a-10 up to 7th highest ranked rpi conference

[slufanskip]

in this discussion your "exaggeration and sarcasm" made no sense. no one wanted a schedule loaded to the gills, but the extreme the other way we went is just embarrassing. take 4 of those horrible games and give us 4 other mid majors and the schedule would have been fine and we likley would not be stuck in rpi pergatory right now or at least have a chance to pull ourselves out.

our only chance now is to just go crazy in conference play. i would say we have to now finish top three in the conference to have an outside shot at any post season.

for those that say we never had a shot at postseason, sorry i was too optimistic for you.

What will be the end rpi of the 3 teams we lost to on the road? We lost to Kent State at home, what will their end rpi be? We need wins, replacing a few cupcakes wouldn't have changed the fact that we were going to have to win the conference tourney to make it to the dance and have to do extremely well in conference to make the NIT. Had we won two of the 4 we lost, we'd be sitting differently right now. Maybe KWYJBO could give us some estimates had we won @ Detroit and @home against Kent State. How about if we had also beaten either SIU or Nebraska.

It seems all this worrying about the schedule is useless, I'm not saying we don't want to hope we play in the post season while we're enjoying the season, but Imo this season is about watching the freshmen grow.

[Postcard]

Not true.

My RPI math may be a little rough but its still 25% based on your W/L %. Right now we have won 3/7 of our games giving us 0.107 points out of a potential 0.25 points. If we were undefeated we could add 0.143 points to our RPI score. This would increase us from 0.427 to 0.570. Looking at Realtime RPI, that would put us at 70th right in front of UCLA. This doesn't factor in the road/home multipliers so it could be off but hopefully you get the point.

Poor play, not poor scheduling is the fault of our crappy RPI.

http://realtimerpi.com/rpi_Men.html

This guy gets it.

[slufanskip]

Not true.

My RPI math may be a little rough but its still 25% based on your W/L %. Right now we have won 3/7 of our games giving us 0.107 points out of a potential 0.25 points. If we were undefeated we could add 0.143 points to our RPI score. This would increase us from 0.427 to 0.570. Looking at Realtime RPI, that would put us at 70th right in front of UCLA. This doesn't factor in the road/home multipliers so it could be off but hopefully you get the point.

Poor play, not poor scheduling is the fault of our crappy RPI.

http://realtimerpi.com/rpi_Men.html

see what a SLU education can do for you.

I agree Kshoe

[SShoe]

Not true.

My RPI math may be a little rough but its still 25% based on your W/L %. Right now we have won 3/7 of our games giving us 0.107 points out of a potential 0.25 points. If we were undefeated we could add 0.143 points to our RPI score. This would increase us from 0.427 to 0.570. Looking at Realtime RPI, that would put us at 70th right in front of UCLA. This doesn't factor in the road/home multipliers so it could be off but hopefully you get the point.

Poor play, not poor scheduling is the fault of our crappy RPI.

http://realtimerpi.com/rpi_Men.html

[bonwich]

As Skip said: See what a SLU education can do for you!

[Cowboy]

in this discussion your "exaggeration and sarcasm" made no sense. no one wanted a schedule loaded to the gills, but the extreme the other way we went is just embarrassing. take 4 of those horrible games and give us 4 other mid majors and the schedule would have been fine and we likley would not be stuck in rpi pergatory right now or at least have a chance to pull ourselves out.

our only chance now is to just go crazy in conference play. i would say we have to now finish top three in the conference to have an outside shot at any post season.

for those that say we never had a shot at postseason, sorry i was too optimistic for you.

-i am not embarrassed by our schedule because i understand why our coach, oh wait you don't like him, so why coach majerus would have a schedule like it is

-so you disagree with kshoe's calculation that it is the results from the schedule we played that has us in rpi pergatory?

[Billiken Rich]

Not true.

My RPI math may be a little rough but its still 25% based on your W/L %. Right now we have won 3/7 of our games giving us 0.107 points out of a potential 0.25 points. If we were undefeated we could add 0.143 points to our RPI score. This would increase us from 0.427 to 0.570. Looking at Realtime RPI, that would put us at 70th right in front of UCLA. This doesn't factor in the road/home multipliers so it could be off but hopefully you get the point.

Poor play, not poor scheduling is the fault of our crappy RPI.

http://realtimerpi.com/rpi_Men.html

70 is good enough for which tournament????

I am not an RPI guru to be sure but from this schedule does not seem geared toward post season. Maybe we should've just played a bunch of exhibition games till next year rolls around??? Or the year after next???

[NashvilleBilliken]

Not true.

My RPI math may be a little rough but its still 25% based on your W/L %. Right now we have won 3/7 of our games giving us 0.107 points out of a potential 0.25 points. If we were undefeated we could add 0.143 points to our RPI score. This would increase us from 0.427 to 0.570. Looking at Realtime RPI, that would put us at 70th right in front of UCLA. This doesn't factor in the road/home multipliers so it could be off but hopefully you get the point.

Poor play, not poor scheduling is the fault of our crappy RPI.

http://realtimerpi.com/rpi_Men.html

Yeah, but who among us thought we would go undefeated though 7 games?

Winning solves a lot of problems, but EVEN if we were undefeated, we would be at 70 according to your calculations. That's pretty awful for an undefeated team, don't you think? I sure do. This is exactly the argument we have be giving to the rest of the league. They need to schedule appropriately as to not drag down the rest of the conference. This year, we are most certainly going to be the anchor on this conference. It will go up after we play DePaul and Creighton....hopefully...but I think it would be a struggle to get below 200. The premise of my post was that it appears the RPI was not considered at all in scheduling.

As to "why does it matter, we're not going to the post season anyway"....well, i just disagree that we should give up and not take any pride in the team. When I get asked by people around here what we're "ranked", it's embarrasing to say 275. When we try to have debates as to the validity of our conference, SLU being ranked with the likes of Savannah state sure doesn't help. I'm sure it doesn't help recruiting when we're in the bottom 25% D-1 schools. Yes, it is just a number...but it is a number that is widely accepted as a means to quantify you're success.

And I shouldn't have to do this, but to clarify....this isn't a "slam" on Majerus. Hopefully it's obvious that I'm a Majerus fan. This is an honest opnion of what I feel is a poorly put together schedule. I think more effort should have been placed on playing teams with better RPI's as to put us in a POSSIBLE position for NIT. That position is nearly impossible given our poor SOS even if we have a very solid remainder of the year.

[kshoe]

Yeah, but who among us thought we would go undefeated though 7 games?

Winning solves a lot of problems, but EVEN if we were undefeated, we would be at 70 according to your calculations. That's pretty awful for an undefeated team, don't you think? I sure do. This is exactly the argument we have be giving to the rest of the league. They need to schedule appropriately as to not drag down the rest of the conference. This year, we are most certainly going to be the anchor on this conference. It will go up after we play DePaul and Creighton....hopefully...but I think it would be a struggle to get below 200. The premise of my post was that it appears the RPI was not considered at all in scheduling.

As to "why does it matter, we're not going to the post season anyway"....well, i just disagree that we should give up and not take any pride in the team. When I get asked by people around here what we're "ranked", it's embarrasing to say 275. When we try to have debates as to the validity of our conference, SLU being ranked with the likes of Savannah state sure doesn't help. I'm sure it doesn't help recruiting when we're in the bottom 25% D-1 schools. Yes, it is just a number...but it is a number that is widely accepted as a means to quantify you're success.

And I shouldn't have to do this, but to clarify....this isn't a "slam" on Majerus. Hopefully it's obvious that I'm a Majerus fan. This is an honest opnion of what I feel is a poorly put together schedule. I think more effort should have been placed on playing teams with better RPI's as to put us in a POSSIBLE position for NIT. That position is nearly impossible given our poor SOS even if we have a very solid remainder of the year.

Who among us thought at this point in the season Savannah St. would be the 3rd highest RPI team we have played?

Kent St. has turned into a bad RPI opponent...impossible to know given that last year they were in the top 30.

SIU has turned into a 251 type RPI...pretty tough to predict that given they have been in the top 50 basically every year this decade

Detroit is the lowest RPI team we have played all year. Had no control on that game since it was a home and home set up last season.

My point is everyone is bitching about all the buy games, but those aren't whats hurt us. Whats hurt us is our piss-ass record and the fact that the teams we thought were going to be good turned out to be crap. If either of those two things were different our RPI would be noticeably better.

The numbers don't lie. When you lose to teams ranked 318 and 251, no manner of tougher scheduling is going to make you look better. You just aren't that good.

[billiken_roy]

-so you disagree with kshoe's calculation that it is the results from the schedule we played that has us in rpi pergatory?

i missed the part where kshoe has determined that the remaining schedule can bring us back to a top 40 rpi.

[billiken_roy]

Maybe we should've just played a bunch of exhibition games till next year rolls around???

we are in the middle of that right now (except for the possible game with creighton coming up next tuesday)

[billiken_roy]

Who among us thought at this point in the season Savannah St. would be the 3rd highest RPI team we have played?

Kent St. has turned into a bad RPI opponent...impossible to know given that last year they were in the top 30.

SIU has turned into a 251 type RPI...pretty tough to predict that given they have been in the top 50 basically every year this decade

Detroit is the lowest RPI team we have played all year. Had no control on that game since it was a home and home set up last season.

My point is everyone is bitching about all the buy games, but those aren't whats hurt us. Whats hurt us is our piss-ass record and the fact that the teams we thought were going to be good turned out to be crap. If either of those two things were different our RPI would be noticeably better.

The numbers don't lie. When you lose to teams ranked 318 and 251, no manner of tougher scheduling is going to make you look better. You just aren't that good.

kshoe the fact it is always possible that the likes of kent, siu, depaul, and fresno state were all candidates to be down years, is all the more reason we should have played more games vs mid majors instead of the scheduled games with umsl, savanaugh state, samford, usc upstate, liberty, umbc, north carolina a&t.

if we had some non conference stronger games after our road stumble and kent state we could still bring it back up. instead after we play upstate and a&t regardless of our outcome our rpi will not get better.

[Cowboy]

-quick analysis using kenpom's data from end of yr rpi's

-since 1999 there have been 38 schools from non-bcs conferences in the year end top 25 of rpi

-this includes memphis since the breakup of cusa

-the avg sos is 74, this is after at least 1 ncaa tourney game for most (not all) of these schools

-the avg ending record of these schools is 25.6 and 5.2,

-1 team got there with double digit losses and they had a sos of 19

-i cut off at top 25 rpi and that is too high, go ask barry hinson

-highest (weakest) sos was 141 and there were 11 over 100 sos

-my points

1-win games

2-don't lose games

3-IF we had a projected 70 rpi IF we were undefeated and IF the a10 is a good conf that causes our rpi to rise in conf play, THEN the schedule would not preclude post season (lot of if's i agree)

4-win games

[kshoe]

-quick analysis using kenpom's data from end of yr rpi's

-since 1999 there have been 38 schools from non-bcs conferences in the year end top 25 of rpi

-this includes memphis since the breakup of cusa

-the avg sos is 74, this is after at least 1 ncaa tourney game for most (not all) of these schools

-the avg ending record of these schools is 25.6 and 5.2,

-1 team got there with double digit losses and they had a sos of 19

-i cut off at top 25 rpi and that is too high, go ask barry hinson

-highest (weakest) sos was 141 and there were 11 over 100 sos

-my points

1-win games

2-don't lose games

3-IF we had a projected 70 rpi IF we were undefeated and IF the a10 is a good conf that causes our rpi to rise in conf play, THEN the schedule would not preclude post season (lot of if's i agree)

4-win games

May I add #5. Just win games.

[kwyjibo]

drivel

No one has ever argued that winning games was not the most important thing. There is no argument here just delusion. The simple fact exists that the easier you schedule the more wins you need to get considered tourney worthy. For example, SLU would not likely make the tournament with 21 wins this year. Yes this is a completely moot point if you do not expect to win 20 or 21 games (like for example Rick Majerus obviously did before the season). That is what is hilarious about the constant spin here, before the season some of us clearly mentioned that IF this was a tournament seeking team that the schedule put us in a hole (looks to be a 2 win hole right now). I know that Rick Majerus is not stupid so he wasn't thinking the tournament would hinge on winning 22 vs 20 games when he made the schedule and it was obvious what the schedule meant except some people chose not see it.

SLU will probably end up with a decent RPI and their current RPI is not indicative of where they will end up. About 6 years ago I vowed never to talk about the RPI until Jan 1; no one has any business talking about current RPI before a dozen or so games are played (and even then they should be looking at projected full season RPI and NOT the current "real-time" RPI). That is why Ken Pomeroy stopped publishing the RPI because he gets face time on ESPN now and he was sick of answering stupid questions like "why is my schools Dec. 15th RPI higher than another school . . . (snooze)".

[brianstl]

kshoe the fact it is always possible that the likes of kent, siu, depaul, and fresno state were all candidates to be down years, is all the more reason we should have played more games vs mid majors instead of the scheduled games with umsl, savanaugh state, samford, usc upstate, liberty, umbc, north carolina a&t.

if we had some non conference stronger games after our road stumble and kent state we could still bring it back up. instead after we play upstate and a&t regardless of our outcome our rpi will not get better.

Roy I guess you don't realize that Liberty and Upstate are not buy games. We had to take them to get the game against DePaul and Crieghton/Fresno. I guess you didn't know that the UMSL game doesn't count in the RPI. It doesn't help or hurt us. I guess you didn't know that MSU would have been on the schedule at home this year instead of one of the other teams if they wouldn't have needed an extra home game at the JQH to make the numbers work at their building.

[slu72]

Why does it matter what our RPI is this year? It's highly unlikely that we are going to the NIT or the NCAA, and it has nothing to do with our RPI. If we are on the bubble at the end of the year and we are all wishing "damnit, I wish our RPI was higher" I will buy you all a beer. It's a schedule that fits this team right now.

Here here....Pretty sure RM had a realistic view of what our post season chances would be this year so didn't give one thought to what our RPI would be. Give the guy a break on the schedule this year.

[former_d1]

Just a few thoughts from a fan that is further away from ground zero....

1. Just win

2. Did anyone really think that an at-large bid was realistic?

3. Wait to make judgements about this young team until the last 10 games

[billiken_roy]

Roy I guess you don't realize that Liberty and Upstate are not buy games. We had to take them to get the game against DePaul and Crieghton/Fresno. I guess you didn't know that the UMSL game doesn't count in the RPI. It doesn't help or hurt us. I guess you didn't know that MSU would have been on the schedule at home this year instead of one of the other teams if they wouldn't have needed an extra home game at the JQH to make the numbers work at their building.

brian i know that liberty and upstate are part of the tourney. but know that they had to take those two games, should have been the opportunity not to waste 2 other games on buy games and to schedule two mid major games.

as to umsl, you say it doesnt hurt our rpi, i say it does because it narrows the focus of the other games. if instead of umsl you play another midmajor, again, it would help your rpi.

as to msu, shame on the athletic dept for letting that happen. that contract should have been set in stone long before last summer.

there is no excuse for seven games. the billikens fans deserve more especially in the first year that our cost per game went through the roof.

[Soderball]

brian i know that liberty and upstate are part of the tourney. but know that they had to take those two games, should have been the opportunity not to waste 2 other games on buy games and to schedule two mid major games.

as to umsl, you say it doesnt hurt our rpi, i say it does because it narrows the focus of the other games. if instead of umsl you play another midmajor, again, it would help your rpi.

as to msu, shame on the athletic dept for letting that happen. that contract should have been set in stone long before last summer.

there is no excuse for seven games. the billikens fans deserve more especially in the first year that our cost per game went through the roof.

I may never agree with billiken_roy more.

[kshoe]

as to umsl, you say it doesnt hurt our rpi, i say it does because it narrows the focus of the other games. if instead of umsl you play another midmajor, again, it would help your rpi.

Roy, please confirm for me that you understand if we play a mid-major team and lose it does not help our RPI.

[billiken_roy]

Roy, please confirm for me that you understand if we play a mid-major team and lose it does not help our RPI.

i understand that, and i also understand that apparently you think that we arent capable of beating any mid major teams then. i am sorry i have more confidence in the billikens than many of you do.

[slu72]

i understand that, and i also understand that apparently you think that we arent capable of beating any mid major teams then. i am sorry i have more confidence in the billikens than many of you do.

It's not about having fans having confidence in the team this year, it's about not destroying the team's confidence.

[billiken_roy]

It's not about having fans having confidence in the team this year, it's about not destroying the team's confidence.

like i said, if you think we have to have 7 buy games on the schedule and that is all this team can handle, i hate to tell you that if that is true, we are going to get it handed to us in conference play.

personally i think we are better than that and a mid major non conference schedule that might have resulted in a 500 non conference schedule would have helped tremendously come conference time. instead we played our 4 tough games and now we are going to coast until conference starts (exception being creighton and possibly depaul).

like i said, i am extremely disappointed that most of you think we cant complete at a level of most 150 rpi teams. hell why are we even playing the season if we suck that badly.

[kshoe]

i understand that, and i also understand that apparently you think that we arent capable of beating any mid major teams then. i am sorry i have more confidence in the billikens than many of you do.

Roy, the fact is we are 1-4 against non buy game opponents this year. Could that record get better this year, yes, but will it, I don't know.

But this concept that if we just schedule better all our problems (RPI and otherwise) will go away is crazy. Put 3 more mid majors on the schedule and maybe we are still 4-4 but its also as likely we could be 1-7.

For those that like prediction contests check out this link. It is based off Pomeroy's calculations and is similar to what the Wiz does every game for us. It doesn't paint a very positive picture of where this team is going based on the first 8 games we have played this year.

http://www.kenpom.com/sked.php?y=2009&...20Louis&t=p