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Post by Gorf on Nov 30, 2004 17:27:28 GMT -5
I don't think you can arbitrarily say some conferences don't get an automatic bid while others do get one.
If you're going to remove that from some conferences you might as well remove it from all conferences and it the selections all at-large based.
OTOH: Once you remove the automatic bids based on many conferences having never won a tournament match you're basically fostering an elitist attitude that tells conferences that their teams are good enough to play volleyball and aren't welcome to your post season tea party.
Before Florida's emergence as a volleyball power how many SEC teams had success in the NCAA tournament?
Now that Florida has been at an elite level for a while and other SEC teams are starting to be competitive in the conference as well as the tournament it shows other conferences that even though the road might be long its still possible to make significant progress toward improving the level of play for individual schools and entire conferences.
I'd rather find ways to foster growth in the sport than ways that could end up making schools consider dropping the sport of volleyball from their athletics departments.
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Post by 2c on Nov 30, 2004 17:30:37 GMT -5
One other thing...
One thing I think we can all agree is that the RPI is a joke. Your record, your opponents' record, and your opponents' opponents' record make it up with some other stuff the RK can fill you in on.
However, it's not rocket science to determine that it's main contribution is your opponents' records.
Your own record you have control over.
To try to influence your opponents' opponents' record isn't very realistic.
But you can certainly schedule to maximize your opponents' records. Simply pick the best of the worst for your non-conference schedule. That is, pick easy teams to beat that will end up having good records because of the conference competition they'll face.
Good teams to schedule for example: Albany, Northeastern, Belmont, FL Atlantic, Syracuse, MontanaState, Winthrop, CoastalCarolina, Hofstra, Delaware, Butler, Wisc-Milw, Cornell, Princeton, Yale, Fairfield, Marshall, CentConnSt, LongIsland, RobertMorris, EIllinois, EKent, American, Army, AppalachianState, CollOfCharleston, GaState, StephenFAustin, TexasState, AlaA&M, GramblingState, MissValState, NewOrleans.
Other bubble team contenders that would be good to play would be: Dayton, Xavier, Duke, EWU, SacState, Towson, Loyola-Chicago, BallState, WMich, Ohio, Valparaiso, Florida A&M , NMState, WKent.
Also conference members are helped/hurt by fellow conference members scheduling. Keep in mind that in conf matches will be identical for all conference members as long as the play each other the same # of times. (Or at least your conf division would be the same) So RPI only differentiates between in-conf schools by their non-conf schedules obviously. Therefore if a conference as a whole schedules well then you can get very misleading Strength of conference results.
I'm guessing the SEC RPI and SOS is so strong because there are a lot of weak teams in the SE that have very good records that many SEC schools feast on.
For the committee to put any real weight into RPI is silly.
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Post by Mumsie on Nov 30, 2004 18:38:08 GMT -5
I repeat again - If a team finishes in the bottom half of the conference they do NOT deserve to be in the NCAA tournament as long as that tournament's main purpose is to select a national champion. . That's silly. That may be the tournament's main purpose, but if it's the only purpose, then we should limit the championship tournament to the top seeded 16 best teams. Why mess around with all those other "so-so" teams? They're NOT going to win the championship!
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