Cats 78 Carroll 75

[Montana Gym Rat]

It's back to where the Big Sky normally competes at. Last year was a down year. My point was that this season is not close to what happened last year (so far knock on wood).

Right now the BSC winner is shaping up for a 14 seed. That is of course considering that the conference champ wins the tournament. The Griz are in a similar position to where Niagara or Winthrop were last year. Those two teams were the 3rd and 4th 14 seeds last year.

The rest of the conference needs to pick it up for that seed to raise. Stanford needs to make a good showing in the Pac 10 and get their RPI close to the 50's. That would be a nice boost for the Griz RPI. There needs to be 2 or 3 teams in the BSC that are in that 80 - 110 RPI range going into conference play. Then those teams can't lose to sub 200 teams at home. Road losses are weighted differently so they don't hurt as bad.

NDSU beating Drake would be nice. Utah Valley beating some teams other than Big Sky teams would help a lot. Boise State getting some quality wins in the WAC would help.

 

[Montana Gym Rat]

Actually looking at where the MVC is sitting right now, playing Drake would be better for the RPI. Plus Drake only lost to Boston College by 3, so it would be a good test.

Of course, the Griz gotta take care of business on Friday first against Mississippi Valley State. They've had since November 22nd to prepare for Friday's game, which could be a good thing or a bad thing depending on how you look at it. The Delta Devils have lost their first 3 games by an average of 33 points (Wake Forest, UC-Irvine, Texas A&M). Irvine beat them the worst, 94-40. Irvine has a couple of other common opponents with Montana: they beat Stanford 79-63 and Santa Clara 78-70.

 

[TrueGriz]

I think it is still to early to rely on RPI until after the non-conference schedule has been played out before predicting what seed Big Sky Conference team will get. It is only a small part of the equation for seeding and will likely just affect the bubble teams.