I know the postseason has been mentioned especially with our rocky play lately.
-However the “mock bracket” of 20 reporters in Indianapolis has us getting in, so like I said before I’m not giving up hope.
HERE’S THE LINK http://sports.espn.go.com/ncb/columns/story?columnist=katz_andy&id=3236122
(scroll down to the second mock draft (not the one by Andy Katz)
[COLOR=black]check it out…[/COLOR]
[URL=http://sports.espn.go.com/ncb/bracketology][COLOR=blue]http://sports.espn.go.com/ncb/bracketology[/COLOR][/URL]
are u kidding me?
I guess the logic goes, that the top 3 teams in the A10 right now are; xavier, st joes and rhode island. We have beat St. Joes and have not played Rhode island and Xavier yet.
The other possible teams to get in are UMASS and Dayton. Right now both are struggling in conference. So I guess if you take 4 teams today, you would say xavier, RI, Dayton and St. Joes or Charlotte. Despite the losses at UMASS and at Dayton, they really don’t hurt you so bad.
The key is how we play RI and Xavier. If you beat both, you are basically the 2nd best team in the A10, so that team would for sure get a bid. If you win 1 of 2, you probably are lumped in with the other 4 teams (assumes of course Xavier is clearly in) in A10 trying to get a bid.
Similar article talked about in [URL=http://www.ninernation.net/forum/showthread.php?t=19092][B][U][COLOR=DarkGreen]this[/COLOR][/U][/B][/URL] thread.
I guess the logic goes, that the top 3 teams in the A10 right now are; xavier, st joes and rhode island. We have beat St. Joes and have not played Rhode island and Xavier yet.I think a poster on the A-10 board has it right: they probably included Charlotte as an auto bid to simulate upsets and how the committee has to deal with them. For e.g., they had Davidson losing in the conference tourney finals, which is not expected but it could happen. We will have to pretty much run the table up to the conference finals and even then I’m not sure we make it in. We just have too many losses to bad teams. It’ll be interesting to see how they handle the unbalanced schedules in the A-10. Dayton and URI play a much harder conference schedule than us, so if they finish below us in the standings, I don’t think this really means all that much for us getting in.The other possible teams to get in are UMASS and Dayton. Right now both are struggling in conference. So I guess if you take 4 teams today, you would say xavier, RI, Dayton and St. Joes or Charlotte. Despite the losses at UMASS and at Dayton, they really don’t hurt you so bad.
The key is how we play RI and Xavier. If you beat both, you are basically the 2nd best team in the A10, so that team would for sure get a bid. If you win 1 of 2, you probably are lumped in with the other 4 teams (assumes of course Xavier is clearly in) in A10 trying to get a bid.
We’re certainly not getting an at-large. If we finish in the Top 4 in conference, there might be a team who finished after us who gets in over us. But I am not sure we will finish top 4.
I don’t know how the bad losses come up, but it is clear that the good wins are compared between teams to select who should get in. It seems the big wins play a bigger role than the bad losses when doing comparisons. So basically it is better to say xyz beat a good team and had a very bad loss, versus xyz played a lot of good teams and never won any (I think that was the Davidson issue in the article).
Bottom line for us is, how the following end up the season:
Southern Illinois
Davidson
Clemson
St. Joes
Wake Forest
and in some respect Maryland/Georgia Tech
and of course:
Wow, thats surprising, but I am not buying it yet. Win against Xavier and finish strong with an nice run in the conference tournament and then, maybe.