Bay Area Billiken

Major upset in the making in C-USA- Southern Miss leads UAB 32-17 at half. And as noted above, Memphis lost to Houston 66-65. If UTEP wins the C-USA Tournament, C-USA could get only 1 bid, where I expected 3. In the Big East, Marquette beat Villanova 80-76, so that should end any remaining doubt- Marquette is in. UCLA is ahead of Arizona in the second half. Those 2 C-USA bids could be in the process of being transferred to the BCS Pac-10.

Hate is a very strong word, that is completely inapplicable here. SLU and Mizzou are both in the State of Missouri. That is what makes Mizzou's ducking of SLU a vastly different situation than the rest of your list, including Illinois. Face it, Mizzou doesn't play SLU because there is a significant risk that Mizzou would get beat- as has happened 19 times in the past, when Mizzou actually did play SLU. With the SLU program clearly on the rise, Mizzou may be forced to end Duck Season.

It's part of the spin, B-Roy, anything within the rules, the new "Eye Test," and the "entire body of work standard," to get SLU in. SLU's overall RPI is 83; SLU's RPI since Cody Ellis began playing is 41. That is quite a difference. On a side note, has that NIT become a total farce or what? That once proud tournament, from which Al McGuire once accepted a bid over an NCAA bid, a tournament in which Pistol Pete Maravich once played, has now bestowed 7 automatic bids to lower conference regular season champs that failed to win their post-season conference tournaments. And the damage is not yet done there, as more NIT bids disappear daily. The NIT has become the LCI- the Low-Con Invitational. As of today, the NIT is down to 25 at large bids. That NIT College of Retired Coaches thought it was doing a good thing, but it created a disaster, a basketball train wreck, that is reducing a quarter of the NIT to rubble. The NIT should put all of the Low-Cons in the same 8 team bracket, like when the NHL first expanded and put all 6 expansion teams in the same division.

It's a close one between (1) Floyd the Barber from Mayberry and (2) Mr. Whipple, "Please don't squeeze the Charmin," = Call the fouls against my team- "That's a foul, that's a foul." Sometimes you can actually read his lips. What is to be made of his son decommitting from URI in favor of Virginia? Between Brian Gregory, Bobby Lutz (T him up, Bobby Lutz), and Jim Baron, the A-10 has its share. And all three are under fire within elements of their fanbases. There is a poster on the URI board who is advocating that URI hire long ago ex-Cal and current Morgan State Coach Todd Bozeman.

My principal issue with Missouri is what it has always been- Missouri's refusal to play SLU home and home.

It all depends upon if you are a big conference, BCS school, like Missouri, in which case the injury will be discounted and not held against you in terms of making the NCAA field, although it will affect your seed. On the other hand, if you are a mid-major like St. Mary's last year, and your star player, Patty Mills, breaks his hand when SMC's RPI was something like 24, that player tries to return in the WCC Tournament, but his shooting touch is understandably off after a near 2 month layoff, you look bad one time in the WCC final on national TV against Gonzaga, you get snubbed on Selection Sunday. It is akin to the Jay Bilas "Eye Test." If it hurts the BCS team, it is ignored. If it hurts the non-BCS team, it becomes the definining criterion to make room for another BCS team in the NCAA Tournament.

Some more statistics for you: Baron is 2-5 all-time v. SLU, 2-4 as URI coach v. SLU. And Baron has lost to SLU in Kingston, RI. Baron is 1-2 v. SLU teams coached by Rick Majerus. The game is a toss-up. URI has reportedly been installed as a 1 point favorite. I expect SLU will control tempo and make URI play SLU's game. What is the over-under on Baron complaints to the refs? Baron will rout Majerus in that category.

Now wouldn't that be justice? But it is more likely that the Fighting Illini would be the ones bumped into the NIT, as opposed to Mizzou. Re all this Mizzou is untouchable, NCAA lock stuff, did one of those Outstate Missouri benefactors recently purchase a Teflon company?

Maybe you should be. See the post below re Mizzou now being on the bubble. For what it's worth, I think Mizzou is in, even if it doesn't deserve to be and doesn't pass my "Eye Test." You mentioned Mizzou's 44% shooting. Seriously, how much of that was layups from steals off the press? You guys don't have that many good outside shooters. You've got to concede that you are limping into the post-season. You just got waxed by a bad Nebraska team, this on top of getting blown out on your home court by your arch-rival. Sometimes teams can surprise and rebound from this, but this Mizzou team looks like first round fodder.

Don't count your Boone County chickens before they're hatched. It wouldn't hurt you Mizzou guys to sweat it out for a couple of days.

There's those raised hands of Bona Hall of Famer, Jim Baron, a veritable trademark, right up there with the sweaters of John Thompson and Lou Carnesecca, and John Wooden's program.

You left out one statistic, the head to head one- SLU 62 URI 57. I realize that head to head result doesn't matter in this modern computerized era, even if it is the one that determined SLU to be the #4 seed and URI to be the #5, but it is added here merely for the sake of completeness.

Yes, the NCAA loves these feel good stories; they give good fill time features for the CBS coverage.

Could it be that your Bona Hall of Famer, "Midnight Jimmy," "doesn't care for" SLU because he is 2-5 all-time against SLU and has never beaten SLU in St. Louis? No, that wouldn't have much to do with it, would it? It must have just been those refs- all 5 times. As for your current Bonnies, the bell is already tolling in Atlantic City for them. Beware of Temple. 15-16 can still get you in the CBI, depending upon how many of your superiors decline bids- but you'll have to pay for your home games.

And a member of the St. Bona Hall of Fame; a great leader of men. The first time I saw Baron was when he was coaching St. Bona in a loss at the current Scottrade Center, when he led the Bonnies down to defeat to the Billikens. That was when SLU was still in C-USA. Baron spent much of the night working the refs. He hasn't changed much since then in that regard. He has to be close to A-10 leadership in raising both hands in response to refs' decisions.

Your Bonnies will be the first to be eliminated tomorrow in Atlantic City.

Jackson State too. This NIT will be the Big East also-rans v. the lower conference D-1 masqueraders, a basketball train wreck in the making. Get ready for Quinnipiac at UConn in a battle for State supremacy, which can be decided once and for all on the hardwood.

Let them talk. They've got good players, but their team has not performed well under pressure down the stretch. Their Coach often spends the timeouts getting on the refs. He reminds me of an East Coast version of Billy Tubbs. Remember Norm Stewart's famous line: "Billy doesn't lose. He just gets cheated." It is good if they keep underestimating the SLU team. It should be a good game.

I hope so. Beating URI should help SLU's RPI somewhat. Hopefully, the NIT College of Retired Coaches will hold SLU in higher esteem than Charlotte at this point in the season and not just take the easy way out there. Winning 2 A-10 games, meaning beating Temple, has to get SLU at minimum in the NIT, shouldn't it? I do know that the new NIT has closely followed the RPI, albeit with a few exceptions, but not many. This NIT rule is just terrible. I fail to see how teams with RPI's over 190 should be rewarded with post-season tournament play, even teams with RPI's over 125.

Make that 7- Jackson State went down in the SWAC. So the Sock Hop tonight says hello to Quinnipiac, Weber State, and Jackson State. This NIT rule is why I hate to see Coach Majerus preemptively taking SLU out of the CBI and CIT. The NIT may well be fading away for SLU thanks to this plethora of debacles in these lower conference tournaments. The NIT could well have a quarter of its teams from these lower conferences- right now it is 7 out of 32 bids and counting. It is more and more looking like win the A-10 Tournament or bust and wait until next year. That is the cold, hard fact.

And add: Illinois 75.

Getting back in part to the original question of this thread: RPI's after Mizzou's loss to Nebraska: URI 41 Mizzou 45 (Can you say bubble?) Dayton 49 Washington (for comparison purposes) 50 SLU 84. So Nebraska's win, at least for now, helped SLU's RPI by 2 spots per the calculation at www.warrennolan.com, which should put SLU back in the NIT in the last spot.

Yes, it is very hard for me to root for Cal, given that I am surrounded by Old Blues. But this year, I have to (begrudgingly) say: GO BEARS! I don't think Cal will win that Pac-10 Tournament, but if that happens, is it even possible that Juan Bid could visit the Pac-10? Again, I don't think that is going to happen.

Try this: Mizzou: Lost to Richmond on neutral floor (SLU split with Richmond) Lost at Oral Roberts (RPI 124)- bad loss; Lost at Oklahoma (RPI 112)- bad loss; Lost to Nebraska (RPI 153) by 15 points on neutral floor (SLU beat Nebraska)- horrible loss; Blown out twice by Kansas by 19 and 21 points, latter on home court; Lost at Vanderbilt; Lost at Kansas State (albeit won at home); Lost at Baylor; Lost at home to Texas A&M; Lost 3 of last 4 games, all by double digits; Continued to play non-conference schedule filled with assorted cupcakes; Continued to duck playing SLU. It won't be, but why isn't it- MIZ-ZOU=NIT?

A motto in these situations is, "Follow the money." There is just too much money involved in getting that 5th team from the Big Ten. There is also precedent. I don't know if a 10-8 team in the Big Ten has ever been denied an NCAA bid. So an also-ran team like Illinois, RPI 75 and sure to have 14 losses, that pretty clearly has no business playing in the NCAA Tournament, is still in the NCAA picture. However, the precedents sometimes are broken. There once was an unwritten rule that a big BCS team had to be at least .500 in conference play to get in the NCAA. But that was broken when Duke and North Carolina were 1-2 in the country, and the NCAA let in a 7-9 ACC team, my recollection is that it was Wake Forest. That situation is present this season with Georgia Tech (7-9 in the ACC, RPI 44).