The unofficial online home for fans of the Old Dominion University Monarchs. Part of Collegiate Sports Nation (CSN).

I know we have nice long thread tracking other bubble teams and opponents, etc. but I thought we might want a thread to track the conference tourneys of the smaller conferences. Most of these will be one bid leagues, but it's still fun to keep an eye on them.

Some tourneys get rolling this week:

America East (Wednesday): one bid league, no top 100 RPI schools. Albany is top seed and only 20 game winner.

Atlantic Sun (Tuesday): one bid league, only 3 teams with winning record, North Florida is top seed

Big South (Wednesday): one bid league, Radford only top 100 RPI school, sitting in mid-80s, so no at-large threat.

CAA (Friday): one bid league, so root for anyone you want, but W&M is sitting around 101 in RPI, so a few wins would help us out. W&M is the #1 seed. Northeastern is the only 20 game winner.

Horizon (Tuesday): One bid league, Valpo and Green Bay have RPIs in the 60s. GB owns a win over ACC school (Miami), but that's it.

Ivy: no conference tourney, bid will go to Harvard or Yale. Harvard has RPI in the 50s but no signature wins. Yale is in the 60s with win over mediocre UConn team.

MAAC (Thursday): Now it gets a little interesting. Iona is in the upper 40s in RPI, but no signature wins. To be safe however, let's all pull for Iona. No other team would get at-large.

MVC (Thursday): Here we go--Wichita St. (#11 RPI) and Northern Iowa (#14 RPI) are locks. No other team should get an at-large bid. We need to be pulling for one of those 2 to win the tourney.

Northeast (Sunday): One bid only--Mt. St. Mary's getting a few wins would help our RPI.

OVC (Wednesday): Murray St. has an RPI in the mid-60s, no other team is in top 100. They have a gaudy 24-4 record, but no signature wins. One bid only.

Patriot (Tuesday): One bid only, Bucknell is the top seed.

SoCo (Friday): Wofford could be a fly in the ointment. Sitting around 50 in RPI, has top 50 (or close to it depending on day) wins over NC State and Iona. It would be best for everyone if they won the tourney.

Summit (Saturday): One bid, SDSU is a top 100 RPI school, but no at-large threat.

WCC (Friday): Gonzaga is a lock, BYU is now an at-large threat (#34 at RPIforecast.com). St. Mary's is around #60. BYU is a name school, with a win over Gonzaga in their pocket. If St. Mary's wins this tourney, that's not good.



As more tourney schedules get finalized, post and let us know who we should be rooting for.

(03-02-2015 12:22 PM)djnva Wrote:  I know we have nice long thread tracking other bubble teams and opponents, etc. but I thought we might want a thread to track the conference tourneys of the smaller conferences. Most of these will be one bid leagues, but it's still fun to keep an eye on them.

CAA (Friday): one bid league, so root for anyone you want, but W&M is sitting around 101 in RPI, so a few wins would help us out. W&M is the #1 seed. Northeastern is the only 20 game winner.


As more tourney schedules get finalized, post and let us know who we should be rooting for.

For some friends of mine who are W&M fans, some of whom are apparently willing to divest themselves of some body parts for the opportunity to dance, I say Go Tribe!!!

Mark Benson (remember him?) is now the AD at UAlbany so you've got root for the Great Danes.

The Tribe laid an egg on Saturday against Drexel, but hopefully they can regroup and make it this year. GO Tribe!

I have no clue how the CAA shook out, but I do love me some Bruiser Flint. I am not sure the NCAA tournament would know what to do with Bruiser! I just know that their fans would become instantly delusional like they were a few years back when they actually thought they could compete with the big boys of the CAA.

Drexel finished 9-9 in CAA play, but only 11-18 overall.

Four teams tied at 12-6 and W&M won the tiebreaker.

The CAA is crazy this year. The Association's tournament should be a fun watch.

(03-02-2015 02:23 PM)monarchfan4life Wrote:  The Tribe laid an egg on Saturday against Drexel, but hopefully they can regroup and make it this year. GO Tribe!

Man I was really pulling for WM, but that looked like the Drexel of old. Crashing the glass and playing tough D. Tom hopefully gets them back on track.

Root for all the champions. Regular season champs who dont win go to the NIT, making fewer slots available. Also, if a champ doesnt win, then that means someone upset them, pushing them higher up the bubble list and possibly stealing a spot from us.

Excellent thread, I'll be keeping watch.

(03-02-2015 03:20 PM)monarchoptimist Wrote:  The CAA is crazy this year. The Association's tournament should be a fun watch.

yes it might be a fun watch - as in an interesting outcome. But it will not be very good on court hoops to watch...... some of the ugliest BB i watched this year was from the caa

After 79 years, it's time for W&M to make an appearance in the tournament. I'll be pulling for them.

(03-02-2015 08:39 PM)N2theBlue Wrote:  After 79 years, it's time for W&M to make an appearance in the tournament. I'll be pulling for them.

Same.

I'm an Indian...err, Tribe...I mean Griff fan!

Good for Mark Benson!

The A10 tourney will NOT be fun for us.

VCU and Dayton right now are top 30 RPI schools and likely pretty safe. But there are a while bunch of A10 schools that could win that thing (Davidson, URI, UMass, even UR and GW) that would take a bubble team slot away.

(03-03-2015 09:44 AM)djnva Wrote:  The A10 tourney will NOT be fun for us.

VCU and Dayton right now are top 30 RPI schools and likely pretty safe. But there are a while bunch of A10 schools that could win that thing (Davidson, URI, UMass, even UR and GW) that would take a bubble team slot away.

so we need VCU and Dayton to make the final. I don't see it happening.

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.

Couple years ago UConn #9th seed BE, won that and won Nat Champ.

Oh, I know it *can* happen. I just don't want it to actually happen this year :)

Conference tourneys tip-off today:

Atlantic Sun quarterfinals: no rooting interest for ODU--no team with top 100 RPI
Horizon League first round: no rooting interest for ODU--bottom 4 seeds playing
Patriot League first round: no rooting interest for ODU--bottom 4 seeds playing