Cookie Miller Wasn't Dirty

Thanks for making those lists of bubble games again. One difference for me is that I’ll be rooting for Michigan State over Purdue. MSU would need three losses and we’d have to go undefeated for us to get the 3 seed. I’d rather have Purdue lose so OSU can get the 1 seed. That way we’d avoid Purdue until a potential conference championship.

I know the whole "if you ignore it, it'll go away" strategy is useful in certain circumstances. But if a group of people actually feels like their safety is threatened, should it really be ignored?

I don't necessarily disagree with where he has us as of now. But it's weird to me that a road win against a decent team actually moved us down his pecking order. I suppose he probably sees Minnesota as a worse team than I do. It really sucks knowing that our resume won't end up matching the quality of our team. The RPI won't be climbing much and we won't be adding any "quality" wins (at least on paper). These committee members really better be watching us every game down the stretch. We deserve to get a shot in the tournament.

Similar to Illinois State last year, and they didn't make the dance. I doubt Buffalo will either if they lose their conference tournament. Seems like the most important factor that the committee uses as a supplement to RPI is quality wins. They really care about quality wins... more than they do about avoiding quality losses.

That three he hit was massive! This team’s balance combined with having a superstar standout player in JPJ makes them really hard to beat.

Yeah we’re going dancing baby! Happy? Don’t worry, I’m enjoying it plenty. I’m pumped about this team, I think they can make a run in the tourney, and at this point I think we’ll get in the tourney (like I said in a post above). I’m very optimistic and excited about what they’ve become and can do. Doesn’t mean I can’t take a step back and try to see the big picture from an objective viewpoint. You want to pass out drunk from your red koolaid, go ahead. In the meantime I’ll be rooting for Michigan.

If Michigan closes out the season strong enough to earn the 5 seed, they’ll already be in the dance. If they then beat us in the 4/5 game, they’ll be a 7 seed at the very worst. We would not even be close to competing for them for a spot in that scenario.

Damn, only a four spot jump on realtimerpi.com. Up to 54 from 58. Road wins are better than home wins, too. What that tells me is we’re provably going to actually drop in RPI if we beat Rutgers. Maryland is really the only game left that has potential to boost us up the rankings. Can’t afford any worse than a 4-1 finish. Good news is I think we’ll do it.

Yeah I mean I can understand the team’s focus being on positioning themselves for a B1G tourney run, which means getting that 4 seed is big. I still think it’s a really bad look when your best win is only a home game against a soon-to-be unranked team. We want Michigan to win out. At this point, we’d have to lose two games to give up the 4 seed.

Northwestern beats Michigan. Hurts the chances of Michigan finishing in Quad 1. Helps the chances of NW finishing in Quad 1. Most importantly IMO, it makes our best win look worse.

Exactly this. In order to have a reasonable hope of dancing we need to finish 5-1, which would only require Michigan to drop one more game for us to get the 4 seed. Their schedule includes road games at NW, PSU, and Maryland plus a home game against the Buckeyes. Chances are they aren't winning out, so I'm going to root for them for the time being. We need that win to look as good as possible.

I think you meant this.

You have to note that every game we have left besides maybe Minnesota would be an unexpected and “bad” loss that would drop us down these rankings pretty quickly, including Maryland (can’t afford to lose a bubble game at home that we’re expected to win). I agree 5-1 would be a good finish, but a B1G tourney win might still be needed.

Marquette and Va Tech were in his Last Four In and they lost as well. I think we’ll jump them and possibly be in his next bracket, pending any teams leapfrogging us like UCLA and St Bonny. Either way, a win against Minnesota would likely put us in his bracket.

500-400 = 0.5556 499-401 = 0.5544 Difference = 0.0012 Opponents' Winning Percentage is worth half of the total RPI formula: 0.0012 * 0.5 = 0.0006 Good point about strengthening road wins. I still think the Maryland game being high-profile is more important, though. JMO.

Because for RPI, the difference between your opponents' record being 500-400 vs 499-401 isn't much at all. As in, a 0.0006 difference. In most cases, that's not enough to even bump you up one spot. With such a tiny impact on RPI, I think the more important thing is to build up the perception of Nebraska in the committee's minds. Winning a big bubble game in the middle of February is more important than boosting our RPI by 0.0006.

Maryland wins a close one. The better they are come February 13th, the more eyes that will be on our game with them, and the more credit we'll get when we beat them!

Interesting grammar choice Kidding aside, not sure the OSU game really matters. Illinois winning would be better for our RPI since we play them twice, but the OSU loss would look like a "better loss" if they win. Maybe it'd be good for us to root for Illinois (159) to jump into the top 135 to make our upcoming road game against them Quad 2. Conclusion: too much to think about at this point to get invested in that one lol. I'm rooting for Maryland in the other one. I think it's important to get the best win we possibly can against them, even if it means their own bubble resume is strengthened.

It's a very interesting topic, that's for sure. We also got unlucky considering four of our five Q1 games were on the road against top notch competition. I believe all of them are in the top 30. I'd like to see everyone's records on the road against top 30 teams. We're 0-4 with two games that we really could have won (Creighton, Ohio State) and one game that we played respectably (Purdue). Add in the home game against KU and our Q1 is unfairly skewed. A road game against the 75th team is still Q1, yet it's a much easier test than any of our five. So hopefully the committee takes these Quads with a grain of salt and analyzes the results on a deeper level.

Not what I’m saying at all. The conference season plays a huge role in your overall body of work. My point that I’ve reiterated a number of times is that, all else being equal, it’s irrelevant whether we finish 4th or 5th or even 7th in conference. Completely irrelevant. When someone says, “they could never leave out the 4th place team in the Big Ten,” they are wrong. They do not discuss conference standings. Yes, finishing 4th means that you probably have built a good enough resume to get in, but that would be due to correlation, not causation. So again, that doesn’t mean the conference season doesn’t matter. It matters a great deal. Your RPI is impacted by your conference results, your signature wins include conference wins, and the eye test is completely dependent on conference games.

Cuse might be likely out if it were today, but they have a lot of opportunities to improve the resume. Don’t want that to start with Louisville. Go Cards.

I could see them doing that to get a grasp on where they stand with each team, then adjust for the eye test after. Although the quality wins and bad losses on a blind resume would go a long ways towards revealing who the team is, so I don't know if they could really keep the bias out of it.

@HuskerFever This was Lunardi's update at noon today. We're in his First Four Out. And his Last Four In are NM State, Mizzou, Va Tech, and Marquette. Two of them took L's. Add in WKU's loss and we might be his first team out now.

I'll try to address your comment in three parts: 1. I didn't say I don't take the recruits at their word. I said that I believe the positive feelings that are associated with visiting a place with nice facilities can play a role in their decisions. Those feelings may be subconscious, and if they are, the recruit is not going to express it as a reason for why they chose the school. That's much different than saying "recruits lie, but committee members wouldn't." 2. Again I ask, why would the committee leave off the conference standings and records from the team sheets if it's supposed to be a relevant criteria? If it was part of the criteria, even just a little bit, wouldn't they admit to it? What's their motivation for lying? 3. Sure, I could see the B1G guys in the room saying, "Nebraska finished 4th, shouldn't that count for something?" Then I believe the rebuttal would be, "No, we're not supposed to use conference affiliation as a criteria." Now, I could see the B1G guys claiming that the conference's RPIs are lower than what they should be. But will the guys from every other conference listen? If the B1G guys think we should get an additional team, one of the other conferences has to suffer for it. Do you think the guys from that conference aren't going to fight back? I'm sure the Pac-12 members lobbied hard for Washington in 2012. Winning the conference regular season title is a pretty big accomplishment. But apparently everyone else in the room didn't think it mattered enough.

For those that follow recruiting... interesting that Western Kentucky is putting together one of their better seasons. They had a five star center decide to leave after signing his LOI last year. He wasn't allowed to transfer so he's just taking a hiatus from basketball this season until he can enter the draft this year (and likely go in the first round). I bet their fans are wondering what could have been.