They haven?t given a bid to a (team that finished) 3-7 in three years. |
They won't get much higher unless Memphis loses. It's hard to move up when you're already high. I don't see them moving past Duke, Connecticut or Villanova. They might have a chance to pass Memphis. It's harder to move at the end of the season. |
This year, the conference is just better. They did what they had to do to earn national respect. They scheduled tough games and they won a lot of them. Even teams in the lower part of the conference, teams like Air Force, really improved their RPI. |
USC is in the middle of a lull in the schedule. Texas is about to hit a lull. |
Vanderbilt's got two Top-25 RPI wins, over Old Dominion and Western Kentucky. That's more than a lot of teams. But Arkansas is a bad loss. All the teams that have beaten Vanderbilt are pretty good except Arkansas. |
Votes like that hurt the credibility. Whether it's carelessness or ignorance, you can't have votes for Idaho. It only takes one guy voting for Idaho to ruin it for the rest of the 114. |
What it means is that you can't simply trust conference records to be a method of evaluating teams in the same conference. Everybody in that league will get a chance to play some good teams at some point, but not all 8-8's are the same. |
With the schedule set up so that their toughest remaining opponents come to Blacksburg [Miami, Boston College], they have to be considered a threat to play not only for the ACC title, but the national title as well. |
You never want to be stuck in the middle, but I don't see them falling much further than that. They hurt themselves by losing two of their last three games, but their RPI is strong at 30 and they did a lot of great things this season. |
You're already seeing signs that Virginia Tech is catching Texas. |