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Who’s ready for the tournament?

March 18th, 2008, 3:35 pm · 1 Comment · posted by Mark Heller

trio.jpg

“Hello, Tom O’Connor? (Clockwise) Seth Greenberg at Virginia Tech, Brian Gregory from Dayton and Herb Sendek from ASU here. Can we chat a minute?” 

Oops. Wrong tournament.

First off, apologies for the basketball portion of the blog going on hiatus for the past 10 days, but we’re back in tow.

For better or worse, the Arizona State-got-hosed mantra continues. It (and the RPI) is suddenly getting shredded on the TV networks, message boards, talk radio, everywhere.

Both the Sun Devils and Virginia Tech have been the poster teams for what’s wrong with the RPI and the committee’s selections, as sympathies have poured in from around the country.

There are good reasons why ASU should be in the tournament (namely, because their portfolio is at least equal to Oregon and Arizona, yet the Ducks somehow received a No. 9 seed and Arizona a No. 10 seed). There are also good reasons why ASU didn’t get in. Same goes for the Hokies.

Mystifying, however, is that few have wept for Dayton.

Yes, the Atlantic 10 wasn’t very good this year. But …

The Flyers were No. 32 in the RPI and finished 21-10 (12-1 non-conference). They were 33rd in strength of schedule (28th in nonconference strength-of-schedule), were 4-4 against the top 50 teams and went 5-5 in their last 10 games.

They won non-conference games at Louisville (No. 13) and destroyed Pittsburgh (No. 15) at home. The Flyers also beat tournament-bound St. Joseph’s (No. 44) and Temple (No. 47). Two close losses (three overall) to Xavier (No. 9) was probably their downfall.

ASU is justified in feeling robbed by the committee (especially because of the Oregon-Arizona factors), but the Devils and Hokies have Dayton on their side.

Heck, even ASU and Virginia Tech are No. 1 seeds in the NIT. The Flyers are No. 3 behind Ohio State and Illinois State, and ISU was one spot lower in the RPI than Dayton and played in a worse conference (Missouri Valley) this season.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 18th, 2008 at 3:35 pm and is filed under Men's Basketball. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

One Response to “Who’s ready for the tournament?”

  1. Glen Clark Says:
    March 19th, 2008 at 7:36 am

    Since the big boys likely will not give up their stranglehold on the NCAA tourney selection process, its time to merge the NCAA & the NIT into a 96 team field. Thirty two teams get a first round bye, then play the winners of thirty two opening round games. There will still be complaints about seeding, but at least more teams would be dancing.
    Glen Clark - Dayton Flyer fan.
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