There is some evidence that Rice's men's basketball team has been playing well as of late. The Owls have won four of their last five games, including victories over two of the Pod 1 teams, and the only loss was by just three points. I've tried to quantify this performance by using the performance ratings I developed from Kenneth Massey's ratings system and comparing Rice's rating to those of the other Conference USA members. I'm not doing this for the entire season; that would take far too long to compile, and I'm more interested in recent performance anyway. I decided to do it for the last ten regular-season games for each team to see how things appear going into the conference tournament. Of course, the final four games for the teams have yet to be played, so I'm going to compile the results for the last six games before Bonus Play for each team and update them over the course of the last four games.

For those unfamiliar with the performance rating, it's calculated for a particular game result by using what Massey calls the "power rating" for an opponent plus the final margin of the game adjusted for home court. For example, in Rice's recent game against Charlotte, to figure the Owls' performance rating for the game, one takes the 49ers' power rating (31.93) and add to it the score margin (Rice won 70-54, a margin of +16) adjusted for the Owls' home-court advantage (3.89, in this case subtracting because it's a home game; for road games, the opponent's home-court advantage is added to the rating). In this case, the performance rating is 31.93 + 16 -3.89 = 44.04.

Here's what the results look like for the 14 C-USA schools over their last six games each. I've calculated the median and mean performance ratings and the standard deviation of the mean ratings, and sorted by median rating:

Team, Median, Mean, Standard Deviation
Rice 39.58 37.51 10.64
Florida International 39.31 34.59 10.45
Old Dominion 38.82 35.71 8.68
Marshall 38.66 34.84 11.77
North Texas 36.16 36.25 7.29
Alabama-Birmingham 35.06 33.90 12.42
Western Kentucky 35.05 35.25 7.22
Louisiana Tech 31.72 34.16 4.57
Southern Mississippi 30.96 29.82 7.79
Florida Atlantic 29.97 31.70 10.48
Charlotte 29.90 28.84 6.22
Texas-San Antonio 29.12 28.78 9.91
Middle Tennessee 28.18 26.68 8.87
Texas-El Paso 19.64 21.86 6.92

It looks like the impression about Rice playing well lately is correct - the Owls have the highest median (and mean) rating in the conference. That bodes well for the Owls in the upcoming conference tournament. Rice also gets a break due to the vagaries of scheduling for Bonus Play - the Owls get UTEP twice, by this measure the team in the biggest slump in C-USA currently. The Miners' last good game by performance rating was their win over the Owls; since then, UTEP has lost six of its last seven, and the lone victory was at home by one point over cellar-dweller MTSU.

Of course, there are caveats to consider. Looking at the median and mean ratings, one can see that the spread is not that big, and considering the standard deviations, there isn't really much of a difference between any of the teams (except possibly UTEP). While the trends say Rice should do pretty well over the last four regular-season games and the conference tournament, actually doing it is something else. The teams are close enough so that one could really make a case for almost anyone to win the tournament. We also can't put the cart before the horse; technically, Rice hasn't even qualified for the tournament yet. Looking at the numbers, the only Bonus Play game that could give the Owls trouble is the one at Southern Miss, but a couple of bad games still could knock the Owls out of it.

What these numbers show is that, as much due to the overall mediocrity of C-USA as anything, that Rice has a reasonable chance of winning most of its games from here on out and even win the C-USA tournament. I haven't run the numbers, but I'd guess that this season is probably the best chance the Owls have had of winning the conference tournament since the last years Rice was in the WAC. I'll update these numbers after every set of games in Bonus Play and see how things stand thereafter. As for the games of Saturday, February 22, using the trends in the performance ratings I'll make these picks:

Southern Miss over Middle Tennessee
North Texas over Louisiana Tech
Western Kentucky over Charlotte
UAB over Florida Atlantic
Marshall over Old Dominion
Rice over UTEP