jpschmack

This concept doesn't match the application of the NCAA tourney points.

It's embarrassing to get upset, sure. But the effects of being in the bracket are massive compared to not being in the bracket.

I think that's non-sense. Temple got a lot of "guff" for getting upset? From whom? From fans of Xavier, Saint Louis, St. Joe's, LaSalle, Nova, Drexel and Penn fans?

A #5 seed losing to a #12 isn't bad, it's disappointing. Temple didn't suffer from the negative news cycle of losing to USF (which I had to look up who beat them). On the same DAY that TWO #15 seeds upset #2 seeds. I remember Lehigh and Norfolk State. It's bad PR for the conference for about an hour. Then the tournament moves on.

When Temple lost to USF, the country collectively pulled out their brackets, circled USF or crossed off Temple, and then watched the next game.

That doesn't wipe away the week-long coverage of the bracket. The estimates are that 60 percent of Americans fill out NCAA brackets. When you're in the dance, roughly 150 million people read your schools name in the bracket.

The idea that any point system would have non-NCAA achievements lead to more points than an NCAA berth is patently absurd. Being upset in the NCAAs or even being a 14 and getting crushed by 40 in the NCAA's is better than winning the NIT. (I know the UMass fans will disagree with this, but right now turn to someone near you and ask them "Who won the 2011 NIT?"). To be upset, you have the year-long recognition that comes with being a ranked team, and top seed, etc.

I don't even think the "losses" points make any sense. No one notices if you're 14-17 or 5-25. You're either "nationally relevant" or you're not.

If you're a fan of Rhody, Charlotte, Duquesne, LaSalle or UMass, honestly answer me this: In the last 12 seasons, would you rather have St. Bona's W-L and post-season list (Scandal not included), or your school's? Would you rather have 12 seasons hovering around .500 with a couple NITs, or six years of bad records and two NCAA appearances?

Bona Wolf for Pope

Dude, 2-26 is AWFUL and I wouldn't wish it on anyone, even if they're promised an NCAA tourney 7 years later. I know part of it (a lot of it) was the scandal, but when you can get Bona's fans depressed about basketball, you know things are bad.

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ace93

I think the losses do matter. This is a barometer, albeit not a perfect one, of what you have done *for the A10* lately. The more losses you have, the more you hurt the A10. This is not about which program would you rather be or how is your program perceived nationally.

Are a chunk of bad years offset by 2 NCAA appearances? I would lean towards yes, but at the same time recognize that in those years when the conference only got one or two bids, it could be the horrible record of others that kept RPI's down and therefore lost us a bid or two.

UMass87

This is precisely the point. The converse is true as well. It may well be that Dayton should be behind Temple but the reason they end up ahead of Temple is that they consistently win 20 games a year. Dayton and their fans have not reaped any real benefit from this but the rest of the A10 teams have - particularly those getting at-large bids. Dayton has been a significant plus to the conference precisely because wins against them are invariably top 100 wins and losses are invariably losses to a top 100 team.

The enmity from KA and others is, I believe, a direct result of the inescapable fact that they are, like me, fans of a team that has been dead weight in the A10 for far too long. The A10 aspires to be a major conference - yet there are no truly major conferences that are not also BCS football conferences. Acquiring VCU and Butler have been a great step in the right direction and losing Charlotte will help. Losing Temple is a very, very significant blow. The fact is that to be considered a truly major conference the conference needs its bottom teams to have significantly fewer 18+ game losing seasons. If they need to schedule only against schools for the blind to accomplish that then that is what they need to do. In the last ten years Fordham and SBU have had six 18+ game losing seasons. La Salle has had five. Duquesne and UMass have each had four. That's simply unacceptable.

antboy

As a fan of Charlotte, I would definitely rather have Charlotte's last 12 seasons. But then, that would include 4 NCAA appearances, a 2nd round in the NCAA, and mostly higher finishes in the regular season than SBU (including winning a slightly tougher conference before entering the A10). I'd have switched places this past season though, that's for sure.

UMass87

Ace - I gave 2 points for a NIT bid and then either 2 points for losing the championship game or 5 points for winning it. The thinking is that NIT bids have some value to the conference and the championship game gets a reasonable amount of press coverage. I used the same method for the NCAA - 5 points for a bid plus points for your terminal position.

jpschmack

Valid. I was cutting off your pre-A10 days, since that benefitted C-USA and not the A-10.

There is no conceivable way that Bona's lean years cost the A-10 more bids than the Bonnies themselves provided by winning last season's A-10 title.

Putting the "lean yearS" of our bids on Bonaventure is flat out stupid. We had a horrible scheduling policy to begin with during Bruno's reign of terror with "hardest OOC SOS possible" that racked up losses and devalued our conference season.

Furthermore, the scandal provided everyone with ADVANCED NOTICE. Something you don't get when a team just sucks on their own, like URI did last year. The NCAA took scholarships away. Everyone knew there was a five-year period where the Bonnies would be awful.

Did we as a group say "Hey, Bona won't be able to bring 7 OOC wins to the table. Everyone needs to add another easy win to the OOC schedule so we hit our target for OOC victories and keep our RPIs up?"

Practically everything I talk about on this board boils down to "We need to work together on our OOC scheduling to insure conference success." This is yet another example of why.

Free Quebec

No offense, but only a fan of a team that hasn't made the tourney in over a decade would come up with a scoring system where winning 20 games counts for MORE than making the NCAA tourney!

(and where winning an NCAA game doesn't count unless you win twice, and where losing an NCAA first round game as a 7 seed is basically as bad for the league as losing 19 games, and where a lone 20-loss season exactly negates a trip to the Sweet 16, etc.).

Honestly, this could be the most poorly thought-out ranking system I've ever seen.

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jpschmack

Here's my point system:

NCAA Third Weekend: 500
NCAA Second Weekend: 250
NCAA Second Round: 150
NCAA First Round: 100

NIT Champs: 10
NIT Appearance: 5

20 Wins: 3
Winning Record: 1
Undefeated Regular Season: 100

200+ RPI: -5

Last 10 years (not counting C-USA seasons for SLU, Char)
Xavier: 1637
Temple: 588
St Joe's: 485
Richmond: 460
Dayton: 410
GW: 370
SLU: 158
Bona: 85
UMass: 33
URI: 32
LaSalle: 6
Charlotte: 6
Duquesne: -9
Fordham: -28

I think that's a more accurate assessment of where everyone has been.
The hardest team to slot is St. Joe's. Richmond's had more CONSISTENT NCAA tournament success. But the amount of positive pub SJU brought the A-10 by being #2 in the country cannot be understated. THE STORY on Selection Sunday was "Would St. Joe's get a #1 seed."

That has to be worth more than merely making the first round enough times to cover the difference.

antboy

You can do what you want for these kinds of rankings, it's something to kill time over the off-season and doesn't really mean anything. But it makes no sense to include Charlotte and SLU if you're only looking at their 7 seasons versus 10 for the other teams. I know it's all about what they did for the A10, but it seems like you'd want to cut it off at 7, or else leave Char/SLU out of it.

UMass87

For those that think this exercise has no basis in reality - you are not thinking. This exercise is about perception which is, by definition, subjective. That doesn't mean it's not important. It is very important when the conference negotiates its tv deal. It's very important when the conference tries to sell sponsors advertising space. The subjective bias in my perception is documented in my weighting system and, to some degree, explained in subsequent posts. If one tries to make too fine a judgment (for instance is Temple really second and Dayton third) based on the numbers then that is a mistake of their own making. The utility of the model is to identify groups of teams:

teams pulling their weight:

Xavier, Dayton, Temple, UR, SJU, URI and SLU

teams that need to more consistently perform

GW, UMass, Charlotte, and Duquesne

teams that need to do more than have one good season:

SBU, La Salle, and Fordham

UMass87

jpschmuck - you really need to get a grip on reality. The ONLY good thing about SBU getting a bid last year was that it was one more bid for the A10. It was a very, very negligible positive because the rest of the world saw it and thought less of the A10 precisely because SBU won the A10 tournament. Outside of the A10 there are two types of college basketball fans: those who have no idea who SBU is and those who think of SBU as a perennial doormat. You may not like that but that's the reality outside of the A10 bubble - and really only the historic A10. People from Charlotte and Saint Louis and Richmond have no clue who SBU is or think they are a joke.

mm4cc

If we want a ranking system that is at all meaningful we must first decide what a “point” is worth. Then we can assign points to specific achievements (winning regular season games, post season games, conference championship, etc) in a meaningful way. I suggest that each regular season win is worth one point. Thus our “points” are in units of wins, which I will assume directly corresponds to prestige.

Games played against other conferences bring prestige to the conference since they demonstrate the relative power of our conference to others. Nationally televised games bring prestige to the conference by bringing our product to a national audience, and are therefore worth as much as a win itself no matter the outcome. OOC losses are worth -1 since they make our conference appear weaker than others.

OOC win: +1
OOC loss: -1

BCS OOC Wins: +1 (for a total of +2)

Nationally Televised Game: +1

Yes, winning against a BCS team is worth twice as much as winning against a mid-major team. In general these wins gets much more national coverage.

What really brings prestige to the conference during the regular season is being ranked. I suggest that each week a team is ranked (in at least one poll) during the regular season this brings the same amount of prestige as if they had won an additional game.

Each week of being ranked: +1

A team winning the regular season or conference tournament does nothing to raise the profile of our conference (one of our teams will always win, so it doesn’t demonstrate any value), and neither do winning games in the NIT, but making the NCAA tournament is the one of the best and most effective ways to increase the perception of the conference. The further a team goes into the tournament the greater the impact. I suggest the following points for being in each round of the tourney (the points are cumulative):

round of 64: +2
round of 32: +3 (+5 total)
sweet 16: +4 (+9 total)
elite 8: +5 (+14 total)
final four: +6 (+20 total)
championship game: +7 (+27 total)
national champion: +8 (+35 total)

The only thing fans really remember year to year about previous seasons is who made it far in the tournement. This is what brings real value to your conference.

This may be a more complicated system than the one already preposed but I believe it makes more sense and more accurately describes how much each conference member has contributed to the conference. I will try to tabulate the rankings based on my system for the past 1, 3, and 10 years.

Nugget49er

You're welcome?

Hey Captain Actuary, it's a message board, he isn't defending his dissertation.

DukesDan

Changing from 10 to 5 years sure does make Duquesne look better! -16 to 18! Really shows the progress made under Ron Everhart.

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