Valley Thoughts

[wufan]

They just needed to even the playing field.

[AndShock]

Yesterday I went and looked at how the MVC teams were doing, as I was somewhat surprised at where the Valley is currently ranked in the conference RPI, even this early. I am often a harsh critic of giving that metric any respect before Christmas, and only a little before mid-to-late January. As expected, their "success" is only 2-3 good wins, one of which was an obvious fluke (InSU over IU). They have racked up a bunch of wins against cupcakes that have high SOS's early in the season because they play buy games on the road at power conference teams. Only UNI (somewhat surprisingly) has a semi-solid resume with the aforementioned wins over SMU, NCSU and UNLV and respectable losses to UNC and Nova.

Everyone else is fool's gold.

MSU has losses to NDSU and Georgia Southern. Valpo is undefeated against poor competition. Loyola similarly hasn't beat anyone of quality and lost embarrassingly to Boise St. Illinois State's win over So. Carolina isn't as good as it looks, got smashed by 30 vs. Nevada and lost to Charleston Southern.

Their conference rank will drop significantly once conference play gets going and the SOS of all those teams they beat begin to plummet.

I will grant they are better overall (sans WSU) than last year, but ultimately I expect they will be a 1-bid league with a 13-seed.

Their conference rank isn’t going to plummet as much as you think it will. The SOS plummeting is already factored into RPIForecast and it still has Drake projected as the worst Valley school at 218, ISUb is 167, everyone else is top 150 with 4 top 100 schools.

If the MVC outperforms expectations the rest of the non-con and the AAC underperforms, the MVC will finish ahead of the AAC in the RPI. I would claim that the MVC somehow gamed the RPI but KenPom backs up their rankings too. The MVC has miraculously managed to turn into a good mid-major conference in one offseason.

[RoyalShock]

Yesterday I went and looked at how the MVC teams were doing, as I was somewhat surprised at where the Valley is currently ranked in the conference RPI, even this early. I am often a harsh critic of giving that metric any respect before Christmas, and only a little before mid-to-late January. As expected, their "success" is only 2-3 good wins, one of which was an obvious fluke (InSU over IU). They have racked up a bunch of wins against cupcakes that have high SOS's early in the season because they play buy games on the road at power conference teams. Only UNI (somewhat surprisingly) has a semi-solid resume with the aforementioned wins over SMU, NCSU and UNLV and respectable losses to UNC and Nova.

Everyone else is fool's gold.

MSU has losses to NDSU and Georgia Southern. Valpo is undefeated against poor competition. Loyola similarly hasn't beat anyone of quality and lost embarrassingly to Boise St. Illinois State's win over So. Carolina isn't as good as it looks, got smashed by 30 vs. Nevada and lost to Charleston Southern.

Their conference rank will drop significantly once conference play gets going and the SOS of all those teams they beat begin to plummet.

I will grant they are better overall (sans WSU) than last year, but ultimately I expect they will be a 1-bid league with a 13-seed.

[WuDrWu]

Please for the love of God stop talking about UNI at large bids on OUR board. It's bad enough they talk about it.

I realize I started the thread.....I guess that's what I get.

[AndShock]

The Valley is actually pretty dang solid this year, which is actually going to hurt UNI more than it helps them. They’re not going to be able to put together a Wichita State-esque MVC record and the committee will leave them out for losing 4 MVC games even though all the losses will be in the 50-150 range.

[UCONN_Husky]

The SMU win could be a REALLY good one by season's end. If they avoid too many bad losses in the Valley, I don't see why they wouldn't be in the mix.

[WheatShock]

I can easily see them beating ISU and UTA. Xavier might be asking a lot but it is at home so they have a decent shot.

The toughest path for an large has to be the MVC schedule as any loss will be considered a bad one.

[Horn28Clem30]

I'm not denying that they should be in with that criteria at all. I just think the chances of them winning all 3 games then only losing 1 or 2 in the MVC schedule is about the same as me getting to take Beyonce on a date!

[WheatShock]

Felt like going to the UNI message board for a good laugh... they're talking about getting an at large bid. Fantastic stuff!

To be fair its not that crazy at this point. They have what should turn out to be 3 good wins already against NC State, SMU, & UNLV. Their only losses are to UNC & Nova.

To have a realistic shot they probably need to win 3 of 4 of the remaining non con schedule to pad the resume then go no worse than 15-3 in Valley play + make the finals in St. Louis. Whether that gets them in or not the way the committee has been screwing non power conference teams I can't say, but that should get them in if there's any justice IMO.

[shocks02]

Felt like going to the UNI message board for a good laugh... they're talking about getting an at large bid. Fantastic stuff!

If they beat Xavier, Iowa St and UTA at home and then go something like 16-2 or 17-1 in the Valley then they may have a chance. Maybe.

[Horn28Clem30]

Felt like going to the UNI message board for a good laugh... they're talking about getting an at large bid. Fantastic stuff!

[1972Shocker]

In the ongoing saga of WSU's non-con getting blown up through no fault of WSU, I think this is the strangest.

While the AAC is having teams posting winning records against the dregs of D1 ball, the MVC is having its' best start in a long, long time.

http://host.madison.com/sports/colle...bc05a6e8f.html

The men are having a good start. The women not so much. Currently ranked 32nd in RPI out of 32 conferences.

[Cdizzle]

How bad was the Drake coach? Sheesh.

[ShockerEngr]

What the MVC is doing well at is there are no terrible teams (jokes about Drake night aside). Have no anxious like ECU to drag the conference down makes up for a lack of top teams.

It'll be interesting to see how things play out. The MVC could end up with a high conference rpi, then only put one team in the NCAA tournament as 12-14 seed with no NIT teams.

[Rocky Mountain Shock]

In the ongoing saga of WSU's non-con getting blown up through no fault of WSU, I think this is the strangest.

While the AAC is having teams posting winning records against the dregs of D1 ball, the MVC is having its' best start in a long, long time.

http://host.madison.com/sports/colle...bc05a6e8f.html

While the win/loss record is better than previous years, I withhold judgement on whether the MVC is truly improved until I see information on strength of schedule, RPI, Kenpom, etc.