BASKETBALL Polls on Monday after uab win?

[SpaceRaider]

do we break into the top 25? or not?

I haven't kept up with the other teams receiving votes and the lower part of the top 25 to know what the likelihood is.

 

[RandallThomason]

Doubt we crack the top 25. Probably add a few votes though.

 

[C-Bow]

They'll be close, but I think a few slots behind the line. Like Randall said though, I'd expect a bump in the "others receiving votes" category.

On a side note, I was pretty tuned in to CBS Sports all day today, and they would not stop talking about MT all day. Never seen a Blue Raider team talked about in this manner before.

 

[MTFNBY5]

Even ESPN has a nice section on our game last night (I couldn't hear since I was in a restaurant) with several clips of the game along with showing our potential 11 seed.

 

[subkyle]

29th in the coach's poll. Dang we are close! If we win the tournament we'll be ranked.

 

[b_raider]

We picked up two new voters in this weeks AP poll, and dropped one voter:

• Dick Vitale (ABC-ESPN) @DickieV
  • Week 16 (25), Week 17 (24)
• Elton Alexander (The Plain Dealer, Cleveland) @eaPeeDee
  • Week 16 (-), Week 17 (23)
• Joe Leadingham (WKRN-Nashville) @JoeLeadingham
  • Week 16 (22), Week 17 (21)
• Kevin Brockway (Gainsville Sun) @gatorhoops
  • Week 16 (24), Week 17 (25)
• Kevin Lyttle (Austin American-Statesman) @klyttleAAS
  • Week 16 (-), Week 17 (24)
• Seth Davis (CBS-SI) @SethDavisHoops
  • Week 16 (25), Week 17(-)

http://collegebasketball.ap.org/poll

 

[dukewayne]

Oh man, ever so slow but still steadily creeping upwards in RV in both polls out today. Even with 2 potential wins to close out the regular season, FAU & FIU don't have enough cachet to allow MT to build all that much more in the RV category. Maybe, a big maybe if just the right teams lose just in front of MT might allow MT to advance by way of attrition to the #25 spot to close out the regular season. I'm not holding my breath though.

Frankly, this is another example of fellow conf mates really hurting the conference overall. It's really pretty aggravating. A win or two in conf vs teams with RPIs somewhere in the mid 100s just might have provided enough respect to get that boost to 25. Present reality of playing a couple of home games vs the worst teams with RPIs in the 300s really hurts MT's chances to get into the top 25. It also hurts the conference as a whole in hurting the chances to have a conf member in the top 25 and with a lot better chance at an at-large bid.

 

[dukewayne]

Rankings and the conference brings to mind again that there seems to be a leadership problem at the head of C-USA. At this point, I'm not really sure what the conf leadership is doing to get the conference performing back to the level that is fitting of the C-USA brand.

 

[Blueraider_Mike]

While our conference mates can improve we own the loss at home to Ga State and a road loss to UTEP with a 17 point lead in the second half.

4 losses is the bubble for a mid major from a conference like ours.

 

[dukewayne]

"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.

 

[Stonesraider]

The Vandy thing is a joke and the coach seems incredibly arrogant. And for the complaining he did about playing us, it's sure helping his NCAA chances.

We have basketball tradition in our conference just everybody's in the bag for football. If our basketball schools are playing well and getting good crowds at the same time, we're a powerful conference. Certain schools won't ever help in basketball but we need UTEP, WKU, UAB, Marshall, Charlotte, ODU, La Tech, Southern Miss, Rice to pack their arenas and stay in the top 150 in RPI. These all have good arenas and some basketball history. We look at the A10 for where we want to be supposedly but many of those schools play in tiny gyms and smaller crowds than ours. My argument is that many of our schools made it past that long ago we just quit caring about basketball.

 

[MTFNBY5]

It's not just the "not caring" about BkB. It the trying to be competitive on the D-1 FB level and the costs necessary which cut into BkB budgets. You don't think it helps Belmont BkB (both M & W) in the OVC that they are the only school w/o FB even at that level. Both The Belt and C-USA were started primarily as BkB leagues. Why aren't they competitive with the A-10 and similar conferences? Two answers: Funding scholarship FB and having footprints in a FB mad region.

I could be wrong but at this time MT has the highest RPI (and also votes in the polls) of any so-called %$&-major school which also tries to fund D-1 FB. In a poll of similar schools we would be #1. Not a bad place to be.

But, nothing in this post should be construed by the reader to imply that I don't wish for the teams in the conference to improve their programs. Nothing would please me more than to see the conference be listed as among the best non-power BkB conferences.

 

[blueraiderJT]

Well Vandy has been on a hot streak and nearly beat UK last night. If they had beaten them, they wouldn't have been a bubble team at all. They would have been a definite. Now they are really on the edge. It will depend on what they do in the SEC tourney.

I'm in agreement with coach Stansbury. If we were in the SEC right now we'd be the top 1-2 teams in the conference and ranked. The way UK played last night, we could have beaten them. VU has beaten Florida and USC but we held VU to their lowest points for the entire year! Ole Miss is 5th and we dismantled them at their house.

 

[MTFNBY5]

Gotta believe that VU has improved greatly since we played them. Part of if is just getting with the new coach's program and part of it is being in competitive games against teams that, face it, are in general better than who we have played. As for Ole Miss, can't say I have seen too much improvement. Where we would fall in the $EC is anybody's guess but IMHO we would be fighting for 4th place behind KY, UF, and USC.

But, no doubt, we also are better than we were early in the season before Walters and Habersham, to name two, started contributing. We would probably be an even better team if we had been tested more in-conference, although the record would not be as good.