With so many possibilities for Rice MBB to slot into ANY of the three CUSA pods with just two games to go in the round-robin phase, how’s a fan to keep track of scoreboard watching with six games going Thursday and all potentially affecting Rice?

No problemo... we gotcha covered.

Rice at FIU
Who to root for? RICE
How Important? *****
Why?
1. It’s Rice!!!
2. A win “almost” clinches a berth in the second tier “Pretty Pod”. That’d be an amazing result given that pundits almost universally predicted us as a 13 or 14 seed this year.
3. A win keeps alive hope for a “Primo Pod” berth

UNT at FAU
Who to root for: UNT
How important: **
Why?
Along with a Rice win, would be simplest easiest, and quickest path to clinching a POD2 berth.(I’ll have to double-check that one and update if needed)//edit— this is NOT a potential clincher & might even be a don’t care. Or even a root for FAU. I think it mostly depends on how we do in our game. Downgrade this one to a one-*.

UTEP at LATech
Who to root for: LATech
How Important: ***
Why?
LATech is one of our best tiebreaker “allies” due to our win against them and their wins against USM & UAB. Most scenarios getting us to the top pod involve LATech winning out.

UAB at Marshall
Who to root for: Marshall
How Important: ***
Why? All top pod scenarios for Rice pivot on this game. It’s not a showstopper either way, but our narrow path to the top pod is cleaner if Marshall wins this game.

UTSA at USM
Who to root for: UTSA
How Important: ****
Why? USM cannot win at all next week if Rice is to make the top pod. And even if other paths don’t align, catching USM will improve our seeding by at least one spot and maybe more depending on the tiebreaker. They are two games ahead of us right now, though.

MTSU at WKU
Who to root for: MTSU(probably)
How Important:**
Why? MTSU is another team that helps us in tiebreakers, especially against teams like UAB (who we lost to— but MTSU swept). However if we lose earlier in the evening then I might switch over to WKU in this one, to possibly help with insurance against making the ‘poopy pod’
Or, if Rice and Marshall have both won and UNT lost, may also switch over to WKU as it would be another opportunity to clinch POD2 without hurting our POD1 chances much.

Bottom line is that as long as Rice, UTSA, and either Marshall OR LATech win next Thursday, we can enter the final game of the season with a shot at the Primo Pod.

Feel free to update this thread with the scores as they roll in Thursday.

Thanks for keeping track of all this!

OATM is the Pod whisperer.

(02-10-2019 05:49 PM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  OATM is the Pod whisperer.

You should see me with a Keurig.