Memphis article knocks CUSA teams

MeanGreen61 · December 18, 2005

Tiger RPI No. 2, but conference play may hurt

Some C-USA additions not much help for rating

By Gary Parrish

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December 16, 2005

First, the good news.

As of Thursday, the University of Memphis' CollegeRPI.com ranking was No. 2, behind only Duke.

Now, the bad news.

It's difficult to imagine it staying there through March, not with the way the majority of the rest of Conference USA is performing this season.

"We're only playing 14 league games instead of 16," said Tiger coach John Calipari. "You're seeing how big that is."

It was supposed to be bad. But not this bad.

It was supposed to drop off. But not this far.

Still, the reality of the newly shaped C-USA is that it was, as of Thursday, ranked 19th out of 31 Division 1 conferences behind such leagues as the Mid-American, Sun Belt, Horizon, Patriot and Southern.

To put this into perspective, just two years ago C-USA was ranked as the fifth-best conference.

But that was with Louisville, Cincinnati, DePaul, Marquette and Charlotte, all of which are now gone and replaced by the likes of SMU (295 RPI), Rice (247 RPI), Tulsa (227 RPI), Marshall (272 RPI) and UTEP (300 RPI).

More telling, Memphis and Houston (14 RPI) are the only C-USA memberswith Top 100 RPI rankings, and eight of the 12 league schools have RPI rankings worse than 225, an inordinate ratio considering there are only 333 Division 1 schools.

Eight of C-USA's 12 members are in the bottom third of the nation. And though Calipari realizes what that means, he's not panicking.

In fact, he's already developed a plan to help going forward, and intends to formally pitch it after this season.

Calipari's proposal would ensure protection of C-USA's top-flight schools by forcing them to play each other twice and everybody else once.

Call it a mini-division at the top.

For argument's sake, assume Memphis, Houston, UAB and UTEP are considered the top four schools.

Under Calipari's plan, Memphis would then play UAB, Houston and UTEP twice, and everybody else once.

Likewise, UAB would play Memphis, Houston and UTEP twice and everybody once. And so on and so forth.

"Then six of your 14 league games are against top 40 or top 50 (RPI) teams," Calipari said. "So that's one possibility."

Any others?

"Maybe 12 league games," Calipari answered. "Play everybody once, and have one mirror game, then you can build whatever kind of schedule you want.

"Why couldn't we do that?"

NT80 · December 18, 2005

....replaced by the likes of SMU...
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MeanGreenBuzz · December 18, 2005

Well in both men's and womens BB they would have done better bringing in NT rather than SMUt and UTEP. Football is still in the air... We would have upped Soccer. Our Volleyball is getting better and better. Honestly I think SMUt helped CUSA shoot itself in the foot.

MeanGreen61 · December 18, 2005

Post by Littlebittyschool on the Sun Belt board in response to the article.

"Sweet. Looks like Coach Cal already sees the writing on the wall that many others saw much earlier. It's interesting that he's already concocting "doomsday" scenerios. C-USA is well on the way to becoming C-DOA if they don't get those basketball $$$ units from the tourney. It's not SUCH a big surprise though. Last year, they got 5 teams into the tourney (correct me if I'm wrong). Of those 5, only UAB is still in the conference. UTEP did make the dance last year, but it looks like they may be going in the tank. Memphis has surged back up, but who's going to stand with them? It looks like there's a real possibility that C-USA will drop to a two-bid or maybe even a single bid conference.

So here's the 64 thousand dollar question (or more like the several hundred thousand dollar question)... where are the bids that CUSA will no longer get going to go? Do they go to the Big East with all of those teams? The question then arises on just how many bids you can give out to one conference. Does the 7th best team in the Big East deserve to go to the dance? How about the 8th, 9th, and 10th ones? They'll all be jawing and say they deserved more, no matter how many bids they get. What if the committee keeps the status quo and only sends 5 or 6 Big East teams to the dance? The talk of splitting the conference will REALLY heat up then. An equally chaotic scenerio (but a better and more fair one) is if some of the other "mid-major" conferences go from single bid confernces to multiple bid ones. That'd be great for the Belt if we could get two teams to stand out above the rest. But you KNOW the powers that be wouldn't like this at all. When the money gets spread out more, then things get evened out more and they lose their advantage and consequently lose more money.

So what's going to happen? I'm hoping that the bids will get spread around through the other "mid-majors". I'm guessing that the Big East may get 8 or 9 teams into the dance. I'm betting that the majority of those extra bids will just go to the "bubble" teams of the Big XII, ACC, SEC, etc..."

badgerwolf · December 18, 2005

Well in both men's and womens BB they would have done better bringing in NT rather than SMUt and UTEP. Football is still in the air... We would have upped Soccer. Our Volleyball is getting better and better. Honestly I think SMUt helped CUSA shoot itself in the foot.
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A Loser Tech fan linked this thread on the CUSA Board. Check it out, if it interests you:

http://www.ncaabbs.com/forums/cusa/phpbb/v...000c2b0dd25fb2a