Pilots Should be in Bracket Buster?

This is from my new favorite site, MidMajority:

West Coast: All hail your second place Portland Pilots (6-1), who washed out Saint Mary's in a watershed G!O!T!N! win on Saturday, routing the Patty Mills-less Gaels 84-66. SMC got out to a fast start, but Portland was able to get out of any tough situation by dialing long distance. As we mentioned earlier, few teams nationally are as dangerous from 3-land as the Pilots, who went 11-for-18 (Jared Stohl had six of those) on Saturday. The third-place Gaels (5-2) happen to be the WCC's only BracketBusters participant, thanks to head coach Randy Bennett's insistence to play -- we intend to honor ESPN's info-embargo, BTW -- and seriously, wouldn't that be the kind of thing that would help introduce Portland to a larger audience?

http://www.midmajority.com/2009/02/good-morning-hoops-nation-febr.php

I'm not quite sure I understand his point at the end there... is he saying that the conferences should be able to pick which teams participate midway through the year? I can't imagine how that would work. Or am I just misinterpreting what he means?

Still... it would be really cool if we could participate in the Bracket Buster - it definitely would help us get a bit of national attention if we could beat another solid mid-major program, and since its sponsored by ESPN it gets a lot of play on their shows and website and all that.

Maybe next year?

Unfortunately, not all of the Bracket Buster games get on television at all. Portland State has had that happen to them the last two years, and I know Ken Bone has been trying to get PSU to pull out of it.

I'm not sure I'm a huge fan of interrupting the conference schedule with a non-conference game that may or may not mean anything, but if we can get a guaranteed slot on television, I think I could deal with it.

Okay, forgive my ignorance (and my laziness, as I could just search for it), but what are Bracket Buster games?

-SciFi

Doesn't GU have a game with Memphis right after us? Is that a bracket buster, or just a high profile non-conference game they play since they don't get any competition from their conference to prepare them for the tournament?

SciFi wrote:Okay, forgive my ignorance (and my laziness, as I could just search for it), but what are Bracket Buster games?

-SciFi

Bracketbusters Is an ESPN TV "fake" tournament.

102 teams sign up to be eligible to play. ESPN pairs the top 26 (or what they think will be the 26 best "shows" to put on TV, then the other 76 teams are paired of NOT on TV.

They agree to rematches the following year at the away teams house.

I think our preseason tourney next season will do a lot more for the program than one weekend of the "bracketbuster" thing. This season all that we can do is try to beat Gonzaga, another ranked opponent in the next game...

Our RPI is up to #103. Call me crazy, but, I think it should have jumped a little bit more. We should be ranked in the next mid majors rankings.

http://realtimerpi.com/rpi_Men.html

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncb/news/story?id=3880198

Looks like the matchups have been finalized and published.... That Utah State-SMC game has definitely lost a bit of luster at this point...

I saw on the WCC site San Diego is participating as well, and will be playing Pacific on that Saturday night.

WCC release

Yet another team killed by key injuries to a top playmaker, I suppose ESPN can't really predict that before teh season, especially since both USD and SMC were both tourney teams last year and on paper looked to be in the same echelon this year...

Saint Mary's is still in the tournament according to ESPN (Joe Lunardi's I think). I saw last night on the scrolling bottom line they were last four in. I don't forsee them getting in with more than one more loss though...

I don't think that we can complain about our RPI after the last several years. As bad as we have been I know that we have killed other teams RPI, so I guess it is only fair that ours is killed.

Ha ha... touche, caniparolimt.

I think people were expecting a bigger bump after wins against USD and SMC, but actually SMC's RPI isn't super strong because their strength of schedule is weak, and USD's I think was even lower than ours.

Yeah, our RPI was 117 just before we played Santa Clara. After beating them and USD it went to about 124. The first bump in the positive direction was St. Mary's (103, last I checked) I bet if we beat the zags it'll rise. Heck, it might rise even if we lose to them.We finally passed Portland St. They had a miserable week losing to the Montanas. Let's hope they right their ship.

So, anybody want to start crunching numbers for this RPI a la UPSF for the RPI for women's soccer???

-SciFi

something about st mary's that we need to remember is that the commitee takes into consideration injuries. Considering the team was playing really well with Patty Mills, even in the Gonzaga game, and then just lost it shows a lot. If they win most of their remaining games, meaning if they beat everyone and only lose to Gonzaga, and stay competitive with the zags, and also make it to the WCC championship game, i think they will get in. If they do get in, i feel bad for their first round match-up, seeing as they will be probably a 12-13 seed, who was once considered a 6-7 seed before injuries. This is all hinged on assuming that Patty Mills is as dominant when he gets back as he was before the fall. If they lose a game to any one other than Utah State or Gonzaga, I think they will need a lot of help.

SciFi wrote:So, anybody want to start crunching numbers for this RPI a la UPSF for the RPI for women's soccer???

-SciFi

There really isn't the need. It's been done for us. The Basketball RPI isn't like the soccer RPI. There are no hidden fudge factors to sus out, as all the formulas are public. Just go to Realtime RPI