Messages

Kyle -

Good catch - I was looking for College Basketball News RPI, not "Collegiate".  Still, that's a really obscure RPI to use for a tiebreaker - too bad.

I don't know where you're getting 20 spots from - even using your link it's 48 vs. 61.  We have road games at Detroit and Cle St. remaining, while GB has home games and goes to UIC.

ESPN RPI: GB 54, Valpo 64
KenPom: GB 62, Valpo 63
Sagarin: GB 65, Valpo 66

Too bad Horizon league doesn't use an RPI average, because surely (considering remaining schedule) we will be ahead in all of the three I listed above, if both teams are 13-3.  The Horizon League will then be in the awkward position of resolving the tie using their obscure RPI site, when all others potentially disagree.

With each passing day, the likelihood increases that we are going to end up in a tie for first with GB at 13-3.  Of course, we may also finish 14-2, and in that case this thread can be purged (Woooo)!

But in the event of the 13-3 tie, both Valpo and GB will have losses to each other on the road, at Cleveland State, and at Oakland (who paid those refs anyway?  Kampe?     Couldn't have cost much more than that toupee.   )

Therefore, the cascading tiebreaker rules will not resolve the tie, and we go to RPI.

Horizon League specifies that the RPI tiebreaker is per the College Basketball News RPI, an "outlier" in terms of RPI separation between GB and Valpo.

Anyone have any more details around which RPI we should be keeping an eye on in the next two weeks?

Ummm... UIC average ACT is 21.
Valpo average ACT score is 26.

I could go on with more stats but I don't see the point in embarrassing UIC any further.

Back to even with GB!  And sweet justice by the way... Oakland beats GB at home by 3.

The result of this game is invalid.  A travesty.  41-12 free throws?  Horizon League should be ashamed.

You're right, we need to leave this league if we're ever going to feel like we didn't just suffer a mafia hit.

Bottom line:

Chairback for some inexplicable reason is trying to do rpi in his head instead of just using one of the many excellent rpi resources available on the public internet.

Rpi uses math where Chair is using what seems to be intuition, and frankly I'll take math nearly every time.

Realtimerpi has Valpo at 50 rpi. Oakland, with its 200 plus Rpi, already lost at home to 284 rpi western Carolina.  This really isn't even up for debate.  Valpo wins by 25 or by 5, but we certainly don't lose by 8.

A couple predictions:

Valpo 71
Oakland 55

16 point lead by halftime which holds.  This team is special, and that will become evident on Friday with the start of the Conference season, if it hasn't already become obvious!

I'm not expecting much of a challenge from the conference.  I've followed RealTime RPI for years, and normally their prediction system is nearly spot on for predicting the HL conference outcome.  They've got Valpo at 15-1 with a loss by 3 at GB.

If we can win our next 2, we will be 15-2 (12-2 official), and either in the top 25 or right on the verge. 

Fun season so far!

Valpo is up to #83 in the KenPom rankings today.

Regarding the top 25, I expect the Crusaders to get some votes this week (from 2 or 3 good voters paying attention to margin of victory), and 26 or 27 overall next week if we beat EKY and NM.  We would be 9-1 with some good wins.  That's got to be close.