Xavier & the BE Bubble

[MHettel]

We are still alive with a shot at the Dance. We could remove all doubt and run off a 10 game winning streak....but I doubt it. I think we are going to be sweating over these next 10 games, so I want to understand what lies ahead of us that WE can control, and how the rest of the BE bubble is shaping up.

The BE Bubble

• -Uconn (1), MU (2), and CU (3) are locks for this exercise
  -SJU (9), Provi (10), & SHU (11) are projected in as of earlier this week.
  -Butler & Nova are among teh next 8 out.
  -We are somewhere beyond the next 8 out and considered among the bottom 3 teams with DePaul & GTown...

The reality is that the BE will NOT be getting 8 teams in. 5-6 is likely, and maybe 7 if some of these teams get hot and not cannibalize the others. We need to find the path to jump from 9th to 6th.

SHU is 7-4 and has only 2 games left against the top 3. 5 home games, 4 away. Im rooting for SHU to win as much as possible (expect against us, of course). They could deal 2 losses to Nova (who is currently 4-6) and basically knock them out. In addition they can get Ws against Butler & SJU. I assume they will beat GTown and DePaul. I see them finishing 4th, with 13 wins and looking at a 8 seed or so.

Butler is at 6-5 after a solid win last night AT Creighton. Their schedule is tough with 1/3 of their remaining games agains the top 3. In addition, they have 5 games against other at-large hopefulls and only 1 game left against the bottom 2. They helped themselves yesterday, but lets root for Butler to miss any of those bigwin chances and also lose to us and @ Nova, @ SHU and either home vs SJU or Providence. finish out 2-7 with us providing the final dagger @ Hinkle. Butler misses

Providence is 5-5 and has a pretty balanced schedule left. I'd like to see Providence do JUST enough to get in....right behind us. Provi can help knock out Nova with 2 wins. As mentioned above, beating Butler at home would be great. Also, need them to win @ SJU. Avoid bad losses against GT or DePaul. 6-4 finish puts them at 11-9 but with 2 losses to us if all goes welll. 6th BE team in, probably with a game in Dayton.
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SJU is 5- 6 and frankly we need them to fold down the stretch. but their schedule is favorable with only 2 games against teh top 3, and 4 games left against GT and DePaul. It appears that might need Butler to beat them at Hinkle, although we're rotting against Butler as well. I see SJU ending with 9,10, or 11 wins which puts them in the mix, but we need to get in front of them somehow.

Nova is the outsider in my mind. Currently 4-6 with 4 games reaming against SHU and Prov. Lets just root for SHU and Prov and then a game @ Uconn should give them 5 more losses and pu them under .500 and out of the discussion.

Turning my attention to the XU schedule, I'm grouping our final 10 games into 3 categories
Must Wins (also known as bad losses)- @ DePaul, vs DePaul, @ GT, @ Butler (4 wins)
Toss-Ups (need to win 1)- Vs Nova, vs. Prov
Good Wins / Ok Losses- (Need to win 1)- VS CU, @SHU, @ MU, VS MU

This would get us to 11-9, but more importantly into the top 5 in the BE standings. That could be enough. I only have us winning 1 of 4 "good wins" remaining on our schedule. Obviously there are several other chances for us in that group as well.

Bottom line is we must win those 4 "must win" games, starting tonight.

What to root for (in order): Xavier against anyone, UConn / MU / CU against everyone else, SHU against everyone on the bubble, Root for Providence generally , root against Nova, Butler, & SJU.

[Xville]

I don’t mean for this to sound flippant but it probably does. Place in standings means zero to the committee. It’s not something they look at in the slightest so it doesn’t matter what any of them do, only what x does. Win 12 in reg season and x is in.

Nova at home they need to win. That’s a quad 2 game, butler is a quad 1. X could lose that game and be fine, but they should stack as many quad 1s as possible. They have five left, would be nice to win 3 but 2 should suffice if they avoid the bad losses which is the DePaul games, gtown.

[profson]

Root against any bubble team in and out of league. Of course we have to win games to get to the bubble but once there we want a weak bubble.

[MHettel]

I don’t mean for this to sound flippant but it probably does. Place in standings means zero to the committee. It’s not something they look at in the slightest so it doesn’t matter what any of them do, only what x does. Win 12 in reg season and x is in.

Nova at home they need to win. That’s a quad 2 game, butler is a quad 1. X could lose that game and be fine, but they should stack as many quad 1s as possible. They have five left, would be nice to win 3 but 2 should suffice if they avoid the bad losses which is the DePaul games, gtown.

I’ll purposely sound flippant. I disagree about the committee not giving any consideration of conference standings. It is likely that there could be 2-3 BE teams fighting on the bubble. You don’t think it will matter the way those teams ranked in conference? You think they might take the 7th ranked team over the 5th.

That’s nonsense.

We have 8 of 11 teams currently in the discussion. We make 9. Many of the remaining Big East games will matter to us. I don’t see us going 7-3, so we need help. 7-3 probably DOES get us in, and 5-5 probably means we don’t. So 6-4 is what matters most, but other circumstances will factor in

[Xville]

I’ll purposely sound flippant. I disagree about the committee not giving any consideration of conference standings. It is likely that there could be 2-3 BE teams fighting on the bubble. You don’t think it will matter the way those teams ranked in conference? You think they might take the 7th ranked team over the 5th.

That’s nonsense.

We have 8 of 11 teams currently in the discussion. We make 9. Many of the remaining Big East games will matter to us. I don’t see us going 7-3, so we need help. 7-3 probably DOES get us in, and 5-5 probably means we don’t. So 6-4 is what matters most, but other circumstances will factor in

I never said they’d take 7th over 5th. I said conference standings don’t matter which is 100% true. They don’t factor conference standings in any of their discussions when selecting teams, it’s just not a factor. If you want to argue bubble teams here and there in and out of our conference , ok I can see your point.

If you want a recent example, vandy didn’t make it over miss st, auburn or ark last year in the sec even though they easily finished ahead of both of them.

[MHettel]

I never said they’d take 7th over 5th. I said conference standings don’t matter which is 100% true. They don’t factor conference standings in any of their discussions when selecting teams, it’s just not a factor. If you want to argue bubble teams here and there in and out of our conference , ok I can see your point.

If you want a recent example, vandy didn’t make it over miss st, auburn or ark last year in the sec even though they easily finished ahead of both of them.

And I’m not saying it’s a deciding factor. But it absolutely is part of the soup.

In the Vandy case, I’m sure the committee discussed the relative standings in the Sec. they obviously could justify their decisions so they made it.

I don’t know much about the divisions in the SEC, but I know schedules are not balances.

With the BE double round robin, it’s hard to NOT let the standings be an actual reflection of the ranks of the teams

[Xville]

And I’m not saying it’s a deciding factor. But it absolutely is part of the soup.

In the Vandy case, I’m sure the committee discussed the relative standings in the Sec. they obviously could justify their decisions so they made it.

I don’t know much about the divisions in the SEC, but I know schedules are not balances.

With the BE double round robin, it’s hard to NOT let the standings be an actual reflection of the ranks of the teams

Ok. You’re wrong. You’ll probably still try to say you’re right but whatever. Below is the actual criteria.

https://www.cbssports.com/college-ba...t-resumes/amp/

[X-band '01]

I’ll purposely sound flippant. I disagree about the committee not giving any consideration of conference standings. It is likely that there could be 2-3 BE teams fighting on the bubble. You don’t think it will matter the way those teams ranked in conference? You think they might take the 7th ranked team over the 5th.

That’s nonsense.

We have 8 of 11 teams currently in the discussion. We make 9. Many of the remaining Big East games will matter to us. I don’t see us going 7-3, so we need help. 7-3 probably DOES get us in, and 5-5 probably means we don’t. So 6-4 is what matters most, but other circumstances will factor in

In the Big East, you can put a little more weight on conference standings with a balanced schedule. Unfortunately, most conferences are unbalanced schedules so you can't really go by conference standings alone. If you're Memphis and you're a game over .500 in the American without Houston, Cincinnati and even UCF, that's obviously going to hurt them in that regard.

[OTRMUSKIE]

19-14

[D-West & PO-Z]

I don’t mean for this to sound flippant but it probably does. Place in standings means zero to the committee. It’s not something they look at in the slightest so it doesn’t matter what any of them do, only what x does. Win 12 in reg season and x is in.

Nova at home they need to win. That’s a quad 2 game, butler is a quad 1. X could lose that game and be fine, but they should stack as many quad 1s as possible. They have five left, would be nice to win 3 but 2 should suffice if they avoid the bad losses which is the DePaul games, gtown.

I agree. I mean I want X to finish as high as they can because that means they are stacking up wins, but I don't think the committee considers who finished where in conference more so looking at the overall resume.