Projo College Hoops

Bouncing around a bit before the balls start bouncing at Madison Square Garden and Boardwalk Hall . . .

In a better world, every league would award its automatic bid to the NCAA tournament to the regular season conference champion. Really now, why should the events of one weekend outweigh the results of two-plus months of hotly-contested conference play?

It ought to be generally accepted that, if a team finishes under .500 in its league, it doesn't get to play in the NCAA tournament. Period. No matter how good the league purports to be.

RPI shouldn't be used to differentiate between teams that play in the same conference. While the RPI is a contrived, computer-generated number, a team's conference record is a real number.
Consider the case of URI, which has as an RPI of 65 heading into the A-10 tournament. Dayton has an RPI of 22. If form prevails, the Rams and Flyers will meet in the semifinals in Atlantic City. If the Rams were to add a neutral-court victory over Dayton to the last-second, 2-point, overtime win they had two weeks ago in Kingston, isn't it clear that they would deserve to be the second A-10 team selected --if, that is, they don't win the tournament?
Dayton and URI finished tied with Temple for second place at 11-5, a game behind 12-4 Xavier. As Paul Kenyon so astutely pointed out in the online hoops chat he did with Kevin MacNamara on projo.com Monday afternoon, URI fans also need to root for the Musketeers to reach the finals. Losing to Xavier in the finals could -- I would say should -- still leave the Rams in position to get an NCAA bid. If they lost in the finals to Temple, that'd leave them third in the pecking order (although some deluded souls might say fourth, behind Dayton) and that might leave them on the outside, looking in, come Selection Sunday.
As A-10 Coach of the Year Jim Baron -- congratulations are in order -- says, however, that's all speculation. The Rams must take care of business, which they failed to do Saturday against UMass on Senior Day in the Ryan Center. They'll have to beat the winner of the UMass-Duquesne game in the quarterfinals, which is no easy task, and then likely have to take on Dayton again. Without question, the Rams have their work cut out for them.

There is no question that, if PC hopes to receive an NCAA bid, the Friars have to beat Cincinnati -- assuming, of course, that the Bearcats get past 0-18 DePaul in the opening round. PC already has beaten Cincy twice. While some people say it's hard to beat a good team three times in one season, who says Cincinnati is a good team? As coach Keno Davis pointed out, it's better to be playing a team you've beaten twice than a team that's beaten you twice. And the Bearcats come to NY having lost three in a row, including an overtime defeat at home at the hands of Seton Hall.

If the Friars do beat Cincinnati (or, OK, DePaul) and West Virginia is upset by the winner of Notre Dame-Rutgers (presumably the Fighting Irish), then it says here PC should get an NCAA bid ahead of the Mountaineers, even though WVA has an RPI of 26, compared to the Friars' 70.

Yes, West Virginia trounced PC in Morgantown, and both finished 10-8 in the league, tied for seventh. But the Friars were 2-5 against the six teams above them in the standings, including a victory over Pittsburgh, which was No. 1 in the polls at the time, while West Virginia's record against those same six teams is 1-7.
The Mountaineers lost twice to Pitt. West Virginia also lost to Syracuse and Cincinnati. PC beat Syracuse and twice defeated the Bearcats. West Virginia did, however, beat Villanova, which knocked off PC twice.
In non-conference games, West Virginia has an impressive win at Ohio State, but the Mountaineers also lost to Kentucky and Davison on neutral courts. What hurts the Friars is that their best non-conference victory was a 1-pointer over URI at the Dunk. It doesn't help that PC lost its opener at home to Northeastern, although a game played before Thanksgiving shouldn't loom terribly relevant now.

If Keno Davis, coaching in his first Big East tournament, wins one game in NY this week, he'll equal Tim Welsh's total in 10 years at PC.

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