt Xavier 1 bit. Marquette being way down didn't hurt either. And the thing was, they had 5 top 50 wins in conference play- and none were with St John's- so even if Seton Hall/Marquette/DePaul/Creighton had been much worse- dragging down the conference RPI- Xavier wouldn't have been hurt as much as you would think- Georgetown/PC/Butler would all still have been top 50 teams.

The thing that was interesting about this years committee is they were the closest to the old style committee that we've seen in a while in terms of power conference teams with mediocre records making the tourney- something that hadn't been happening recently. It'll be interesting to see if this is a 1 year blip or not. One thing that was extremely interesting in Lunardi's initial bracketology he did today- he only had 8 conferences with at large teams. I don't think I've ever seen so few. It was the F5, BE, AAC, and A10. That's it. No MWC or WCC getting more than 1(and of his first 8 teams out, only Northern Iowa was outside the 8 conferences.).

[hoyahooligan]

CBS has updated their way too early rankings and now has Georgetown #18 to go along with #11 Nova on the Strength of DSR returning.

http://www.cbssports.com/collegebasketball/eye-on-college-basketball/25147601/kentucky-now-no-1-in-ridiculously-early-preseason-top-25-and-one

[hoyahooligan]

NBC Sports has updated their Early top 25

http://collegebasketballtalk.nbcsports.com/2015/04/15/updated-2015-2016-college-basketball-way-too-early-preseason-top-25/

Nova 8th (down from 7th)
Georgetown 11th (up from 18th)
Xavier 15th (Down from 13th)
Marquette 20th (Stayed the same)
Butler 24th (up from 25th)

[BEX]

X generally does what it needs to do to get to the Dance. I know this is news to Stever, but not to the long time X fans. While not ranked all year, we seem to to make it in the final poll more often then not. We like to "sneak up on people".