(04-07-2017 05:46 PM)MplsBison Wrote:  

(04-07-2017 03:11 PM)stever20 Wrote:  It's those teams OOC RPI. So Drake for instance was RPI #334 in OOC games this year.

the problem for the MVC is when you start conference play that bad, you can't get enough in conference play to matter. Especially given you see everyone 2x with no exceptions.

Reason I asked was ... how can they all be that bad?? Even Wichita, which I thought was like this top 15 team?? How can it be almost 100 in non-conf RPI??

That would mean, I think, that its non-conf schedule must have been really poor. Because I don't think it was from losing games.

Sometimes teams don't perform as well as you expect them to. South Dakota State was much worse early this year than anyone would have expected. Long Beach State may have had their worst season in forever. SLU had Majerus when we signed the contract with them, and they've steadily gone downhill since his passing. Tulsa ended up having to replace a lot of talent and fell off. Oklahoma had the biggest fall in history of a Final Four team. LSU was even worse than expected.

That's why the non-con schedule numbers don't look strong. Not because we didn't attempt to schedule well, but that most of our non-con opponents vastly under-performed expectations.

Wichita St went 9-3 vs the #163 OOC schedule. But when you look RPI wise- it was only 7.0-3.4 for record. Had only 1 road game(win) and 4 neutral site games. Had 7 home games- going 6-1 in those 7(which sounds great but for RPI purposes it's only 3.6-1.4).

It'll be really interesting to see how much improvement Wichita gets with their OOC schedule now going to the AAC. ESPN a lot more of a factor with a team in the AAC than in the MVC.

Well then, in any case, why can't UNI, IL St, and the rest of the remaining MVC make a pact to schedule really hard, and try to win those non-conf games?

(04-10-2017 08:16 PM)MplsBison Wrote:  Well then, in any case, why can't UNI, IL St, and the rest of the remaining MVC make a pact to schedule really hard, and try to win those non-conf games?

They can, but history shows that they won't. UNI and ISU might, but if you're being dragged down by the remaining members for two months it still makes it difficult to get an at-large.

I found it interesting that the average KenPom rating of the bottom 5 teams in the American is almost identical to the bottom 5 teams in the MVC.

2016-17 Bottom 5 MVC teams
#154 Evansville
#169 Northern Iowa
#199 Indiana State
#217 Bradley
#258 Drake

Average = 199.4

2016-17 Bottom 5 American teams
#118 Temple
#144 Tulsa
#191 East Carolina
#241 Tulane
#292 South Florida

Average = 197.2

Where the difference lies, however, is swapping out Illinois State, Northern Iowa and Southern Illinois with SMU, Cincinnati, Houston and UCF.

(04-11-2017 08:40 AM)GoldenWarrior11 Wrote:  I found it interesting that the average KenPom rating of the bottom 5 teams in the American is almost identical to the bottom 5 teams in the MVC.

2016-17 Bottom 5 MVC teams
#154 Evansville
#169 Northern Iowa
#199 Indiana State
#217 Bradley
#258 Drake

Average = 199.4

2016-17 Bottom 5 American teams
#118 Temple
#144 Tulsa
#191 East Carolina
#241 Tulane
#292 South Florida

Average = 197.2

Where the difference lies, however, is swapping out Illinois State, Northern Iowa and Southern Illinois with SMU, Cincinnati, Houston and UCF.

1 MAJOR difference though is that in the MVC, teams are guaranteed to have 10 games vs those 5 teams. In the AAC, teams now could have as few as 6 games vs those 5 teams. In best case scenario- the AAC could have avg of those 6 games of 184 which is already an improvement.

Not having the round robin is huge.

(04-11-2017 08:40 AM)GoldenWarrior11 Wrote:  I found it interesting that the average KenPom rating of the bottom 5 teams in the American is almost identical to the bottom 5 teams in the MVC.

2016-17 Bottom 5 MVC teams
#154 Evansville
#169 Northern Iowa
#199 Indiana State
#217 Bradley
#258 Drake

Average = 199.4

2016-17 Bottom 5 American teams
#118 Temple
#144 Tulsa
#191 East Carolina
#241 Tulane
#292 South Florida

Average = 197.2

Where the difference lies, however, is swapping out Illinois State, Northern Iowa and Southern Illinois with SMU, Cincinnati, Houston and UCF.

The problem with this comparison is found in the context. 4 of those 5 AAC teams are going through a transition. Tulane and USF have brand new coaches. Tulsa just had an unusually large Senior class graduate and they were playing a lot of freshmen. Although they beat FSU and WV, Temple wasn't the same team once Josh Brown got hurt. An infusion of talent this year should have them back in the hunt.