Is the Valley a 1-bid conference now?

[Valleyball]

You guys don't understand the big picture. There is no team that will come in and not lower your RPI. They took a shot at potential. It will hurt for a while and is poor timing for you guys. But there are no great choices to be made.

[TylerDurden]

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).

With all respect to the person who put that together, those would not be the RPI numbers unless said person created entirely new conference schedules for every league and ran numbers based on every result.

Everyone needs to relax. The MVC is still a very good basketball league and will have ample opportunity to earn at-large bids.

[uniftw]

Everyone's so negative. Did you consider the conference to be "bad" during four years in a row that we only got one team into the tournament?

Yes. If it's a one bid conference then it's a bad conference.

In 2011 a mediocre Ind. St. got hot and won the Valley tournament. MSU was left out. WSU was forced to win the NIT. WSU and MSU should have been in.

In 2010 a VERY good UNI dominated the conference and got the auto-bid. A 25 win Shocker team finished second and was forced into the NIT.

In 2009 a goon UNI team won the conference tournament. A 27 win Creighton team went to the NIT after winning the conference with a 14-4 record. A 24-10 Ill St was also left out.

In 2008 a VERY good Drake dominated the conference and got the auto-bid. A 25-10 Ill St was left out.

The above conference resume does not make me feel warm and fuzzy.

FWIW, UNI was the league champion in 09 as well...

[unipanther99]

We were known as a two bid conference for a long time, but for many of those years, we would have been a one bid conference if the league champion had also won the tournament. It seems like in the last few years we head into St. Louis with two or more teams having a solid chance of getting in.

[sixth ace]

Sweep them and you don't have to worry about their RPI, Yes, it won't be like sweeping
Creighton but perhaps SIU but wait you didn't do that last season even, so where is your beef?

Seriously, you could have at least read my post.

Beating Loyola twice is worse for your RPI than losing to Creighton twice.

75% of RPI is calculated by SOS.

My beef is that I cheer for a team that actually goes to the NCAA tournament. I can certainly understand why you don't care, because you don't need to worry about SOS, RPI, or good wins/bad losses when you're playing in the CIT.

Oh but I did read your post and understood your point. However nothing hurts your RPI worst than playing a 200+ team and losing to them. Obviously every team has loss some of the SOS with any team in the conference slipping below the 150s. You have to schedule 2 additional games this year. The bracket buster and the MWC challenge are gone. Fill those two games with higher seed games and win them. WSU shouldn't have a problem next year after their Final Four appearance. The challenge is for the 9 other teams to fill those date with quality team or will have to hear how we, the conference, brought WSU down.

[Wufan]

Sweep them and you don't have to worry about their RPI, Yes, it won't be like sweeping
Creighton but perhaps SIU but wait you didn't do that last season even, so where is your beef?

Seriously, you could have at least read my post.

Beating Loyola twice is worse for your RPI than losing to Creighton twice.

75% of RPI is calculated by SOS.

My beef is that I cheer for a team that actually goes to the NCAA tournament. I can certainly understand why you don't care, because you don't need to worry about SOS, RPI, or good wins/bad losses when you're playing in the CIT.

Oh but I did read your post and understood your point. However nothing hurts your RPI worst than playing a 200+ team and losing to them. Obviously every team has loss some of the SOS with any team in the conference slipping below the 150s. You have to schedule 2 additional games this year. The bracket buster and the MWC challenge are gone. Fill those two games with higher seed games and win them. WSU shouldn't have a problem next year after their Final Four appearance. The challenge is for the 9 other teams to fill those date with quality team or will have to hear how we, the conference, brought WSU down.

If we go undefeated then it won't matter. Anything short of that and it is a drag on our schedule. When CU left, WSU lost it's top 3 RPI games. Next was the BB. We've replaced two (or 3) of those games with a 200+ RPI. We went 26-8 and got an at-large. We will need to win 30 games (before the NCAA tourney) next year to replicate our same resume.

[Aces0976]

To me this isn't so much about Loyola coming in, it's more about losing Creighton. For Wichita this year, the only chance to make a splash in conference was to beat Creighton. What this move (or likely any move we were going to make) does is make the noncon schedule absolutely vital. When looking through the prism of at large bids, there may well not be a single game in the conference that can improve a Wichita's resume. There will be games that won't be bad losses, but probably not any marquee wins.....or at the very least very few chances.

[Wufan]

To me this isn't so much about Loyola coming in, it's more about losing Creighton. For Wichita this year, the only chance to make a splash in conference was to beat Creighton. What this move (or likely any move we were going to make) does is make the noncon schedule absolutely vital. When looking through the prism of at large bids, there may well not be a single game in the conference that can improve a Wichita's resume. There will be games that won't be bad losses, but probably not any marquee wins.....or at the very least very few chances.

This guy gets it!

[rlh04d]

Oh but I did read your post and understood your point. However nothing hurts your RPI worst than playing a 200+ team and losing to them. Obviously every team has loss some of the SOS with any team in the conference slipping below the 150s. You have to schedule 2 additional games this year. The bracket buster and the MWC challenge are gone. Fill those two games with higher seed games and win them. WSU shouldn't have a problem next year after their Final Four appearance. The challenge is for the 9 other teams to fill those date with quality team or will have to hear how we, the conference, brought WSU down.

We played good teams in both the MWC challenge and Bracket Busters. We were going to have to schedule good teams just to replace them regardless. We're going to have to find two other games to replace with good opponents to make up for Loyola at all, even without worrying about bettering our schedule from last year.

[saluki762]

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).

What does this have to do with anything?