We'll know tonight who the 16 hosts are, and then I guess tomorrow we'll find out the national seeds and field of 64 (or do they announce the national seeds tonight too?).

I see our RPI is 7. It does seem strange to me that Rice isn't really being mentioned in the national seed picture much even though the Owls and ULL are the only two teams in the top 15-20 RPI who are both regular-season and post-season conference champs of their respective conferences.

I really doubt we'll have four hosts in the state of Texas and two in Louisiana (plus one in Oklahoma). I could see anywhere from 4-5 in those two states but not six. And I know that even though logically it seems three Texas regionals would make sense (with Texas, Texas Tech and Dallas Baptist being possible 2 seeds), I still think we might see Houston or Texas shipped out to Washington as a 1 seed.

Remember now that ESPN likes to show two regionals on ESPNU. They typically pick an SEC regional (it seems like Vandy and LSU have been on in recent years), and then they like a western regional (I know they've had Fullerton's region on TV a few times). I could see Texas being sent to Washington and that would be ESPN's west coast TV regional.

FTR:

Quote:Aaron Fitt ‏@aaronfitt
Sites announced 9 p.m. ET tonight on ESPN scroll. RT @morningmarsden: @aaronfitt are regional assignments announced tomorrow? What time?

(05-25-2014 06:31 PM)Fort Bend Owl Wrote:  It does seem strange to me that Rice isn't really being mentioned in the national seed picture much even though the Owls and ULL are the only two teams in the top 15-20 RPI who are both regular-season and post-season conference champs of their respective conferences.

In his recent Stock Reports, Aaron Fitt has made it clear that our record against the Top 50 has hurt his perception of our relative seed-worthiness. Winning the C-USA tournament should help us. But will it be enough to beat out the surging LSU and TCU? I doubt it. But maybe the Committee sees it otherwise.

Rice is 9-11 vs. top 50. I'm not sure why Indiana (9-7), ULL (3-1) and Houston (10-8) for example are considered positives (green), while our record is neutral. Also many of our 20 games against the top 50 are against top 20 teams (8 of the 20), whereas Cal Poly's 6-5 record (also considered green in the Nitty Gritty) doesn't include any games against anyone ranked higher than 29th in the RPI.

Not that it will matter for seed selection, but looking at Warren Nolan as of now (7 pm), it looks like we'll stay at 7 in RPI. I figured an LSU win over Florida would leapfrog them over us, but it didn't. LSU is currently 9, tied with UH, and it's possible that TCU's impending win over OSU will slide UH ahead, pushing LSU to 10.

(05-25-2014 06:59 PM)Fort Bend Owl Wrote:  Rice is 9-11 vs. top 50. I'm not sure why Indiana (9-7), ULL (3-1) and Houston (10-8) for example are considered positives (green), while our record is neutral. Also many of our 20 games against the top 50 are against top 20 teams (8 of the 20), whereas Cal Poly's 6-5 record (also considered green in the Nitty Gritty) doesn't include any games against anyone ranked higher than 29th in the RPI.

Seems obvious to me: all of those green records are winning records.

Also, I agree with you that no one takes into consideration the strength of the top 50 opponents, but that's one of the major flaws in the metric/nitty gritty report.

So are they announcing at 8 central? JP said 4 central earlier today then was corrected (by Sully?) that it was at 7 central. It was nice back wehen they announce when the announcement would be and stuck to that. I can't find the original announcement.

We're hosting per NCAA.

(05-25-2014 06:59 PM)Fort Bend Owl Wrote:  Rice is 9-11 vs. top 50. I'm not sure why Indiana (9-7), ULL (3-1) and Houston (10-8) for example are considered positives (green), while our record is neutral. Also many of our 20 games against the top 50 are against top 20 teams (8 of the 20), whereas Cal Poly's 6-5 record (also considered green in the Nitty Gritty) doesn't include any games against anyone ranked higher than 29th in the RPI.

They all have winning records against the Top 25; whereas we are 1 - 4 vs. Top 25.

Louisville hosting over UH and UW.