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Message: [QUOTE="DomeHolmes, post: 5561168, member: 10113"] That’s a good analysis. You seem to be the most versed around here on all this so I did a little digging. And at the end of this, if you could tell me what your thoughts were on a question, I would appreciate it. It still looks to me that the mountain West is not really challenging themselves, only “appearing” to challenge themselves. For example, most power conference teams play two or three neutral or away games. Utah State, Boise, Colorado State, and New Mexico play a total of 10. So nothing unique there. The teams they play are certainly nothing special. They are playing the following teams, either away or neutral: Illinois state, Charlotte, South Florida, Tulane, VCU, Loyola Chicago, Virginia Tech, New Mexico State, VCU again and butler. So maybe by playing those games away and neutral you turn quad threes into quad twos and maybe Butler and Virginia Tech become quad ones but it’s still some pretty thin gruel. Most of those teams are in the 100 to 200 range. And their home games for the most part are the same tomato cans everybody else is playing. So it seems to me that beating all your tomato cans by 20+ and just scraping by against OK teams is all that’s necessary for a high NET pre conference ranking. And then once you have that ranking, as long as you go 500 in your conference against the other highly ranked teams, you’re good for the tournament. So my prediction is that the stars alligned with good play and favorable scheduling the last few years. Now other conferences like the ACC, are catching up as how to schedule. I would be surprised if the Mountain west got more than three teams this year. For a historical note, in the last 27 years, mountain West teams (not named San Diego State) have a total of 18 tournament wins. That’s it. As they say, the proof is in the pudding. They are average teams who would finish in the bottom half of a power conference, so they do not perform well in the tournament. My question to you is, who would have a higher net ranking, a team who played 10 teams all ranked above 200 but won them all by 30 points, or a team that played six games against 6 of those same teams ranked above 200 , beat them all by 30, but split neutral site games with VCU, South Florida, Charlotte, and New Mexico State, in close games? I know it’s a tough question, but based on your insight, I’d be curious if you could figure it out. [/QUOTE]

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