HL goes 6-0

[EddieCabot]

The conference is now 17-6 with no "bad" losses, our loss to Nebraska notwithstanding. Loyola lost to Western Michigan, not sure how that was suppose to come out.  Saw that UIC lost to New Mexico by 7.

And after a rough few days, the Horizon is now 21-16 (DI games only) and has fallen to #22 in conference RPI.  http://realtimerpi.com/rpi_conf_Men.html

More concerning is the #31 SOS ranking.  Valpo is clearly leading the way in RPI and SOS ( http://realtimerpi.com/rpi_horiz_Men.html ), but they need the rest of the league to step and win some games.  Valpo has done their part putting together a great non-conference schedule, but unless something changes in the next month, will take an RPI hit during the Horizon schedule.

[wh]

Detroit at 276 and GB at 325 are killing us right now. 

[FWalum]

As soon as Detroit plays a few more games, and hopefully comes away with some wins, their ranking should rebound some playing against Miami and Pittsburgh.

[agibson]

Valpo is clearly leading the way in RPI and SOS ( http://realtimerpi.com/rpi_horiz_Men.html ), but they need the rest of the league to step and win some games.

These things still seem really volatile at this point in the season.  UIC's climbed ahead of us in RPI and our strengths of schedule is... 4th.  I guess home games against low RPI teams will do that for you.  It is interesting that 7 of 9 teams have sub-500 SOS.  I guess the league's scheduling winnable games... and then not necessarily winning them?

[crusadermoe]

ESPN the magazine had some pre-season rankings that seemed like a nice rough guess.      That magazine likely not very expert on the low and mid-majors but the top 100 seemed on track.

I didn't write down all the ranks, but here are the notables:
SLU at #25, New Mexico #26, Murray St. #50.     

Horizon had roughly these rankings:
Detroit in the 80s, Valpo at #106, Green Bay in the #110s, Cleveland in the #140s, Milwaukee in the #170s and then a big drop into the 200s for the others. 

Kent and Nebraska were mid-pack in the 150s and 170s. with Nebraska higher.    Kent beat them by a lot though and I think in Lincoln.
Alphabeters from Indiana were in the low 200s so we can't afford a loss to either one.

[agibson]

Wow.  Now Detroit's lost to Bowling Green.  70-65.  Bowling Green's first D1 win, after losses to e.g. IUPUI and Cleveland State.  Bowling Green's RPI (336) is still a hair lower than Detroit's (307).

The Horizon League's conference RPI is really not going to be pretty this year, is it?

[wh]

Terrible loss to a terrible team.  Jr. scored 25 but took a 3rd of their shots and had only 1 assist.  The whole team only had 9 assists for the game.

[valpotx]

Geez, thanks Detroit!  At least our Nebraska loss will be against a mid-range RPI team since they play in the Big 10.  What happened to them?  They must really be missing Lowe and Holman as I thought they might.  Ray sucks as well, the piece of crap