NCAA tournament

Donate To GopherHole
G

GophersOnTheRise

Active member
Joined
Nov 13, 2008
Messages
3,751
Reaction score
0
Points
36
I know they need to take it one game at a time and a lot of things need to go our way for this to happen, but if the Gophers beat Michigan and Iowa while Illinois loses to OSU and Wisconsin, can the committee really say no to us on Selection Sunday with a 5th place finish in the Big Ten and signature wins against Butler, Wisconsin, and OSU? We also accomplished the "beat a good team on the road" requirement today. If all that happens could we really be denied?
 

If the Gophers win the BT Tournament, they can't keep us out. If not, we could be out based on poor RPI.
 

I imagine the Gophers case would have been stronger if they could have closed out the blowout. If the scenario you mentioned played out AND the Gophers had recently defeated Illinois on the road by 15 plus, I think it would be hard for the committee to take the Illini over the Gophers.
 




GophersOnTheRise said:
I know they need to take it one game at a time and a lot of things need to go our way for this to happen, but if the Gophers beat Michigan and Iowa while Illinois loses to OSU and Wisconsin, can the committee really say no to us on Selection Sunday with a 5th place finish in the Big Ten and signature wins against Butler, Wisconsin, and OSU? We also accomplished the "beat a good team on the road" requirement today. If all that happens could we really be denied?
Click to expand...

Absolutely could be denied and would be denied without us doing great things in the BTT, and other things going our way with respect to teams that are on the bubble (which we are not on).

There's no requirement that the Big Ten needs to have 5 teams in the tourney. If it's 4, it's 4.
 

The gophs need to boost their RPI - They want Ill to keep winning out as well as ourselves from now on.

Our RPI will not be high enough, IMO, without 2 wins in the B10 tourney....
 

Bottom-line is we need to win the last two and reach the BTT semi-finals to have a decent chance. If we can get by Illinois into the 5 seed, it would only require 1 BTT win. To be a 'lock' I think we have to win the last two and reach the final game. Then we would be either 21 or 22 and 11 on Selection Sunday morning and I think they would put us in rather then wait for game to end.
 

I am not sure it would be in our best interest to finish 5th in the big ten. Sounds funky, but I really think we need at least one win in the big ten tournament to bring our total wins on the year to 20. Finish 5th and we have a tough game against wisconsin (most likely), finish 6th, and we get a game against penn state (which should be a win). We could certaintly beat Michigan State afterwards too. Not sure how the committee will look at this, but I think more wins > higher finish.
 



A lot is going to depend on the conference tournies and teams like Gonzaga, Butler, New Mexico, Northern Iowa, etc. winning those tournies. Those conferences are direct Bid-Stealers from teams like us on the bubble.
 

RPI is not going to be a strong suit, regardless of the rest of this year's outcome. Forget about that part of it..at this point, its about finishing strong and playing well. We have some nice wins on the resume' but we cannot afford to lose to Mich or Iowa. I believe Wisky made the NCAA last year with a horrible RPI.
 

stocker08 said:
I am not sure it would be in our best interest to finish 5th in the big ten. Sounds funky, but I really think we need at least one win in the big ten tournament to bring our total wins on the year to 20. Finish 5th and we have a tough game against wisconsin (most likely), finish 6th, and we get a game against penn state (which should be a win). We could certaintly beat Michigan State afterwards too. Not sure how the committee will look at this, but I think more wins > higher finish.
Click to expand...

Win total is not a specific criteria. They're not going to choose us over anyone else because we got an additional meaningless win over PSU or Iowa will not impress anyone. Further, I don't really want to play PSU again (they're not nearly as bad as thier record) nor do I want to have to beat Iowa twice in 4 days.
 

You must log in or register to reply here.



Top Bottom