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http://bleacherreport.com/articles/19134...gh-2013-14

This isn't the first article I've seen drooling over the Eagles. Pre-season and even recently I've seen them picked as favorites to win the conference. Their only two top 100 wins are versus Drexel and North Dakota St. They lost to Western Kentucky. Maybe I just really hate Southern Miss...

I agree. I think their RPI and record are very overinflated. I don't think they are terrible by any means, but they have somehow managed to raise their RPI to way higher than it should be.

They were pretty good last year as I recall and seem to be pretty good this year too. Only time will tell how we stack up against them..

They haven't done anything to overinflated their RPI. Except play teams that have good records, including Louisville. It doesn't matter that they lost by 30 to them.

They are 1-1 against top 25, 1-0 against 50-100. The difference in our schedules is that while we are 1-1 against 100-200, they are 7-1. While we are 6-0 against 200+, USM is 2-0

(01-08-2014 07:01 PM)Memphis Blazer Wrote:  They haven't done anything to overinflated their RPI. Except play teams that have good records, including Louisville. It doesn't matter that they lost by 30 to them.

They are 1-1 against top 25, 1-0 against 50-100. The difference in our schedules is that while we are 1-1 against 100-200, they are 7-1. While we are 6-0 against 200+, USM is 2-0

Good teams don't lose by 30. Period. Yes, I know we laid a nearly as bad egg at LSU. It wasn't 30 though. Pretty sure we haven't been beaten that bad since @ Memphis during their championship reaching year.

UAB had some pretty good teams get beat by 30+ in the early 90s...to Arkansas and UNLV. But that is the point. Good teams can be beat by 30 when they play great teams.

We lost by 23, but we also managed to score above 40 points. Scoring less than 40 in a blow out is abysmal. USM is a fraud IMO.

And yes MB, I understand you can't fake or overinflate numbers spat out from a mathematical equation. I meant that I don't think they are as good as the #s would make the casual observer think.

Let's expose them in the Tow. Lots of payback is owed this season.

Everybody knows that the way to inflate your RPI is to play a bunch of teams between 100-199 and win those games. Southern Miss has just happened to schedule a bunch of those this year. I do not think Southern Miss is as good as many people do, but I also don't think they are a terrible team. To me, right now, there are 3 fringe at large teams in our conference in UAB, La Tech, and USM. I don't think a great deal separates these 3 teams at the moment.

The writer of that article is on meth. I'll bet next years salary against Southern Miss making the Final 4. USM basketball's proud history in the NCAA tournament can be summed up on a small post-it note. Southern Miss has been playing basketball for 100 years. Their hoops teams have made the post season 15 times. Three times the Golden Eagles have made the NCAA tourney. They are 0-3 in their 3 appearances.

We are talking RPI here = not fairness or facts. If you lose by 100 or 1 - all loses count the same.

(01-08-2014 09:44 PM)BlazerGold09 Wrote:  

(01-08-2014 07:01 PM)Memphis Blazer Wrote:  They haven't done anything to overinflated their RPI. Except play teams that have good records, including Louisville. It doesn't matter that they lost by 30 to them.

They are 1-1 against top 25, 1-0 against 50-100. The difference in our schedules is that while we are 1-1 against 100-200, they are 7-1. While we are 6-0 against 200+, USM is 2-0

Good teams don't lose by 30. Period. Yes, I know we laid a nearly as bad egg at LSU. It wasn't 30 though. Pretty sure we haven't been beaten that bad since @ Memphis during their championship reaching year.

The other secret is playing the 50 to 150 teams at their place since a road victory counts as 1.6 win vs .6 for a home win.

If we want to be an NCAA at large team which next year should be our goal-we got to change our schedule. When we played in a strong conference it was OK to schedule OOC cupcakes(below 150) at home but not we are in a bad/very week conference(17th RPI) we can not schedule more that a couple in OOC We will need to schedule a few top 50s ether in preseason tournaments or 2 for 1s like NC and a bunch of 50-150 at home and on the road.

Our conference today has only 2 top 100 teams and 10 cupcakes. This year's CUSA conference schedule will hurt most teams RPIs. So IMHO only So Mo can expect to have a borderline RPI (low 40s), UAB and La Tech will almost have to sweep the conference to get that low of an RPI.

(01-09-2014 09:38 AM)blazers9911 Wrote:  Everybody knows that the way to inflate your RPI is to play a bunch of teams between 100-199 and win those games. Southern Miss has just happened to schedule a bunch of those this year. I do not think Southern Miss is as good as many people do, but I also don't think they are a terrible team. To me, right now, there are 3 fringe at large teams in our conference in UAB, La Tech, and USM. I don't think a great deal separates these 3 teams at the moment.

Their RPI is so high because they've played a lot of road games and went 4-2 in those games. UAB's only played 2 road games (1-1) and our only road win is 200th expected in the RPI. Southern Miss has road wins over RPIs of 57, 153, 172, 215. Both of their only 2 losses were away games at RPI 17 and 137, so those don't exactly hurt them as much as us losing at a neutral site to Temple did. Not to mention they have way more 100-200 RPI games (as everyone else has mentioned) as opposed to our large number of 200+ games.

Not to mention a lot of the top 200 teams we have played are on losing streaks so our own RPI is dipping a bit. Temple has lost 2 in a row. LSU has lost 2 in a row. North Carolina just lost again. Nebraska has dropped 3 in a row (though all away games to really good teams).