(01-11-2021 06:16 AM)TripleA Wrote:  

(01-10-2021 06:27 PM)shockerfan1313 Wrote:  

(01-10-2021 06:26 PM)Stickboy46 Wrote:  Wichita, Tulsa and SMU all have a shot. Very unlikely it's 1 bid.

Good luck convincing these people lol

I never said they don't have a shot. Of course they have a shot. I just don't think it's likely anybody but Houston makes it. All 3 would have to win the great majority of their games to climb in, since they are out at the moment.

In the latest ESPN bracketology, as of Jan. 8, Houston is a 3 seed, Tulsa is a 12 seed, and is only listed due to leading the league standings at the time of the update as the presumptive AACT winner, which likely isn't happening.

SMU is listed as the 8th team out, and Wichita isn't listed at all.

http://www.espn.com/mens-college-basketb...acketology

How that translates to "a one team bid is very unlikely" is a mystery to me. Right now, assuming none of the 3 win the AACT, it's not only likely, it's what will happen.

To think I have the bad opinion here is to ignore the reality of the moment.

Correct, shockerfan. You are looking at the situation pretty realistically, or, at the very most, only slightly pessimistically. Right now, the only AAC team on or inside the NCAA bubble, other than Houston, is SMU, and their loss at home to (3-7) Cincy has raised significant doubts about whether they have what it takes to make the field.

Another thing that will make it hard for AAC teams to make the tournament is that there aren't going to be anywhere near the typical number of Q1 or Q2 games the rest of the way.

Given this situation (as you have pointed out), the only way any team AAC other than Houston can make the NCAA tournament, if they don't win the conference tournament, would be by winning the vast majority (ranging from 75% (SMU) to 87.5% (UCF)) of their remaining games.

Unfortunately, the only conference team other than SMU to have won 75% or more of their games, to date, is Houston. So SMU is the only team that can end the season with a winning % of 74% or higher without boosting their winning percentage the rest of the season.

Usually (when AAC teams tend to play more Q1 and Q2 games than they will this season), an AAC team has to win 23 (74.2%) of 31 games to get a bid to play in the NCAA tournament.

A team like SMU (6-2) would need to win 12 of their 16 remaining games to finish the season with W-L record of 18-6 and a winning percentage of 74% or higher.

Wichita State (7-3), would have to win 12 of their remaining 15 games to finish the season with a W-L record of 19-6 (winning percentage = 76%).

Tulsa (7-3), would have to win 11 of their remaining 14 games to finish the season with a W-L record of 18-6 (winning percentage = 74.2%).

Memphis (6-4) would have to win 13 of their remaining 16 games to finish with a W-L record of 19-7 (73.1%), which might be enough to get them in.

Teams such as USF (7-5), ECU (7-3), and Tulane (6-3) are in a similar or more difficult situation. USF would have to win 12 of their last 14 games to finish with a .73% winning percentage, and UCF (3-3) would have to win 14 of their last 16 games to finish with a 74+ winning %.

With 15 games remaining and a record of 3-7, Cincinnati might have to win the AAC tournament in order to get into the NCAA tournament, because even if the were to win every remaining game on their schedule, they couldn't finish the season with any higher than a 72% winning percentage.

.

If Houston were to win the conference tournament, and if the level of parity within the AAC were to remain as it has been thus far, it's very conceivable that the AAC could end up as a one-bid conference in 2021.

However, Houston could certainly get knocked off in the AAC tournament, since they'll only be playing for a high NCAA seed, and there's a decent chance that at least one conference team will get hot enough to finish the regular season with a winning % over 73%.

Fortunately, however, the likelihood (i.e., the "additive probability") of Houston winning the AAC tournament AND of no team but Houston winning more than 73% of their games is probably below 50%. By random chance alone, there's probably a 50%+ chance that some AAC team (most likely SMU or Wichita or Memphis or Tulsa) will win either 3/4 of their remaining games or the AAC tournament

Thus, it might be most likely that the AAC will be a 2 or (possibly) 3 bid conference in 2021, with 2 appearing more likely than 3 at this moment, given the current Massey Composite rankings:

#8 Houston (in)
.
#48 SMU (bubble/NIT-ish)
.
#62 WSU (bubble? NIT?)
#66 Tulsa (bubble? NIT?)
.
#76 Memphis (bubble?? NIT??)
#78 UCF (bubble?? NIT??)
#102 USF (NIT???)