Every year at this time, there are about 50 college basketball teams that get nervous. They are the ones that think they still have a shot at being invited to the NCAA tournament but don’t exactly have the invitation in hand. Don’t be confused, the North Carolinas, Dukes, and Stanfords are still a little nervous, but their nervousness comes from a different direction. They are just worrying if they will be a number one or a number two seed. They are worrying that they may have to leave their home region to get that number one seed. Yes, they have worries, but there are over 300 Division I teams that would give anything to have that kind of worry.The NCAA Selection Committee has already been meeting to begin talk about “Bubble Teams.” Life as a bubble team is not the greatest in the world. If you are not in one of the major conferences, the ACC, SEC, Big 10, Big East, Big 12, or the PAC 10, life on the bubble is not unusual. In the last seven years, there have either been 34 or 35 at-large bids available for teams that did not win their conference automatic bid. This translates to 30 conferences fighting over those slots aside from the one that is automatically given to them. For the small conferences, this is not much more than a pipe dream. During that 7-year period, the largest number of conferences receiving at-large bids was 15, in 1995. The fewest were 9 in 1998. In 1998, there were only three conferences that received an extra bid outside of the big-6. Of the 239 at-large bids that were given out during that period, nearly 70% went to those six conferences.

If you are a fan of the University of Dayton, you have to be wondering just what are our chances of getting one of those at-large bids that go to the non-big-6. If the 70% number holds true this year, that means that there are really only 10 slots available for the peon conferences. One of the most accurate predictors of selection to the big dance is the RPI, the Rating Percentage Index. The RPI was created by the NCAA a number of years ago to make those last minute adds easier and to help in the overall seeding process. Like most computer-based systems, there are flaws and if you are a UD fan, you cannot like where we currently sit.

As of Monday morning, February 19, 2001 — because of our current RPI ranking — the chance of us making the tournament is not very good. We currently rank 77. Before the George Washington game, we sat at 80. Not much of a gain, but that can be expected because of GW’s poor record. The old belief that a win is a win is a win is definitely true with the RPI. The value of any particular win is constant. In reality, the RPI cares nothing about whom you win against and whom you lose to. It cares about winning percentages only. Your winning percentage, the winning percentage of the teams you play, and the winning percentages of the teams that they play is what matters. If the truth were told, the winning percentages of the teams you play are more important than your own winning percentage.The formula is as follows: 25% team winning percentage, 50% opponents’ average winning percentage, and 25% opponents’ average winning percentage.For us this would translate to (.25 X .640) + (.50 X .513) + (.25 X .550) = .5573

Although the Committee also looks at other items, the RPI has proven to be very accurate in the past. Jerry Palm, who runs the collegerpi.com web site, has been very accurate in the past with his predictions of who will and will not make the tournament. During that period of time, he has been accurate on over 93% of his at-large projections and has placed 86% of the teams within one seed of their actual seeding. What this tells me is that the RPI is heavily used by the Committee despite their talk about “other secret” factors. The fact that margin of victory and where you played the game is of no consequence is disturbing. A one-point overtime loss at North Carolina is just as damaging or rewarding as a 50-point loss to UNC at home. The big conferences play a high percentage of home games during their non-conference schedule. Some, like Georgetown, load up on patsies. As long as those patsies play in conferences that are smart enough to play easy pre-conference schedules, the Georgetowns come out unfairly as overrated in the system.

For those that haven’t suffered through the pain of RPI watching, the folks at Xavier, with an RPI of 39, are now worrying that they may be left out. One week ago they were talking about a 5 or 6 seed in the tournament. A loss to the number one and number two teams in the league changed all of that talk. In past years, you begin to walk a line of uncertainty around a ranking of 43 or 44. Last year we finished with an RPI of 43 and received one of the last invitations. The current team at 43 has an RPI of .5836 in comparison to our .5573. The big question that remains is if we can get there.Due to the fact that I do not have all of the sophisticated software and data that is needed to put this calculation together, I did some rather rudimentary calculations to see if it were even possible. Remember that my RPIs are all approximations. I made several assumptions, any of which could throw this whole thing in the toilet. The first is that we win the next four games. Because of the way that the system is structured, a loss is a loss, but one loss is not devastating. An additional loss would cost us .0086. Not insurmountable in ordinary circumstances, but in our case it is. I also assumed that the teams that we played and their opponents would keep the same winning percentage that they have maintained throughout the season. With this being the case, we would end the regular season with an RPI of .5807, which would put us at position 45, which is probably not good enough.

I then made the assumption that we would play Temple and St. Joe’s on the way to the championship game and play Xavier for the championship. Winning those three games takes away all of the need to worry, because we would get the automatic bid. Losing either of the first two games would put us in a very dangerous position despite a 20-10 or 21-10 record. Losing to St. Joe’s would give us an RPI of .5830. Should we lose the championship game after winning 10 in a row, it would almost certainly put us in the dance with an RPI of .5893. The committee looks very closely at how a team finishes and losing in the championship game to Xavier would not be an embarrassment.

When the season began, this was a schedule that looked like winning 19 or 20 games would take us to the dance. The fact that all of the perceived top teams have fallen on their butts hasn’t helped. Those two big wins in Maui now mean very little. The losses to Marshall and Old Dominion now look very large. The overall winning percentage of the teams that we have played this year is just a hair over .500. We had opportunities this year to put ourselves into a position to be relaxing on Selection Sunday. Losing double digit leads at home to UC and Temple and the loss of a nine-point lead at UMass may force us to sign up at Arthur Murray to do any dancing this year.The positive is that we are playing well at the right time of the season. The injury to Brooks Hall might have been the best thing that could have happened to this team. Even though UD lost two of the four games he missed, they probably would have lost them anyway. With the improved play of Marshall and Waleskowski, this team is poised to make a run. Even if they do not win the final four games, there is a very good chance that 3-1 will get them the first round bye. If that is the case, there is enough firepower available that they can win three games in three days. This is the first year since 1990 that I have actually felt that we could win the league tournament. Having a hot Tony Stanley would almost guarantee a tourney victory, but we now know that we can win with an average Tony Stanley. Let’s hope for the best and seven more wins.