Bracketology

[RationalGriz]

The Big Sky should be proud. Joe Lunardi has 16 seed UNC playing Northwestern St in the playin game.

[CatBlitz]

That's bullshi*. UNC is not deserving of a play-in game. And neither are you guys if you make it in.

[BozoneCat]

You really think so? In my opinion, any conference in which this MSU team is still sitting at .500 doesn't deserve better than a 16 seed. It has to be a pretty terrible league for MSU to be able to be .500, so our conference strength has to be the pits. Fair or not to UNC and UM, that's the way it works for us little guys. I bet that UM would get a 14 or 15 seed just because of the respect they have earned by making it to the dance 5 times in the last decade, but N. Colorado would probably have to play with a 16 seed. Remember, they are adding 4 teams to the tourney this year, so all those "16" seeds have to play their way in to the "real" tournament now.

[Potomac Griz]

We've heard the same type of stuff every year about how bad the Big Sky is.... I know the Big Sky doesn't have a great RPI right now as a conference, but it's about where it's been the past several years, with an occasional good RPI year here and there, and we've faired pretty well in where our teams got seeded, especially if it's a team that's been in the tournament lately (PSU, Weber, Montana).

If either UNC, Weber, the Griz, or NAU win out (or close to it), it'll be very hard for them to justify a 16 seed for those teams if they win the tournament. If Weber or the Griz end up with 20+ wins and in the NCAA tournament, I wouldn't be surprised to see at least a 15 seed. If UNC struggles and just barely cracks 20 wins but wins the conference tournament, I could see them with a 16 seed possibly.

Take a look at the past 7 years, the RPI rating of the Big Sky team in the tournament, and the seeding.

2009-2010: #97 Montana (14 seed) - 22-9 overall 10-6 in conference.
2008-2009: #113 Portland State (13 seed) - 23-9 overall 11-5 in conference.
2007-2008: #83 Portland State (16 seed) - 23-9 overall 14-2 in conference.
2006-2007: #143 Weber State (15 seed) - 20-11 overall 11-5 in conference.
2005-2006: #61 Montana (12 seed) - 23-6 overall 10-4 in conference.
2004-2005: #130 Montana (16 seed) - 18-13 overall 9-5 in conference.
2003-2004: #126 Eastern Washington (15 seed) - 16-12 overall 11-3 in conference.
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Either way, it's still too early for predictions to mean a whole hell of a lot There's a lot of basketball left to be played.

[GrizinWashington]

The Big Sky definitely doesn't deserve a 16 seed unless a team like MSU gets on a run and wins the tournament. While the league's rating is lower this year than it has been in the past, the low rating is being dragged down due to the bottom dwellers (Sac State is about 10th worst in the nation). The upper division teams all have very respectable RPIs.

Quick question; What do all of these traditional BB powers have in common:

Indiana, Oklahoma, UMASS, Virginia, Stanford, Oregon, Iowa, Utah, Mississippi State?


A: All of them have RPIs lower than Montana's. (and most are only a handful of spots ahead of UNC).

If Montana wins the tournament, a 13 or 14 seed is likely. If UNC wins, I'd say a 14 or 15 depending on what happens in other conference tournaments.

What sucks is that you know if a team like Oklahoma gets in, they'll be seeded above any BSC team.

[Potomac Griz]

Weber and NAU would have a decent shot at being higher than 16 too if they won out (or close to it). Weber especially, since even though the win against North Carolina happened a long time ago, I think they still get a fair amount of respect for it.

What sucks is that you know if a team like Oklahoma gets in, they'll be seeded above any BSC team.

I'm definitely not a big fan of the expanded field for the NCAA tournament. In my opinion it'll just make the mid major teams get ****** seeds, while allowing more Big East and other big conferences to get teams in the tournament that don't really deserve to be there.

So we'll see something like a team with an auto bid from a decent mid-major conference playing in the play-in game (when they would've been a 16 with no play-in or a 15) and a team like Marquette get an at-large bid with a 18-13 record (after loading up on home games early in the year), a .500 record in their conference, and still get a 9 seed.

[GrizinWashington]

Yep, I agree Dex. The expanded field will really just put more undeserving "power" conference teams in the tournament. As if America doesn't see enough of those teams 7 nights a week....

[TomCat88]

The expanded tournament won't affect the Big Sky's automatic bid to the NIT for the regular season champ, if they don't make the Big Dance, which is a nice safety net to get someone some good exposure and a chance to play at least one top notch program. Are the CBI and CIT also out there? I think UNC won a game in the CIT last year. The latter two are good fits for Big Sky schools. The NIT is obviously much more realistic than the NCAA, but is simply loaded with too many quality teams for anyone to make a serious run there also.

People really need to stop embrace these extra post season tourneys, because they're important to BSC schools. They can get 2-3 extra games against quality programs after only playing 1 or 2 in a typical season. I'm sure it's been tossed around a time or two here, but it would be nice if the Big Sky teams would/could all land 5-6 games against perennially top teams every season. The BSC would occassionally produce a team that came close, maybe won one, in those games and then beat up on the others to finish with over 20 wins and have a shot at a more respectable seed.

UCLA has won 7 of 8, which has to be helping UM's RPI, but the P-10 only has one team (Arizona #16) in the top 25.