Portland vs. LMU, Part III

DaTruRochin wrote:No, it really isn't... Losing to the 8th place team in your tournament after finishing 5th over all in a mid major conference? NIT is for top mids and mediocre bigs, we don't qualify under either criteria...

Does the NIT really have a criteria though? I thought that they just flipped quarters and called heads or tails to decide who got in...

Up until this game, we were still in the top 100 in RPI (at 94). For comparison sake, Hofstra, is also 20-10 and has an RPI of 79, and I think they are a mid-major team with a chance at the NIT if the cards are played fairly. We finished with wins over two top 100 teams (UW-Milwaulkie and St. Mary's). A lot of teams that get in are going to have about 6 wins over top 100 teams and just miss making the NCAA...like possibly WSU. All the same, I think that any top 100 RPI team should be somewhat hopeful of an invite until they are declined.

No its the National Invitational Tournament... They take whomever will make them the most money, the quality of the teams is secondary (In other words, RPI really doesn't matter unless you were one of the "first 4 out" type teams from the tournament).

A mediocre Michigan or Maryland is gonna bring in way more $$$ and sell a lot more tickets than a school like Portland. We haven't had an "impressive" national wins or a particularly large fan following, no way the NIT calls our name. Maybe if we had managed to knock of UW or Kentucky eariler, but neither was the case. We don't have the national recognition necessary to overcome the lack of marquee wins.

Here's one blogger's projected NIT field:

http://bracketproject.50webs.com/nit.html

I agree that the majority are always big $, big draw schools. But, there are always a few schools like Iona and Hofstra as well. Iona's quality wins are: Richmond, Long Island, Hofstra, and Fairfield. Their resume doesn't exactly blow me away...and like Hofstra their season-ending RPI wasn't much higher than ours was. We definitely would be a surprise pick, but, so would almost any mid-major...

But, I guess making the tourney in recent years would put both of those teams above us... RPI can't be completely irrelevant or Harvard would have no chance in being in the conversation for an NIT bid.

File this under "You gotta be kidding me":

http://sports.espn.go.com/los-angeles/news/story?id=6184552

Wow... No Teel would have more than made up for our lack of Timmy... $@&%@#

Why now? It doesn't make any sense to drop him in the middle of the WCC Tourney.

I'm sure we will find out in the coming weeks, but judging from Vernon's body language whenever I've seen the Lions play this year, he and Max Goode haven't been seeing eye to eye. It seems like a thing that has been a long time coming, he must have defied his coach one too many times in the last game... But yeah kind of odd that they brought him all the way to Vegas just to send him back across the desert after one game (especially a senior)...

Not seeing how it's best for the program to dismiss him during the final weekend of his career??? Seems like it just causes more internal strife and possible bad will among teammates who may like him than anything else.