RE: March Madness-Conference tourneys
Let's do up a "best case/worst case" chart.
There are 68 teams, and 32 automatic bids.
This is ignoring the CUSA for the time being:
Best case: 20 one bid conferences (America East, Atl. Sun, Big Sky, Big South, Big West, CAA, Horizon, Ivy, MAAC, MAC, MEAC, NE, OVC, Patriot, Southern, Southland, SWAC, Summit, Sun Belt, and WAC)
Trouble spots: MAC--Buffalo has an RPI of 33 but no top 50 wins. Their RPI is boosted by playing Kentucky and Wisconsin.
Of the other one bid conferences, no team in them has an RPI better than ODU.
So, these smaller leagues give us a best case of 20 bids, worst case of 21.
Now let's give out the best case/worse case for other leagues. Remember we've awarded 20 or 21 of the 68 bids.
AAC: best case: 1 team (SMU), worst case +3 (Tulsa, Temple, Cincy)
A10: best case: 2 teams (VCU, Dayton), worst case +2 (Davidson, dark horse tourney champ)
ACC: best case: 5 (UVA, Duke, UNC, L'Ville, ND), worst case +2 (say NC St and tourney winner--very doubtful, but this is worst case)
Big 12: best case: 5 (KU, Baylor, OU, ISU, WV), worst case +2 (OSU, UT)
Big East: best case: 4 (Nova, PC, Butler, G'Town), worst case +2 (St. John's, Xavier)
Big 10: best case: 3 (Wis, Maryland, MSU), worst case +3 (OSU, IU, Iowa)
MVC: best case: 2 (Wich St., N. Iowa), worst case +1
MW: best case: 3 (Boise, SDSU, Col St), worst case +1
PAC 12: best case: 3 (AZ, Utah, Oregon), worst case +2 (UCLA, Stanford)
SEC: best case: 3 (UK, Ark, Ga), worst case +3 (LSU, Tex A&M, Miss)
WCC: best case: 1 (Gonzaga), worst case +2 (BYU, St. Mary's/tourney winner)
So, where's that leave us?
It won't happen, but if all the best cases play out, that's 32 more bids before looking at CUSA--plus the 20 one bid leagues and that's 52 bids, leaving 16 more. If I looked at every team I listed as a possible "worst case" entrant and took every one with a higher RPI than ODU, that takes up 8 more teams. And since we're talking about an at-large bid here, we assume someone else wins the CUSA tourney, leaving 7 schools.
That's our window as of today--7 slots.
But, the last part. Our RPI will move, so we need to make 3 scenarios (all assuming we win last 2 at home).
1--Lose first CUSA tourney game--RPI projects to drop to about 47
That means 4 more teams could jump ahead of us, leaving us 3 slots. Three slots when measured against BCS-level schools with better name recognition, even if we're a better team.
2--Lose in CUSA semis--RPI would actually slightly INCREASE (2 spots in system I use) from what it is now.
3--Lose in CUSA finals--RPI would increase about 8 spots from what it is now.
Too long, didn't read: Assuming ODU wins last 2 at home and first CUSA game, and there are not more than a half-dozen schools that come out of nowhere to win tourneys (I'm talking with RPIs in the 60s or worse in bigger leagues--schools like Wake Forest, or Alabama, etc.) AND the RPI we have access to is pretty close to what committee uses AND the committee doesn't ignore it too much, I think we're in better shape than some talking heads thinks.
(This post was last modified: 03-03-2015 10:57 AM by djnva.)
|