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[QUOTE="jncuse, post: 897995, member: 1969"]
Jason, I respect your opinion (like Marsh) that UCLA has tourney level talent.   Don't disagree with it at all, or that they could beat Oregon and Stanford in the Pac012.    But the issue is the massive hole they have put themselves in because of the schedule.

To be honest, when I did my projected field based on rpiforecast.com this weekend I didn't even consider Utah because of their projected RPI of 93.

Oregon and Stanford don't need to be as good in the Pac-12.  I will show the example below.

[url]http://www.rpiforecast.com/confs/P12.html[/url]

Oregon 9-9 in Pac-12, #36 RPI, SOS 26, 3-6 top 50, 8-8 top 100, OOC wins against Georgetown (n), Illinois (n), at Ole Miss, BYU   (OOC SOS of 59).    No great wins, but its a solid OOC resume against a good schedule with no losses

Utah is projected at 8-10 in Pac-12, but has a projected RPI of only 93.    It is based on OOC SOS of 344.    They had one nice win against BYU and all other wins were garbage - 9 out of 10 were sub 250 teams.

Let's say Utah goes 11-7 in the Pac-12, instead of 8-10.   Instead of being 17-11 with a SOS of 100, they would be 20-8 with an SOS of 100 and an RPI in the mid 50's.   (Note - I calculated that based on looking at teams with a similar projected record to 20-8 and SOS around 100).    There record would probably be around 4-5 vs top 50, and 7-6 vs top 100.  That's bubble material.

In the scenario above Oregon gets off the bubble because there numbers are adequate and they had a good OOC.    But Utah is not so lucky (at a fall two games better than Oregon) - there numbers vs top 100 are similar, but they stay on the bubble because committee hates borderline teams with a really bad OOC.      
So basically 9-9 Oregon is in, 10-8 Utah is clearly out, 11-7 Utah needs to keep its fingers crossed (and has the resume that typically gets burned).   I think they need to go 12-6 to create so much good to just take them off the bubble discussion.

** Note those records are estimates, and based on a standard mix to the results.   If it goes and beats Arizona twice and ends at 11-7 its a different story.
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