The Rule of 1

[Jamar Howard 4 President]

I'll keep this short and sweet. WSU has one more loss to give if they want to make the NCAA Tourney. Win the next 5, or win the final 3 in St. Louis. Either will be enough. Anything less won't.

WSU has 7 losses today. 8 losses on selection Sunday and they get in. 9 and they don't. Simple as that.

[KC Shox]

Are you sure 8 losses gets us in? If we were some other program on the bubble and looking at WSU as being in, I'd be pissed. WSU playing in the 13th rated conference with one fairly decent win (Utah) doesn't exactly WOW anyone. The way I see it, the only loss we can possibly afford is in the championship game in St. Louis.

[_kai_]

147 - Indiana St.
219 - Mo St.
222 - Loyola

Any 3 of the next 5 to end the season would be horrible RPI losses. Lose to any of those and have 8 losses and I don't really see an at-large with the selection sheet WSU would have.

[CBB_Fan]

Are you sure 8 losses gets us in? If we were some other program on the bubble and looking at WSU as being in, I'd be pissed. WSU playing in the 13th rated conference with one fairly decent win (Utah) doesn't exactly WOW anyone. The way I see it, the only loss we can possibly afford is in the championship game in St. Louis.

While I also think we need 7 straight wins to be sure of an at-large, I think we have a shot. Not because of this year, but because we've earned up enough respect over the last 3 to cash-in a bid. We no longer have an excuse that Orlando was all because of injuries, because to be honest our losses after the injuries are worse than the losses before. Our resume is terrible, and if we were evaluating based on good wins and bad losses we'd be an NIT team. But the same guys that earned a terrible resume this year have shown that they are capable of winning at the highest level in years past, and the eye test generally says we can be that type of team this year. If this was 2011, we probably would not be dancing but we've earned broader institutional respect. I don't want to test the limits of that respect, but we are without doubt in a much better spot than our resume alone suggests.

[Jamar Howard 4 President]

Our resume is terrible

KenPom #18 AFTER today's loss. No top 20 in KP has EVER been left out.

Terrible? Your adjective is terrible. Maybe even turrible.

[proshox]

I am just going to go with win MVC tournament.

[pinstripers]

If we win everything but lose in the tournament finals, are we in? Maybe? Probably? Depends...........

[ShockerPhi]

I'm kinda surprised with how many people are standing at the edge ready to jump. I know 2 rough losses in 3 games is bad, especially at this point in the season. But there's a LOT of people who suddenly think we NEED to win Arch Madness as of right now.

[Jamar Howard 4 President]

If we win everything but lose in the tournament finals, are we in? Maybe? Probably? Depends...........

Absolutely. Definitely. For sure. No doubt.

[pinstripers]

teams that are ascending get in, teams that are descending do not

[shoxlax]

If we win everything but lose in the tournament finals, are we in? Maybe? Probably? Depends...........

Yes

No question, could even make it to semis and lose

Listen to Jamar

[CBB_Fan]

KenPom #18 AFTER today's loss. No top 20 in KP has EVER been left out.

Terrible? Your adjective is terrible. Maybe even turrible.

I said our resume. Not our KenPom. Our resume. Even if we make the tournament we will have the fewest good wins of ANY at-large team and we'll still have 2-3 bad losses. It is our worst resume since 2011, where we missed the tournament as the #25 in KenPom; the next highest missing team was #44. We were 3-6 in real games that year with some bad losses. We are 3-6 in real games this year with some bad losses. We finished with an RPI around 40-50 in 2011. We currently have an RPI of 50, and we'll need to almost win out to bring it down to 35-40.

We were a #4 seed in the NIT with basically this exact same resume. You'd have to be crazy to call it anything but terrible.

[Shockers5150]

The committee knows this is a good team, has had success. But yes, 1 more loss in the Reg season or early in the MVC tourney and it's NIT time, which will suck so bad.

[Rosewood]

It is already a win to get in year guys.

[KC Shox]

The committee knows this is a good team, has had success. But yes, 1 more loss in the Reg season or early in the MVC tourney and it's NIT time, which will suck so bad.

If that happens, I'd feel a lot worse for RB and FVV. The program will move on, but those two ending their illustrious careers in the NIT - especially after forgoing the draft - just isn't the right way to pull the curtains.