[COMPARATIVE CONFERENCE STRENGTH]

Roy and Kshoe,

If you look at the non-conference schedules I think you will find that the Horizon teams played as tough or a tougher non-conference schedule than the Atlantic 10. Take a look at the comparative schedules.

You will notice the the RPIs are skewed in favor of the football conferences who have the lopsided home schedules. Their strength of schedule is not held up by their non-conference neutral court or road wins, but rather their conference play against their fellow conference teams that don’t play many non-conference games on the road. The old Georgetown schedules were a classic example of this when they would line up a host of home patsies on their non-conference schedule, but they would never lose and would have a high RPI strength of schedule, because of their Big East opponents in conference play. The RPI is bogus in that it gives little or no weight to the difference between home and road games. Compare the home records against home records and road records vs. road records and you will find the RPI falls apart. But it does serve the purpose of the football conferences that created and perserve it.

Put things on a neutral court, and you saw no Atlantic 10 teams in the Sweet 16 with the Horizon League’s private school, Butler, last year.

[COMPARATIVE CONFERENCE STRENGTH]

DIVISION 1 CONFERENCE RANKING based on win-loss percentage for all non-conference games played in the last 3 years.

I realize that there should be a handicapping to lower the ratings of the top 9 conferences who have a lopsided advantage because they play such a higher percentage of home games than the other conferences. However these are just based on the straight numbers for the 31 conferences.

01 SEC

02 Big 12

03 ACC

04 Big E

05 Pac 10

06 Big 10

07 Mountain West

08 WAC

09 Conf. USA

10 Horizon (Midwestern)

11 Atlantic 10

12 Sun Belt

13 Southern

14 Ohio Valley

15 Big West

16 WCC

17 Colonial

18 MAC

19 MVC

20 Big Sky

21 Metro Atlantic

22 Atlantic Sun (TransAmerican)

23 Ivy

24 Patriot

25 Mid-Continental

26 Atlantic East

27 Southland

28 Big South

29 Northeastern

30 MEAC

31 SWAC

With the conference re-alignments going on, look for the WAC conference to have a power change with the loss of 3 teams, and possibly Conference USA, which is losing 4 of its top teams.

The Horizon conference has had a better non-conference win-loss record, for every one of the last 3 years, than the Atlantic 10, the MAC, and the Missouri Valley conferences.

In fact, both the MAC and the Missouri Valley each have a losing record for the 3 year period, and are ranked in the bottom half on Division 1 conferences. It is becoming a stretch to rank them as high as Mid-Majors.

The Atlantic 10 finished 12th in 2002-3, 15th in 2001-2, and 12th in 2000-1.

The Horizon finished at 11th in 2002-3, 11th in 2001-2, and 9th in 2000-1.

Jesuit schools Detroit and Loyola are in the Horizon League. It is not a football league.

Any thoughts or comments?