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What is Conference USA Bonus Play?

We have five dates for bonus play before the conference tournament.

https://uabsports.com/schedule.aspx?schedule=2324

(01-01-2019 02:35 PM)KevMo4UAB Wrote:  What is Conference USA Bonus Play?

We have five dates for bonus play before the conference tournament.

https://uabsports.com/schedule.aspx?schedule=2324

Where the split the teams into pods according to their conference record. Then only play the teams in your pod. Is supposed to boost resumes for top pod teams.

When your conference is only getting 1 bid regardless more than likely this stuff will make the top teams drop in RPI even more.

Its a dumb idea which leads to another dumb idea of playing conference tournament basketball games simultaneously on a football field.

http://conferenceusa.com/news/2018/5/29/...edule.aspx

So if you are the #6 team you are screwed by the time this novel scheduling idea comes around.

No chance of moving up.

CUSA is a joke, but I actually like the pods scheduling.

I do too. Doing nothing is not an option. The potential to get 2 teams improves with this scheduling idea. Any loss is a bad loss. But the top pod wins will be good wins.

And the Committee will say, oh I see you think you can manipulate the system. One bid for you!

(01-01-2019 07:48 PM)blazinrunner Wrote:  CUSA is a joke, but I actually like the pods scheduling.

Me too. The status quo was not working. I think this will have a positive impact on the teams in the top pod.

If you have 2 or more teams with a high enough RPI to get in the tournament before the POD action, then you have just probably dropped them out.

Back in the day commissioners did something for their conference. I have yet to figure out what this one has done.

(01-01-2019 08:42 PM)Memphis Blazer Wrote:  And the Committee will say, oh I see you think you can manipulate the system. One bid for you!

Yep. CUSA is liable to get screwed on principle. Afterall, the selection criteria is a moving target based on whatever the committee wants to base it on...

I don’t see it making much of a difference. The “who have they played” excuse will always come up.

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(01-01-2019 08:52 PM)the_blazerman Wrote:  If you have 2 or more teams with a high enough RPI to get in the tournament before the POD action, then you have just probably dropped them out.

Back in the day commissioners did something for their conference. I have yet to figure out what this one has done.

We keep mentioning the RPI, but that isn’t the ranking used by the committee this year.

Also, when is the last time we had 2 teams high enough to even be considered in the last few weeks of the season?

Well, I think it was UAB & MTSU a few years back but under this scenario one of the two would drop out of contention with a loss.

I'm just hoping UAB can catch lightning in a bottle like we did during the conference tournament championship year(2014?)...

I just thought of this fact -

If the top 4 or 5 are in a POD together playing the last 4 games of the regular season that also means the bottom teams are busy playing each other as well thereby making their RPI (or whatever criteria they are using) crappier.

Since we have played the teams with the crappy RPI (or worse case it is us) already it will just lower our existing RPI just as much as this howdy doody POD play idea would in theory increase it.

Don’t you know that teams in the advantages of being in the top pod and playing other teams in the 80-150 range will outweigh those sub 300 games. The committee will say hey this team finished with wins over the 78th, 92nd and 115th ranked team. They definitely deserve a bid.

& obviously the answer to this is to somehow figure out a way to boost the conference RPI level (or whatever) prior to conference play.

If it sucks prior to conference play, slicing & dicing it up won't matter.

The answer is to for the whole conference to schedule top 50-100 home and away games and win them.