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Spiders shown as bubble team in Charlotte Observer

LKNSPIDER

LKNSPIDER

Assistant Coach
May 7, 2005
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The Charlotte Observer and Jerry Palm, CBS Sports make a good case for Richmond being listed as a bubble team with 3 top 50 wins and 2 top 25's and strong full and ooc schedule that ranks 40th and 31st in the country. RPI needs to move up.

Two A10 teams shown on the bubble:
RPI WL Top 25 Top50 Top100 SOS ALL SOS NC
Davidson 43 20-6 0 1 6 125 218
Spiders 64 17-12 2 3 5 40 31

Interesting scenario with the Davidson - VCU game: Davidson wins and UR can take 4th seed but could hurt our bubble vs Davidson. VCU wins Spiders are in 5th but that could help our bubble vs Davidson. And final game for all teams can change assumptions.

Must win at UMASS or A10 or BOTH Or it is all academic! GO Spiders!!







This post was edited on 3/2 1:17 PM by LKNSPIDER

This post was edited on 3/2 1:18 PM by LKNSPIDER

Who are the NCAA tournament bubble teams?
 
In an interesting scenario i played out at RPIForecast.com last night, if we beat Umass, SLU, RPI on Friday in Brooklyn, Davidson on Saturday in Brooklyn and then LOSE to Dayton or Rhody in the Title game, we would be about 36th in the computers.

Need to beat Umass first.
 
Saw that last night...actually cross published from the Raleigh News & Observer. Have to wonder whether he got a little awareness bump with them since we played NC State.

We just don't have enough Top 100 wins, and some bad losses to go with it. Two wins over VCU is nice for the top line stat, but we're kind of counting on them to lose another one so we can get the double bye...for resume purposes, however, we want them to look as good as possible.
 
The only realistic way we get ON the bubble is we win out the regular season and make it to the A10 finals. Then we might be ON the bubble.

Yes - our numbers are good, but I believe numbers just get you before the selection committee. Then - they take a closer look at your resume, and that is where we go down.

Top 25 wins - VCU twice. Good wins for sure.
Top 50 wins - Davidson. Good win.
Top 100 - High Point and GW. That is where it will get interesting. GW has fallen a bit and no selection committee member will look at High Point as a good win.

So in reality at this point in time - we have 3 good wins. 2 vs. VCU and 1 vs. Davidson.

BUT - make it to the A10 finals and win out regular season - we will have to rack up some more good wins, and not to mention - we will be on a 9 game winning streak - considering it will probably takes us 3 wins to get to the A10 finals. And like it or not - I think the selection committee always likes to take the HOT team in the tourney, and winning 9 out of last 10 would certainly jolt us up there as a HOT team.
 
I don't think anyone is discounting the wins we have, it's the loss(es) that are going to kill us, notably, George Mason.

I think we could possibly survive losses to 100+ RPI teams like JMU or Wake, but the loss to Mason is a frickin' albatross.

I'd love to think we run the table but it's almost too late for anyone to pay attention to getting us on the bubble.

Probably gonna have to win A10 tourney to get in. I think we're a strong NIT contender at this point.
 
If we win out the regular season, Broad Street loses, we go to Brooklyn as a 4 seed, and win one game, I think we are in. We beat UMass at their place, and beat SLU at home, no matter what happens in Brooklyn, I think we are in the conversation for NCAA, and a lock for the NIT, might even get to play at home.

Just about every team outside the top 10 has bad losses. GMU hurts, JMU and Northeastern sting, but I don't think they automatically torpedo our chances if we win out, and win one or two in Brooklyn.
 
With VCU out of the top 25 do our two top 25 wins fall off? Just like we fell off the bad loss for them because our ranking changed
 
Don't know the exact teams compared with but I agree with TBone no chance we get in unless A10 tourny champ even if 2 wins, 4 seed, and 2 tourny wins. Can't get SMU's snub from last year out of my head.

This post was edited on 3/2 2:18 PM by SouthJerseySpiderFan
 
keefusb, i admire your optimism.

i think it's probably going to be a tough slog although anything's possible. let's look at the last four in and the first four out (I used CBS but the method probably applies anywhere):

Last four in: Illinois (59/57), Texas A&M (38/86), Boise State (30/99), BYU 39/76)

First four out: Pittsburgh (49/38), Temple (40/65), Texas (46/9), UCLA
(52/25)

Only one of the four in have a loss outside of 150 (Boise St lost to 191 Fresno St.). A&M doesn't even have a loss outside of top 100.

Of the first four out, Pitt has 2 losses over 150 (164 and 214), Temple had 1 (182, but nothing between 100-150), Texas has no losses over 100, and UCLA has none over 150.

We might compare favorably on SOS in another week, but right now we're 65/34, so worse than everyone on this list by RPI but mostly better on SOS.

I still think the common thread is mostly that key loss to Mason and questionable losses to WF/JMU.

I hope you're right though.
 
Originally posted by I-M-UR:

With VCU out of the top 25 do our two top 25 wins fall off? Just like we fell off the bad loss for them because our ranking changed
Click to expand...
VCU is still top 25 in the RPI, just not in the national polls.
 
really have no insight into how committee members do their thing but there will only be a handful of teams that are in that gray area and how we stack up to them is what determines it. if on that committee, am not really looking at numbers, indices, am looking at those teams, what conf are they in, who have they played out of conference, what is their record, who have they beaten, who have they lost to. as stated above, losing to umwcah, northeastern, puts us way down the list, unless our competitors for a spot have the same kind of losses. just don't see us being strong enough to make a case or at least a good enough case. really gets down to our competition for that spot and how we stack up against them.
 
If we are going to make the NCAAs without winning the A-10, we need to win these last two games, obviously, and then hope to play VCU in our first A-10 game and Davidson in our second. Why? Because Davidson has no notable OOC wins, so their bubble status is predicated on what they've done in league play. If we finish a game or two behind them but then end the year having beaten them 2 of 3 times, I think we leapfrog them.

Similarly, if we sweep VCU in 3 games, that says a lot. And could possibly even knock VCU out of the field.
 
My gosh Legger between the possible thought of Mason beating RPI - probably not going to happen, and VCU getting knocked out of the field - I'm getting giddy - it is almost more hopeful than I can bring myself to be - but bring it on and keep those thoughts coming!
 
You can look at it 2 ways:

A team like Texas is 1-11 vs. top 50, I think. They've proven they can beat no one good, despite tons of chances. They're 3rd to last in their league standings. It's a joke that they're mentioned, IMO.

A team like Richmond has 3 top 50 wins, one of them on the road. But there are multiple poor losses on the slate and not a ton of top 50 games overall. They're not mentioned by 90% of pundits, rightfully. Too many bad losses.

Texas fans can say - we played tough teams and didn't lose to bad ones. Richmond fans can say we beat good teams, despite some hiccups. Both have similar records.

Which team do you put in there? I'd say the one that has shown they can beat good teams. The committee (as stated in Grantland's article on the media mock bracket selection) has said they consider who you can beat more than who beat you, especially if on road.

However, UR is too much in a hole because of WFU, NE, GMU, JMU games. Change 2 and UR is on cusp. Change 3 and they're in. But 0-4 against those teams is not an ncaa team until further things (like 4 wins in a row, and being #4 seed in A10) happen. And even then, maybe. Remember that both DC and URI are not being spoken of as locks for the ncaa by any means. A10 having a bit of a down year.
 
Candidly, I would feel better about our odds if I thought the committee really was conference-blind when it makes its selections. But I just don't buy that it is. I can't believe that it wouldn't compare us with Davidson/VCU/Rhody/Dayton etc when considering who to take. Compare us to Texas and maybe the argument looks ok for us. But I think the reality is that at most the A-10 is getting 3 in. So we need to beat a couple of those teams that are ahead of us in order to become the third team.
 
Who knows how the committee works? - they do a lot of of explaining after the selections are announced. Then media "talking heads' go on their rants about "so and so" should have been in and how can you select this team over that team? Yeah I know they have to talk about something. Who can forget Jay Bilas "going off" after the 2011 selections about how VCU did not deserve to be in the field and since then he has been the opposite talking how good they are at every turn. "Supposedly" a team that shows improvement through the season and goes on a winning streak at the end has that taken into account by the committee if that team is "on the bubble". Our best shot and some of you have said the same thing already is to go on a winning streak for the rest of the season and in the A-10 tournament. Only "guarantee" is to win the tournament but making it to the final may or may not be good enough?
 
it's not inconceivable, if we end with two wins to close out the regular season, we get to 19-12 which is respectable.

Getting to 20 wins seems like an absolute must in my mind to even get considered. My biggest concern is that it may be too late to get much push, no one is really talking about UR as a bubble contender, even after the second VCU win and current win streak. Maybe two more wins gets some talking going?

Crazier things have happened...
 
I am feeling some similarities between this team and Wainwright's at-large team in 2004. We had to sweat that thing out, and I thought we were toast when we lost in the A-10 semis to Dayton (on their home court) in that crazy, nearly miraculous comeback game. But we made it somehow.

I also see some similarities between us this year and VCU in 2011. They were not even mentioned by anyone as a bubble team, and then they just showed up in the field randomly. So it is true that we never really know what the committee thinks. Time will tell. Gotta keep winning to make it interesting.
 
I don't know that the 2011 comparison with VCU is that similar. If i recall correctly, they were at 20 wins pretty early in February and then kind of stumbled through the last 4-5 games, limping into the CAA tournament, which they lost in the championship game. So they'd been on the radar for a long time and kind of lost it, whereas we have not been on the radar and are peaking trying to get on the bubble.

One fair comparison is that we could be a dark horse like they were...a lot of people thought they shouldn't be in, but got rewarded in spite of the late season swoon. It proved to be a pretty valid call.
 
But which counts RPI or polls?

Why when I push reply to an earlier message it doesn't show up? Do I need to cut and paste?
This post was edited on 3/2 5:44 PM by I-M-UR
 
Originally posted by I-M-UR:
But which counts RPI or polls?

Why when I push reply to an earlier message it doesn't show up? Do I need to cut and paste?
This post was edited on 3/2 5:44 PM by I-M-UR
Click to expand...
When you hit reply there should be a toolbar above the area where you type your reply. There should be a button on the far right that looks like quotes (") and if you press it then the post you are replying to will be included in your post.

As for which matters, polls or RPI I think they both matter. The committee will look at RPI numbers for the teams we beat, but beating a team that is top 25 in the polls is better than beating a team in the top 25 RPI in most cases I would believe.
 
Originally posted by fan2011:

Originally posted by I-M-UR:
But which counts RPI or polls?

Why when I push reply to an earlier message it doesn't show up? Do I need to cut and paste?
This post was edited on 3/2 5:44 PM by I-M-UR
Click to expand...
When you hit reply there should be a toolbar above the area where you type your reply. There should be a button on the far right that looks like quotes (") and if you press it then the post you are replying to will be included in your post.

As for which matters, polls or RPI I think they both matter. The committee will look at RPI numbers for the teams we beat, but beating a team that is top 25 in the polls is better than beating a team in the top 25 RPI in most cases I would believe.
Click to expand...
Thanks
 
No team with 12 loses will get in unless they are from the Big 10 or Big East. Certainly not Richmond. We better be hoping that Davidson wins and we can win out and somehow get a top 4 seed. The only way we will get in the NCAA is to win the tournament, and we won't win the tournament unless we get a bye and only have to play 3 games.

Sorry to be a downer......
 
Winning the A-10 tournament is the only path to the NCAA.

Win a few more (at least 1 of the next 2, and a couple in Brooklyn) and I see NIT possibilities.
 
Originally posted by Not-A-Homer:
Winning the A-10 tournament is the only path to the NCAA.

Win a few more (at least 1 of the next 2, and a couple in Brooklyn) and I see NIT possibilities.
Click to expand...
We probably just need to win 1 more game to be a lock for the NIT, and we are basically guaranteed a win against SLU so I would consider us a lock for the NIT.
 
did someone just use the word guaranteed in speaking of a SPID basketball win? won't hang the jim mora, PLAYOFFS!!! video but those two things are pretty darn close. shame on you fan, you were scoring some points with me then you went and blew it. am sure we will be a prohibitive fav at home but we are talking SPID basketball, there are never any guarantees.
 
Originally posted by WebSpinner:
did someone just use the word guaranteed in speaking of a SPID basketball win? won't hang the jim mora, PLAYOFFS!!! video but those two things are pretty darn close. shame on you fan, you were scoring some points with me then you went and blew it. am sure we will be a prohibitive fav at home but we are talking SPID basketball, there are never any guarantees.
Click to expand...
If we lose you I will take full blame.
 
Originally posted by fan2011:

Originally posted by WebSpinner:
did someone just use the word guaranteed in speaking of a SPID basketball win? won't hang the jim mora, PLAYOFFS!!! video but those two things are pretty darn close. shame on you fan, you were scoring some points with me then you went and blew it. am sure we will be a prohibitive fav at home but we are talking SPID basketball, there are never any guarantees.
Click to expand...
If we lose you I will take full blame.
Click to expand...
fan2011, don't ever let the curmudgeons get you down, you're the best thing to happen to this board in a long time!
 
I could see a path for at large for us, that path is for us to win out and lose in the A-10 championship. Even then, I don't like our odds that much because the A-10 championship game is played during the selection process, so I think the game is often not even considered by the committee.

As for VCU, I could also see a path for them not making the tournament and that path would be to either lose out or lose there last 2, one the first round game in the A-10 tournament and then most likely get bounced by us in there next.

Either way, VCU has to lose to Mason for this to happen. VCU is leaking oil right now, but I just don't see them losing to Mason at home.

As for the NIT, I agree with fan2011, one more win and we should feel fairly comfortable. If we beat UMass tomorrow, I think we are a lock for the NIT.
 
Agree 97 - I think for NCAA bubble talk to enter our minds - we need to win out, and make the A10 championship game. Like I said earlier, that would give us probably 2-3 more good wins, and put us on an impressive winning streak at the end of the season - which I think the committee likes to see.

For NIT - I think beating UMASS is a must to feel safe, but the NIT is a harder egg to crack because of the automatic bids. Remember all regular season conference winners get an auto bid to the NIT, so depending on how many upsets there are in lower conference tournaments - will decide how many at large spots available. Last year - there were 13 auto qualifiers who failed to win their conference tourney. That leaves 19 spots. Assuming we are not one of the LAST 4 or NEXT 4 Out of the NCAA tourney - that then brings the number down to 11 spots. I think we would get in, but I would argue that even if we beat UMASS, we probably still need to win 1 game in the A10 tourney. Otherwise - we might be on the NIT bubble.
 
Originally posted by MacSpider:


Originally posted by fan2011:


Originally posted by WebSpinner:
did someone just use the word guaranteed in speaking of a SPID basketball win? won't hang the jim mora, PLAYOFFS!!! video but those two things are pretty darn close. shame on you fan, you were scoring some points with me then you went and blew it. am sure we will be a prohibitive fav at home but we are talking SPID basketball, there are never any guarantees.
Click to expand...
If we lose you I will take full blame.
Click to expand...
fan2011, don't ever let the curmudgeons get you down, you're the best thing to happen to this board in a long time!
Click to expand...
but don't get cocky, kid. that bar is set pretty low!
 
One game at a time. All that matters right now, is UMass. Win that game, and, then see, what lies ahead. Won't be an easy task at all.
 
Originally posted by fan2011:
Originally posted by Not-A-Homer:
Winning the A-10 tournament is the only path to the NCAA.

Win a few more (at least 1 of the next 2, and a couple in Brooklyn) and I see NIT possibilities.
Click to expand...
We probably just need to win 1 more game to be a lock for the NIT, and we are basically guaranteed a win against SLU so I would consider us a lock for the NIT.
Click to expand...
I don't buy that just yet. Too many conference champions will probably lose their tournaments, taking valuable at large NIT bids away from us.

As Tom Berenger said in Major League, "Well I guess there's only one thing left to do....win the whole ****in' thing".

This post was edited on 3/3 12:37 PM by wr70beh
 
In the ever shifting committee opinion on what matters... Utah State rep, who is the chair this year, says how you finish matters according to Andy Katz just now. In effect those wins will be weighted more and a late hot streak matters.

Previously, this stat as a factor was buried a little bit. Imo that's because overall I think it skew/favors low and mid major conference teams with more opportunities to run the table late. A guy from Utah State probably doesn't care about tipping the scales in favor of the little guys.

It's also of note, that the year we got the bid under Wainwright (? I think), Bob Bowlsby who was the chair complimented our road wins at Kansas, Stanford and Xavier (?)... and said that's what an at large team needs to do. No shocker we got a bid that year.

Let's just keep winning. Always better to take the decision out of the committee's hands, but continuing this late run may put us in better shape than we thought..
 
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