"from a conference like ours." being the key phrase. It's pretty much making my point.
At the time of MT's loss to UTEP, UTEP had an RPI of something like 318. Absolutely horrible. Of course their RPI has improved since then. UTEP would appear to be a program that could at least hold a RPI better than 150 in any given season. Matter of fact, I suspect their fans will demand a change if they aren't performing better before too long.
There's no doubting MT lost a couple in non-conf that they would like to have back. The TSU loss being so early in the season may be the reason not too many are complaining about that loss as a big weakness for MT this season. Ga State at home as last non-conf game did hurt. IMO, MT still had a little hangover from the close VCU loss. BTW, it doesn't appear that the road VCU loss was a "bad" loss if such a thing can be said of a loss.
Back to UTEP, some losses are incredibly tough to avoid in conference. UTEP was a setup for it that MT just did not overcome. In the middle of the grueling conf season, the team traveling hours upon hours and hundreds of miles to fight out a win vs UTSA. Then traveling from UTSA to UTEP is no walk in the park. I don't know if they flew or rode a bus. Either way, it's hard to get down on a an incredibly successful team for quite possibly allowing fatigue and lack of focus to get in the way of finishing off an upstart in UTEP who was in the early stages of turning their season around. I think UTEP is now angling for a top 4 C-USA finish.
It's hard to blame a team for 1 or 2 conference losses. It's just a shame when those losses are happening vs conf teams who have RPIs that are horrific and really hurt the conf leader's chances for an at-large bid.
Meanwhile, Vandy is still getting bubble talk with something like a 16-13 record & 9-8 in conference?! Same ole rigged P5 type system. With the system stacked against programs and conferences such as ours, our conference doesn't need to help out the P5 in the NCAA selection process by having an RPI that has dropped C-USA down to 24 or 25 out of what 31 or 32 conferences? At this point, I'm not even sure another C-USA team is even in the RPI Top 100. That is unacceptable. Just a few seasons ago, C-USA's RPI was in the top half, above 15, around 12-14. The conference had about 4 or 5 teams, including MT, with RPIs in the Top 100.