(03-06-2020 07:39 PM)Fort Bend Owl Wrote: Rice is guaranteed, win or loss tomorrow, of being the hottest CUSA team over the 2nd half of the conference season heading into the conference tournament. A loss and we'll be tied with UNT (and maybe one other team) with 6-3 records for the last 9 games. But if we win, we'll be 7-2 in the 2nd half, 1 game better than UNT.
… and the Owls lost for the third time this season to UTEP. That gave the Miners a perfect 4-0 record for Bonus Play, the only C-USA team to go undefeated during that span:
4-0: UTEP
3-1: Louisiana Tech, Marshall
2-2: Charlotte, FAU, Middle Tennessee, North Texas, Old Dominion, Rice, UAB, Western Kentucky
1-3: FIU, UTSA
0-4: Southern Miss
UTEP came into Bonus Play as arguably the coldest team in the conference, having lost six of its previous seven with the one win being a one-point triumph at home over Middle Tennessee, and left as arguably the hottest team. Go figure....
After the final round of Bonus Play games, here's what the numbers look like:
Team, Median, Mean, Standard Deviation
Florida International 39.31 34.08 12.01
Western Kentucky 37.67 35.49 7.45
Marshall 37.24 34.68 9.49
North Texas 36.74 36.93 9.51
Louisiana Tech 34.47 36.97 7.08
Old Dominion 34.13 34.74 9.27
Alabama-Birmingham 34.05 33.19 10.28
Rice 33.17 34.80 10.02
Florida Atlantic 31.07 31.33 8.29
Charlotte 30.76 29.24 11.46
Texas-El Paso 29.64 27.37 9.14
Texas-San Antonio 26.95 26.77 9.43
Southern Mississippi 24.14 24.26 9.91
Middle Tennessee 24.08 26.61 7.57
What does these numbers say about Rice's chances in the conference tournament? The Owls open against FIU, the team with the highest median performance rating in its last ten games, which would seem to augur poorly for Rice's chances. However, note that the Golden Panthers have the highest standard deviation of any team in the conference as well. If you thought the Owls were maddeningly inconsistent in play, it's true even moreso for FIU. Just in Bonus Play alone the Golden Panthers had an impressive win at Charlotte and hung close at Louisiana Tech but at home stumbled to Western Kentucky and were routed by North Texas. Rice's mean rating over the span is actually higher than FIU's, and with ten games worth of data now the mean may hold more significance that the median. We also mustn't forget that the Owls won the regular-season meeting between the two. So while a 5-versus-12 matchup might look one-sided at first, it really wouldn't be that surprising if Rice won to advance to the quarterfinals. In that case, the numbers look even better for Rice, with a higher median and mean rating plus a regular-season victory over Charlotte. It's not at all inconceivable that the Owls could advance at least to the semifinals, although beyond that the numbers don't look as good. Still, that would be Rice's best showing in a conference tournament since 2005.
What about the winner of the tournament? UTEP finished undefeated in Bonus Play, but you have to consider the fact that this record came against the bottom three teams in the standings in C-USA, and I doubt the Miners can get very far against teams not in Pod 3. I've already mentioned FIU's high median rating and standard deviation. If you want to win a single-elimination tournament, you can't have a poor game, and the Golden Panthers' propensity for throwing up a brick frequently makes me doubt they can go four consecutive games without doing so. Looking at the numbers, I'd go with Louisiana Tech: the Bulldogs finished tied for second in the conference, won three of four games against Pod 1 competition in Bonus Play, and have the top mean rating and lowest standard deviation, which means that they play at a high level but aren't as likely to have a bad game.
Of course, the endgame in all of this is the conference's automatic berth in the NCAA tournament. With the overall mediocrity shown by even the top teams in C-USA (according to Warren Nolan's site, the conference has a combined record of 1-29 against teams in Quadrant 1 of the NCAA's NET rating), it's unlikely the C-USA tournament winner will get higher than a 13th or so seed for the NCAA tournament and accordingly will be dispatched in the first round fairly easily.