Marching On!

Time to start looking at the NCAA tournament !

Two weeks ago Lobo fans had pretty much written off any chance in hell at a shot in the Big Dance. ESPN and other analysts agreed, dropping the Lobos off every "bubble watch list" or whatever you want to call these wild a** guess prognostications. Once again, the Lobos have reminded us all why ESPN Bracketology in January is arguably one of the biggest wastes of server space in online sports, despite its ability to create stimulating debate over drinks. Now fast forward to today, when since the "road trip" to BYU and UNLV the Lobos have won 4 straight and outscored their opponents by 113 points or a mind-boggling 28+ pts per game. Granted they bullied three of the league's bottom dwellers, but the Lobos made big statements in two of those games and also picked up a quality win on the road at SDSU to move into sole possession of third in the league. Now the NCAA Tournament debate has started to resurface, but is it really justified?

First, let's briefly discuss the Lobos resume to this point. I am utilizing RPI as the basis of my argument, becuase it is widely accepted by the folks that make the decisions we are discussing. The Lobos have quality wins over Tech (RPI 67), Utep (89), Utah (82) and SDSU (67). On the other hand, they have that bad loss to TCU (193) and an all around crumby schedule (SOS 156) that can be attributed to the old philosophy under McKay. As of this article, the Lobos have NO signature victories, a handful of solid wins (two on the road) and one really bad loss. Looking ahead they have opportunities to add to any one of those categories: BYU (RPI 29) & UNLV (32); Utah (82); Air Force (176) & CSU (244).

Now let's look at what the Lobos are facing to be an at large invite to the tournament. I analyzed the 8-12 seeds for the four tournaments between 2004 and 2007 and here is what I found about the end-season average rpi for all teams with that seeding (and teams that were at large invites):
8 Seeds: 31 (31)
9 Seeds: 34 (33)
10 Seeds: 43 (45)
11 Seeds: 48 (48)
12 Seeds: 50 (37)

So what does that mean? Well statistically speaking, all the numbers look fairly logical except the 12 seeds, but that is skewed by a few extreme outliers. For the most part, the rpi increases as you'd expect given the seeds awarded giving more credibility to the predictive value of the rpi for the tournament. All that being said, the Lobos are currently #54 in the latest realtimerpi.com rankings. That means that if the season ended today they would be on the outside looking in, but the season isn't over and we have several opportunities to improve our rpi. The question is: how much do the Lobos need in order to get over the hump on an at-large bid?

My opinion about the March to March for what it's worth is this:
The Lobos cannot suffer anymore bad losses, that means road victories against AF and CSU are mandatory. If they lose one of those games this is all a non-issue. Next I think they must win BOTH of their remaining home games against UNLV and BYU. Some may argue this point, but the Lobos have zero signature wins so far, and they need to demonstrate that the two previous meetings with both teams were aberations and not signs we cannot compete with better competition. So, we have four "must wins" and that leaves us with Utah in Salt Lake. Honestly I think this game can go in the loss column with the Lobos still having a legitimate shot at dancing. We are long on quality wins and short on signature wins...in other words, UNLV and BYU matter far more than Utah. From there, I think the Lobos are looking at a must win game in the first round and at least a solid showing in the semis to get us there. An appearance in the championship makes the case that much stronger. If the Lobos can win 4 of the last 5 and get to the semis in Vegas they are looking at 25-8 and a 2nd/3rd place regular season finish. Should they do all of those things a low to mid 40s rpi is realistic; based upon the stats above, this gets us into the tourney as an 11 or 12 seed, which I might add gives us a shot to make a little noise in the tournament.