Atlantic 10 leads the nation in top 100

[PM Thor]

Per RPI today, the Atlantic Ten has ELEVEN of 14 teams in the top 100. Other conferences like the Big East and Big Ten come in second with nine.

Say what you will about knocking the conference, bit that's a top to bottom solid conference.

I HATE dayton.

[MADXSTER]

So you're saying that ESPN is not reporting this, hmmm.

[bleedXblue]

No question the talent level in the conference is up from the last 4-5 years.

It is refreshing to see UMASS and SLU playing better and having a positive impact on the league.

I would much rather be 12-4 in solid conference that garners some respect nationally than 15-1 in a 1-2 bid league.

[MHettel]

Interesting.

11 of 14 for A-10
9 of 16 for the BE
9 of 12 for the B10

The A-10 has a slight lead from a percentage point of view.

The RPI is 50% comprised of the W/L record of your opponents. Since the current RPi is made up of about 95% of the non-conference games, and about 1/4 of the conference games, it's heavily skewed towards the records of our non-con opponents. Over time, it will take on more and more of the cumulative records of the A-10 teams as we play each other....

If the B10 (or BE or ACC or whoever) has a better cumulative non-con record than the A-10, then they will probably overtake us in this metric.

In the end, the A-10 has zero teams in the top 25. i dont even think a single team got a single vote. So, maybe this just indicates that we're very average across the board....

Although it is certainly an improvement.

[xavierj]

Interesting.

11 of 14 for A-10
9 of 16 for the BE
9 of 12 for the B10

The A-10 has a slight lead from a percentage point of view.

The RPI is 50% comprised of the W/L record of your opponents. Since the current RPi is made up of about 95% of the non-conference games, and about 1/4 of the conference games, it's heavily skewed towards the records of our non-con opponents. Over time, it will take on more and more of the cumulative records of the A-10 teams as we play each other....

If the B10 (or BE or ACC or whoever) has a better cumulative non-con record than the A-10, then they will probably overtake us in this metric.

In the end, the A-10 has zero teams in the top 25. i dont even think a single team got a single vote. So, maybe this just indicates that we're very average across the board....

Although it is certainly an improvement.

You do realize most of the people voting for top 25 have not seen a single A-10 play all year, right? I would bet the people of the selection committee would have 3 or 4 A-10 teams in the top 40 right now which is about the cutoff for the getting votes category. The A-10 also owns 6 wins against top 25 and those receiving votes this week.

[GoMuskies]

You do realize most of the people voting for top 25 have not seen a single A-10 play all year, right? I would bet the people of the selection committee would have 3 or 4 A-10 teams in the top 40 right now which is about the cutoff for the getting votes category. The A-10 also owns 6 wins against top 25 and those receiving votes this week.

RPI only lists one A-10 team in the top 25 (Temple at #24 with Dayton nearby at #26). No others in the top 40. It's not like voters are being super biased by not ranking A-10 teams. The A-10 has a lot of pretty good teams but no very good to great ones (hopefully with the emerging exception of Xavier).

My favorite ratings tool for trying to get as unbiased a look as possible on the relative strengths/ratings of teams is the Massey ratings comparison, which is an aggregation of 41 ratings systems. According to that comparison, the top A-10 teams are:

#44 St. Louis
#47 Temple
#48 Dayton
#50 Xavier
#65 St. Joes
#72 LaSalle
#73 UMass
#96 Richmond
#101 Duquesne
#103 Charlotte
#105 St. Bonaventure

[Kahns Krazy]

Looking at these metrics to discuss how this year's A-10 conference compares to prior years has some potential merit, but I can't really get behind this thread. The "Top 100" metric is totally arbitrary, and is cherry picked to the A-10's benefit. (Looks what happens if you go to 25, top 50, top 110, or top 150, or or bottom 200). In fact, it looks like the A-10 has already lost a "top 100" team since yesterday. The concept that the A-10 compares favorably to the Big East (with 6 top 25 rpi teams) based on an arbitrary cutoff is a little weak. We also lead in conference members that start with "X".

This thread is the A-10 conference version of Dayton bragging about their NIT win. In fact, Go's list would suggest that the next NIT winner is likely to come out of the A-10.

[xavierj]

I really don't put much stock in RPI numbers but I think the A-10 is obviously much improved. Had it not have been for the UC game Xavier is probably a top 15 - 20 RPI team and a top 15 ranked team. Then you have Temple beating Duke, freaking Fordham beating a ranked team and Georgia Tech, Lasalle totally not sucking, UMASS actually winning games and Dayton beating teams that are actually half way decent. The A-10 is better because deep down it really only has 2 or 3 teams that completely suck this year compared to a normal year of around 8 or 9.