Poll: Will Missouri State make the NCAA tournament?

[sect.3purple]

Yes, forget the stats, the "experts," the talking heads.....the Bears will dance! You can support, or deny, almost any of the bubble teams with the maneuvering of stats, opinions, .... MSU is the Valley regular-season champion and I think the committee will include them, especially because of past denials.
I hope the Bears and the Trees in the NCAA, and the Shockers in the NIT go far carrying the MVC banner. The rest of us in the lower two tourneys will try to represent the Valley well also. At this time of year we're all in this together....come next fall, I hope the Aces step all over the rest of the Valley as they climb to the top!

[Aces0976]

No, but for an MVC "fan" to say we don't deserve is complete BS.

What are we all supposed to hold a candlelight vigil and sing Kumbaya together until they let you in???? I don't think they are getting in, I think MSU is good enough to beat some teams, problem is they haven't had even one really impressive non conference win for the committee to look at and give them the nod. To me it's 50/50 on whether I think MSU deserves a bid, but more like 1 out of 10 for them to actually get the bid.

[DieHardMSUFan]

I voted no, but not because they don't deserve it, just because of the way the bubble has played out the last few days. Virtually every team MSU needed to lose their games did not, and it is just not working out for them.

I would argue hard that they deserve it way more than Villanova or Alabama and several other major conference puds that are going to get it.

That being said, if you really want to talk about "deserving" to be in, MSU abosutely "deserves" to be in...but the nature of the system is that if you reward a conference champion with an auto bid, the conference tourneys mean very little and it reduces the drama of the last week of the season, and the TV money associated with it. Does ISU really "deserve" to be in the tourney for a three win streak in the tourney over the body of work that MSU accomplished in 18 games? Probably not, but it just the nature of the beast we live in....just like the very mediocre major conference schools getting in over the top mid major schools.

[Unsmooth Moment]

NIT for the Bears

[WSUbballer]

Why do some MSU fans assume that just because people say they don't deserve to go to the dance automatically means they don't want them to go to the dance? I wonder if the roles were reversed how many MSU fans would be saying WSU deserved to be in and was rooting for them to be in. I know 2 for sure who would be in that category.

Why is one fan trying to make everything a case against WSU? That kinda stuff will make me happy to see MSU/Weems/Creekmore sitting on the outside looking in come tomorrow.

And the answer to the topic question: an emphatic NO.

[Snaggletooth]

I would argue hard that they deserve it way more than Villanova or Alabama and several other major conference puds that are going to get it.

Lets just look at Villanova vs MSU

Top 25 wins:
MSU 0-0
Nova 4-6 <advantage Nova>

Top 50 wins
MSU 0-1
Nova 2-2 <advantage Nova>

Top 100 wins
MSU 3-5
Nova 3-0 <advantage Nova>

Non-Conference SOS
MSU 166
Nova 105 <advantage Nova>

Non-Conference RPI
MSU 95
Nova 16 <advantage Nova>

MSU is not even close. Nova may be a mediocre BCS team, but MSU is not even mediocre in comparison.

That being said, if you really want to talk about "deserving" to be in, MSU abosutely "deserves" to be in...

What has MSU done to deserve it? Losing record against Top 100 competition. Winning a less than mediocre MVC. This is not your father MVC anymore.

Does ISU really "deserve" to be in the tourney for a three win streak in the tourney over the body of work that MSU accomplished in 18 games?

Yes, ISU-B does deserve it. Coming into the season every team knows that all the regular season means is it is seeding for STL. Evidently you don't get it, but the 18 games in the MVC is not a good body of work. 44% of that work was against 200+ RPI teams. No Top 50 competition. Hardly any Top 100 competition (WSU and ISU-B). And MSU is part of the problem with their 166 Non-Conference SOS. MSU is getting what they deserve.

[MSUDuo]

I would have said this last year and the years before and will say it again next year.

The conference tournaments are for two things. To give the BCS teams more chances to play their way in against other bubble teams and for money. There is no other reason to have them

The fact that we reward the auto-bid to a winner over 3 days and 3 games is foolish. Teams get hot. Teams have a bad game. It makes no sense to make 3 greater than 18.

[PeKaph]

Again, for one Obscene Gesture U. fan, it's all about MSU. Of course, it's not just one. There were also the OGU fans at the women's tournament yesterday trying to lead cheers for InSU against MSU. So it's actually most of your fanbase. I can't blame them for feeling inferior...most of them have moved on to watching their dominant baseball team lose games and are unaware that this "basketball" thing is still going on.

My heart will be hoping to see MSU on the bracket. My head gave up on that a few days ago. And I'm not sure whether my eyes will bother to watch the NIT games or not. They probably will, but it's nearly impossible to really care. The NIT is just a bunch of ghosts wandering around the floor trying to convince themselves that what they're doing is important.

[MVCfans]

The odds for Missouri State look slim. From Lunardi this morning:

Harvard [23-6 (12-2), RPI: 37, SOS: 155] Yes, the Watch is including Harvard in its final edition, and not just because we feel bad for fans of the buzzer-beaten, tourney-bereft Crimson. Believe it or not, Harvard actually has a semidecent bubble case. The Crimson have wins over Boston College, Colorado and Princeton, which is a more impressive collection of victories than, say, Missouri State's. Harvard also has the benefit of a top-40 RPI and only one loss (at Yale) below the RPI top 50. The only problem for this team is the weakness of its wins, many of which came against the ugly Ivy League. In all, 16 of the Crimson's 21 Division I victories came against teams ranked below 150 in the RPI. If you're wondering why the Ivy has never sent a team to the Big Dance via an at-large bid, that's a pretty good place to start. In other words, the Crimson should catch the committee's attention Sunday, and they're worth at least a look after Saturday's crushing loss. But it would be hard to imagine this team moving ahead of the rest of the bubble before the bracket is released.

Missouri State [25-8 (15-3), RPI: 44, SOS: 146] The Bears don't have any really bad losses. That's good. They also don't have any really good wins. And that's bad. Missouri State went 15-3 and won the regular-season title in the Missouri Valley Conference. That's good. All but three of its 25 victories came outside the RPI top 100, and none of them came inside the RPI top 50 -- the "best" came at Wichita State in early January. That's all bad. If it wasn't for the Bears' deceptively solid RPI, Missouri State would probably be well outside the bubble chase, but that decent computer number -- along with an impressive 10 road/neutral wins -- could help this group when the committee gets around to comparing this team against some of the other long-shot profiles in consideration Sunday.

[TNMSUFAN]

The only chance we have is the conference championship, 8-2 in our last 10 and 10 wins away from JQH arena. Other than that not much but as a mid you rarely get those opportunities against top 50 teams and even the top 100 are tough especially when your conference is down. I doubt we get the bid and hopefully the Valley as a whole makes some scheduling changes to get us back where we all need it to be.

Concerning an BCS top 50 crap...BCS teams can beat other BCS teams on their home floor during conference play and claim all this impressive wins when even bad teams win some of their home games. I know we don't have any either but the top 50 and top 100 should be road wins IMO...just not impressed with home wins.