RPI:

Kentucky - 6
Florida - 14
South Carolina - 19
Arkansas - 28
Tennessee - 36
Vandy - 49
Georgia - 50

I think it's safe to say UK, UF, and South Carolina are in barring a momentous collapse.

-Arkansas (17-5) is probably a good bet too.
-Tennessee (13-9) has been playing great and has a brutal schedule. Will the committee be forgiving? Probably not unless they have an insane finish.
-Vandy (11-11) is almost definitely out barring a tournament win
-Georgia (13-9) has had some brutal OT losses but would need to finish strong to get in

Anyone else have any thoughts on who might sneak in? The committee notoriously hates the SEC so you can never rule out them finding reasons to only let two in.

UK, UF, USC and Arkansas will be the only ones to go

Barring a miracle, it won't be Bama.

Anyway, I think you're right about the top 3. Arkansas has a good chance too, but they need to keep winning or, like you said, the Committee is bound to find a reason to keep them out.

The SEC is a bit better than most think this year. I wouldn't be surprised if we get 5 in. Both Tennessee and Vanderbilt have some good wins. If one of those two has a good conference tourney we might get 5.

Losing to Okie state hurt. But the league is improving. It goes to show. That if you hire good coaches. You will start getting good results.

(02-04-2017 10:41 AM)JRsec Wrote:  The SEC is a bit better than most think this year. I wouldn't be surprised if we get 5 in. Both Tennessee and Vanderbilt have some good wins. If one of those two has a good conference tourney we might get 5.

The SEC is definitely better this year, you can point to the SEC/B12 challenge as evidence of that. I thought that Auburn & LSU would be doing better though with their coaches (Auburn) & recruiting (LSU). I think you all are spot on with your analysis so far, 4-6.

(02-04-2017 08:47 AM)Ewglenn Wrote:  UK, UF, USC and Arkansas will be the only ones to go

Those are my guesses. It's nice to see a solid four SEC teams make it this year. Previous years I thought the SEC was gifted a spot or two and were destroyed on the court for it.

(02-04-2017 11:24 AM)hawghiggs Wrote:  Losing to Okie state hurt. But the league is improving. It goes to show. That if you hire good coaches. You will start getting good results.

I listened to Mike Anderson on Bo Mattingley's radio show this week as he talked about that game. He said OSU was just amped up and on fire that game. Sold out stadium, remembering the ten that night, good opponent, OSU just wasn't missing many shots, beating hogs in the paint, another slow start.

I thought the hogs needed the butts kicked in to get them to correct some of these negative threads in games. Mike said the squad seemed more focused in training and it showed against Alabama midweek. It should show again versus Missouri tonight too.

(02-04-2017 04:17 PM)murrdcu Wrote:  

(02-04-2017 11:24 AM)hawghiggs Wrote:  Losing to Okie state hurt. But the league is improving. It goes to show. That if you hire good coaches. You will start getting good results.

I listened to Mike Anderson on Bo Mattingley's radio show this week as he talked about that game. He said OSU was just amped up and on fire that game. Sold out stadium, remembering the ten that night, good opponent, OSU just wasn't missing many shots, beating hogs in the paint, another slow start.

I thought the hogs needed the butts kicked in to get them to correct some of these negative threads in games. Mike said the squad seemed more focused in training and it showed against Alabama midweek. It should show again versus Missouri tonight too.

Given the future stakes with regards to the Big 12, I'm sure the Cowboys were treating the game like an audition and felt they had something to prove.

Arkansas losing to Missouri hurts. That game single handedly did in SC last year.

Big wins for UF and SC today.

Miss St over UT and Ole Miss over Vandy don't help the conference though.

This is one of the things that annoys me about college basketball as it's currently constituted.

Right now, we're put in a situation where all we do is hurt each other rather than having the ability to play for something.

You just can't up your conference RPI during this time of year. I get it, but if you don't win tons of non-conference games then you have everything to lose and very little to gain when it comes to conference play. That just seems backwards to me.

I sincerely hope we get a new tournament and a format one day that rewards teams for doing well in conference. I think the tournament would be better for it and it would be more objective.

(02-05-2017 01:20 AM)AllTideUp Wrote:  This is one of the things that annoys me about college basketball as it's currently constituted.

Right now, we're put in a situation where all we do is hurt each other rather than having the ability to play for something.

You just can't up your conference RPI during this time of year. I get it, but if you don't win tons of non-conference games then you have everything to lose and very little to gain when it comes to conference play. That just seems backwards to me.

I sincerely hope we get a new tournament and a format one day that rewards teams for doing well in conference. I think the tournament would be better for it and it would be more objective.

The problem is that the NCAA Tournament is a welfare system supported by money robbed from the larger conferences and hoarded by they NCAA whereby extremely obscure and small conferences are supported in exchange for the NCAA counting on their votes for their own viability. The fact that the NCAA is approaching a 1 billion dollar endowment off of the back of the tournament and therefore the backs of the schools with the larger market representation is exactly why we have rules like the following:

Every conference may decide if their regular season champion or their conference tournament champion receives the automatic bid. There are a number of smaller conferences that routinely have their regular season champ upset in the early round of their conference tournament either in hopes of, or in the certainty of (depending on the conference's reputation) getting a second school in at a larger conference's expense. The NCAA encourages OOC play so that the bigger schools are forced to play the smaller ones who are ranked or touted. This too gives the smaller school more revenue. The challenges between the larger conferences is the only part of this that appeals to our fans.

IMO what needs to go are the following:
1. The auto bids to conference tournament champions. IMO only the regular season champs are deserving of this.

2. Double round robin games within the division. Play a single round robin within the whole conference. For us that's 13 games. Schedule another 6 games against other P5 schools. Use those to calculate RPI if you must.

3. November and December tournaments need to go away. Nobody is motivated by a crowd of 200 in Hawaii or Puerto Rico, or wherever. Schedule another 6 games against whomever during this time period. In fact no November games at all would be great. Why? This is when the little schools are scheduled and just like with any sport the start of the season games are all tune ups and not reflective of a team's ultimate ability. Way too much emphasis for RPI is placed upon these tune up games. And, our fans are more interested in the close of the football season.

4. No more than 30 games for the regular season. Maybe we need to even lower this to 25. Conference tournaments and the NCAA tournament now boost the games almost to 40 for some schools.

5. When I was a kid many decades ago a 20 win season was a wonderful year. Now schools get left out of the tournament with a 20 win season.
Everything is geared for the final tournament and the regular season means nothing while what were once considered preseason games now give a committee an excuse to place who they want in the tournament and seed them wherever they wish to place them.

6. Get rid of the NCAA, divide it's endowment among all of the schools, and return the whole thing to sanity.
If a Sandusky/Baylor/North Carolina case comes up let the law handle them. Molestation is a felony. That takes care of Sandusky. Obstruction of justice is a felony. That takes care of school officials that cover stuff up or lie to protect their sports revenue. Academic fraud is a crime too. Put those responsible in jail or fine them severely. If a school has a repeat history of the offense remove their accreditation.

The whole damned thing is so corrupt and stupid that college basketball is just a carnival sideshow instead of a sport and college recruiting is its freak show!

I'm all for doing away with the NCAA. The SEC could just create its own association.

You want to let the inmates rule the asylum? I think that's a bad idea. There needs to be a governing body. Reform the NCAA rules or, better yet, start a new one. This time have more restrictions on D1 membership, this would solve a lot of basketballs problems. The NCAA tournament money goes to pay for things like the CWS & the women Final 4. These other sports matter & these athletes deserve a championship as well. I'm fine with March Madness paying for this, the P5 keeps the CFP revenue.

Giving how the basketball season starts after only 2-3 weeks of practice I'm ok with the start of the season. The early season tournaments are for TV & they give you 3 games for the price of 1 on your schedule. They tend to lead to interesting matchups as well.

I agree though that it's a conference regular season champ that should get the auto bid. More of an emphasis needs to be placed on the regular season. I don't agree though that the committee promotes games against the smaller conferences. They weigh SOS pretty heavily & you have seen teams with great records get left out because of a poor SOS. They will jump teams over their conference mates as well for this reason. Louisville says that they take this into consideration, for example, so they try to schedule the teams that are favored to win their conference. I also think that the committee does put a lot of weight onto how a team performs in conference, that's why you very rarely see a sub .500 team in conference make the tournament no matter how strong the conference is.

(02-05-2017 08:02 AM)JRsec Wrote:  

(02-05-2017 01:20 AM)AllTideUp Wrote:  This is one of the things that annoys me about college basketball as it's currently constituted.

Right now, we're put in a situation where all we do is hurt each other rather than having the ability to play for something.

You just can't up your conference RPI during this time of year. I get it, but if you don't win tons of non-conference games then you have everything to lose and very little to gain when it comes to conference play. That just seems backwards to me.

I sincerely hope we get a new tournament and a format one day that rewards teams for doing well in conference. I think the tournament would be better for it and it would be more objective.

The problem is that the NCAA Tournament is a welfare system supported by money robbed from the larger conferences and hoarded by they NCAA whereby extremely obscure and small conferences are supported in exchange for the NCAA counting on their votes for their own viability. The fact that the NCAA is approaching a 1 billion dollar endowment off of the back of the tournament and therefore the backs of the schools with the larger market representation is exactly why we have rules like the following:

Every conference may decide if their regular season champion or their conference tournament champion receives the automatic bid. There are a number of smaller conferences that routinely have their regular season champ upset in the early round of their conference tournament either in hopes of, or in the certainty of (depending on the conference's reputation) getting a second school in at a larger conference's expense. The NCAA encourages OOC play so that the bigger schools are forced to play the smaller ones who are ranked or touted. This too gives the smaller school more revenue. The challenges between the larger conferences is the only part of this that appeals to our fans.

IMO what needs to go are the following:
1. The auto bids to conference tournament champions. IMO only the regular season champs are deserving of this.

2. Double round robin games within the division. Play a single round robin within the whole conference. For us that's 13 games. Schedule another 6 games against other P5 schools. Use those to calculate RPI if you must.

3. November and December tournaments need to go away. Nobody is motivated by a crowd of 200 in Hawaii or Puerto Rico, or wherever. Schedule another 6 games against whomever during this time period. In fact no November games at all would be great. Why? This is when the little schools are scheduled and just like with any sport the start of the season games are all tune ups and not reflective of a team's ultimate ability. Way too much emphasis for RPI is placed upon these tune up games. And, our fans are more interested in the close of the football season.

4. No more than 30 games for the regular season. Maybe we need to even lower this to 25. Conference tournaments and the NCAA tournament now boost the games almost to 40 for some schools.

5. When I was a kid many decades ago a 20 win season was a wonderful year. Now schools get left out of the tournament with a 20 win season.
Everything is geared for the final tournament and the regular season means nothing while what were once considered preseason games now give a committee an excuse to place who they want in the tournament and seed them wherever they wish to place them.

6. Get rid of the NCAA, divide it's endowment among all of the schools, and return the whole thing to sanity.
If a Sandusky/Baylor/North Carolina case comes up let the law handle them. Molestation is a felony. That takes care of Sandusky. Obstruction of justice is a felony. That takes care of school officials that cover stuff up or lie to protect their sports revenue. Academic fraud is a crime too. Put those responsible in jail or fine them severely. If a school has a repeat history of the offense remove their accreditation.

The whole damned thing is so corrupt and stupid that college basketball is just a carnival sideshow instead of a sport and college recruiting is its freak show!

Do you think teams that are "guaranteed" a spot in the NCAAs in smaller conferences (or even in bigger conferences) are intentionally losing in the tournaments to help conference mates/next years chances of getting multiple teams in? Or are you just saying that sometimes upsets happen?

(02-05-2017 10:17 AM)Soobahk40050 Wrote:  

(02-05-2017 08:02 AM)JRsec Wrote:  

(02-05-2017 01:20 AM)AllTideUp Wrote:  This is one of the things that annoys me about college basketball as it's currently constituted.

Right now, we're put in a situation where all we do is hurt each other rather than having the ability to play for something.

You just can't up your conference RPI during this time of year. I get it, but if you don't win tons of non-conference games then you have everything to lose and very little to gain when it comes to conference play. That just seems backwards to me.

I sincerely hope we get a new tournament and a format one day that rewards teams for doing well in conference. I think the tournament would be better for it and it would be more objective.

The problem is that the NCAA Tournament is a welfare system supported by money robbed from the larger conferences and hoarded by they NCAA whereby extremely obscure and small conferences are supported in exchange for the NCAA counting on their votes for their own viability. The fact that the NCAA is approaching a 1 billion dollar endowment off of the back of the tournament and therefore the backs of the schools with the larger market representation is exactly why we have rules like the following:

Every conference may decide if their regular season champion or their conference tournament champion receives the automatic bid. There are a number of smaller conferences that routinely have their regular season champ upset in the early round of their conference tournament either in hopes of, or in the certainty of (depending on the conference's reputation) getting a second school in at a larger conference's expense. The NCAA encourages OOC play so that the bigger schools are forced to play the smaller ones who are ranked or touted. This too gives the smaller school more revenue. The challenges between the larger conferences is the only part of this that appeals to our fans.

IMO what needs to go are the following:
1. The auto bids to conference tournament champions. IMO only the regular season champs are deserving of this.

2. Double round robin games within the division. Play a single round robin within the whole conference. For us that's 13 games. Schedule another 6 games against other P5 schools. Use those to calculate RPI if you must.

3. November and December tournaments need to go away. Nobody is motivated by a crowd of 200 in Hawaii or Puerto Rico, or wherever. Schedule another 6 games against whomever during this time period. In fact no November games at all would be great. Why? This is when the little schools are scheduled and just like with any sport the start of the season games are all tune ups and not reflective of a team's ultimate ability. Way too much emphasis for RPI is placed upon these tune up games. And, our fans are more interested in the close of the football season.

4. No more than 30 games for the regular season. Maybe we need to even lower this to 25. Conference tournaments and the NCAA tournament now boost the games almost to 40 for some schools.

5. When I was a kid many decades ago a 20 win season was a wonderful year. Now schools get left out of the tournament with a 20 win season.
Everything is geared for the final tournament and the regular season means nothing while what were once considered preseason games now give a committee an excuse to place who they want in the tournament and seed them wherever they wish to place them.

6. Get rid of the NCAA, divide it's endowment among all of the schools, and return the whole thing to sanity.
If a Sandusky/Baylor/North Carolina case comes up let the law handle them. Molestation is a felony. That takes care of Sandusky. Obstruction of justice is a felony. That takes care of school officials that cover stuff up or lie to protect their sports revenue. Academic fraud is a crime too. Put those responsible in jail or fine them severely. If a school has a repeat history of the offense remove their accreditation.

The whole damned thing is so corrupt and stupid that college basketball is just a carnival sideshow instead of a sport and college recruiting is its freak show!

Do you think teams that are "guaranteed" a spot in the NCAAs in smaller conferences (or even in bigger conferences) are intentionally losing in the tournaments to help conference mates/next years chances of getting multiple teams in? Or are you just saying that sometimes upsets happen?

Both depending upon the certainty of the regular season champion getting in. If it is a certainty then of course the temptation is there to lose, get some rest, and get the money from a conference mate getting in.

(02-05-2017 10:06 AM)Lenvillecards Wrote:  You want to let the inmates rule the asylum? I think that's a bad idea. There needs to be a governing body. Reform the NCAA rules or, better yet, start a new one. This time have more restrictions on D1 membership, this would solve a lot of basketballs problems. The NCAA tournament money goes to pay for things like the CWS & the women Final 4. These other sports matter & these athletes deserve a championship as well. I'm fine with March Madness paying for this, the P5 keeps the CFP revenue.

Giving how the basketball season starts after only 2-3 weeks of practice I'm ok with the start of the season. The early season tournaments are for TV & they give you 3 games for the price of 1 on your schedule. They tend to lead to interesting matchups as well.

I agree though that it's a conference regular season champ that should get the auto bid. More of an emphasis needs to be placed on the regular season. I don't agree though that the committee promotes games against the smaller conferences. They weigh SOS pretty heavily & you have seen teams with great records get left out because of a poor SOS. They will jump teams over their conference mates as well for this reason. Louisville says that they take this into consideration, for example, so they try to schedule the teams that are favored to win their conference. I also think that the committee does put a lot of weight onto how a team performs in conference, that's why you very rarely see a sub .500 team in conference make the tournament no matter how strong the conference is.

Lenville the NCAA banks about 70 million a year after the other stuff you mention is paid for. They are nearing 1 billion in endowments. I would argue that money rightfully belongs to the schools.

As for the encouragement to play smaller schools you miss the point entirely. When do we play most OOC games? In November and December. How many P schools do we play during that time? Anywhere from 2 to 4 depending upon tournament performances. The rest are played against G5 schools with strong preseason RPI's and a few patsies. And that's for schools who are concerned with RPI. So the set up definitely encourages increased RPI and the schools willing to play you at home (without a home & home arrangement) are G5 who need the payday and want a shot at a P school to help their RPI. So my friend it is encouraged, not directly, but implicitly.

Step 1. Separate from the NCAA

SEC, ACC, B1G, PAC with a few other leagues that contain schools that will probably survive...AAC, Mountain West, Big East, and Atlantic 10


Step 2.

Play double round robin within your conference...home and away. Assuming no one goes beyond 16 then that's 30 conference games max.


Step 3.

Take the top 4 finishers from each league for a total of 32 teams to compete in the national tournament.

Step 4.

Limit non-conference play to rivalry games and a few made for TV events to kick the season off.

Step 5.

Limit conference tournaments to the top 4 teams in each league. The conference title winners get more favorable seeding in the national tournament.

Step 6.

Hold multiple postseason tournaments in nice locales. It's kind of like having bowl games for basketball teams. Basically, you replace the preseason tournaments with postseason tournaments and base the participants on their records during the season. Get rid of the NIT because nobody cares. Hold these tournaments concurrently with the national tournament.

Updated RPI/Standings

7. Kentucky (18-5, 8-2)
8. Florida (18-5, 8-2)
19. South Carolina (19-4, 9,1)
35. Tennessee (13-10, 5-5)
36. Arkansas (17-6, 6-4)
50. Georgia (13-10, 4-6)
NR. Auburn (15-8, 4-6)
NR. Alabama (13-9, 6-4)
NR. Miss St (14-8, 5-5)

(02-05-2017 12:36 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(02-05-2017 10:06 AM)Lenvillecards Wrote:  You want to let the inmates rule the asylum? I think that's a bad idea. There needs to be a governing body. Reform the NCAA rules or, better yet, start a new one. This time have more restrictions on D1 membership, this would solve a lot of basketballs problems. The NCAA tournament money goes to pay for things like the CWS & the women Final 4. These other sports matter & these athletes deserve a championship as well. I'm fine with March Madness paying for this, the P5 keeps the CFP revenue.

Giving how the basketball season starts after only 2-3 weeks of practice I'm ok with the start of the season. The early season tournaments are for TV & they give you 3 games for the price of 1 on your schedule. They tend to lead to interesting matchups as well.

I agree though that it's a conference regular season champ that should get the auto bid. More of an emphasis needs to be placed on the regular season. I don't agree though that the committee promotes games against the smaller conferences. They weigh SOS pretty heavily & you have seen teams with great records get left out because of a poor SOS. They will jump teams over their conference mates as well for this reason. Louisville says that they take this into consideration, for example, so they try to schedule the teams that are favored to win their conference. I also think that the committee does put a lot of weight onto how a team performs in conference, that's why you very rarely see a sub .500 team in conference make the tournament no matter how strong the conference is.

Lenville the NCAA banks about 70 million a year after the other stuff you mention is paid for. They are nearing 1 billion in endowments. I would argue that money rightfully belongs to the schools.

As for the encouragement to play smaller schools you miss the point entirely. When do we play most OOC games? In November and December. How many P schools do we play during that time? Anywhere from 2 to 4 depending upon tournament performances. The rest are played against G5 schools with strong preseason RPI's and a few patsies. And that's for schools who are concerned with RPI. So the set up definitely encourages increased RPI and the schools willing to play you at home (without a home & home arrangement) are G5 who need the payday and want a shot at a P school to help their RPI. So my friend it is encouraged, not directly, but implicitly.

Is that $79 million just after paying for the championships in other sports or after all expenses? Lawyer fees, investigators salaries, office personnel, building leases & maintenance, etc? I would expect an organization the size of the NCAA would have a high overhead.

The early season games are also home games for power teams & generate ticket sales & other various revenues. The more power v power games you have the fewer the home games are for power teams. They are warmup/tuneup games as well. Freshman have very little time to settle in & start training before practice starts. There's no spring practices in basketball. I understand that it's not an exciting part of the season but I think it's a necessary evil so to speak.