Assuming that the rumored Chicago additions will join the MVC, do you think the conference will be strong enough to get an at-large bid in the near future?
I've made a post about this on the main Shocker forums, but here are the conference RPI rankings using 2012 stats with teams in their 2013 conferences. This is assuming UIC and Loyola-Chicago are in the MVC.
1 B1G- 0.5772
2 ACC- 0.5662
3 MWC- 0.5635
4 BE- 0.5596
5 Big 12- 0.5584
6 AAC- 0.5583
7 Pac 12- 0.5546
8 SEC- 0.5419
9 A10- 0.5397
10 WCC- 0.5285
11 MVC- 0.5174
For comparison, C-USA was .5168 this year, and the Horizon League would have been .5059 without the Chicago schools, though both leagues will be lower this year because they bring in some lower quality teams.
Personally, I think the conference will need to schedule and win a lot of tough games OOC to have a chance. In order for teams to get at-large bids or decent seeding in the NCAA tournament, they will need to sweep the low end teams (whereas now you can afford maybe one loss to a team like SIU last season). IMHO, it doesn't look the MVC will see at-large bids most years, except as a rare exception.
For those wondering what the Shockers might think about this, consider that the A10 would have a .5450 RPI with Wichita State (the MVC would drop to .513 in that case).