I can see what you and others are trying to say bga1, and its understandable to be happy when Iowa loses. But we played Iowa TWICE, and only play NW once. So our own RPI dropped from 72 to 74 because NW won that game. And one of our few Top 50 wins may have disappeared. Our fight to get into the NCAA tourney has very little to do with what place in the Big Ten standings we hold, but with our RPI rating and corresponding ranking and corresponding # of Top 25/50/100 wins.
I don't care who the Big Ten team is, if we have or will play them twice, we should be cheering for them to win, except when they play the Gophers of course. And if we only play them once, it depends on where they are in the RPI, we want Top 25 teams to remain Top 25 and Top 50 teams that we have beaten to remain Top 50 and any team we have lost to we want to be in the Top 100.
This is part of the reason I HATE the RPI, because the Gophers seem to be doing this same thing every season and I hate having to cheer for a team like Iowa, but it hurt our chances of getting into the Big Dance far more than moving ahead of them in the B1G standings will help us.
Don't you remember two 8-10 B1G teams getting into the tourney when a 9-9 B1G team got passed over?! So many conferences do not play every team twice, that what place a team is in conf means little to nothing!!!
I think Duke was 4th in the ACC a little while back, yet #4 in the polls.
Well, maybe its all meaningless as none of our ooc opponents seem to be doing much to help us out this week. We jumped up to #68 after our win over Iowa, and without even playing have dropped all the way back down to #74, because of Iowa losing, because of Georgia losing, because of North Dakota losing, because of Louisville losing, because of W Kentucky losing and Wake Forest coming up 2 pts short of pulling off a huge upset didn't help, either.
So more and more it seems like the Gophers are just going to have to win at least one more game than I originally thought they needed. The positive effect of beating Iowa on the road has almost been completely erased.
The B1G is NOT as down as everyone thinks, but losses like the one Iowa just suffered do nothing but strengthen people's negative thoughts about the B1G, which hurt the Gopher's as well, far more than possibly moving ahead of Iowa will ever help us.
This was bad. No matter how you think of it.