Conference Tournies: Separating the Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Friday, February 27, 2009
By Jim Feist

It's time! Time for college basketball teams to begin conference tourney play, that is, also known as a time for separating the contenders from the pretenders. It's important to understand and closely examine the schedule of college hoop teams. Some teams start off the season playing a bunch of cream puffs, while other teams have a mixture of good and bad teams. But what has taken shape the last few months is conference play. Since conferences are purposely made up of schools with a similar level of talent, you need to pay attention to how teams start the season and what their schedule has been like.

Some schools want to get a few cheap victories over smaller schools and fatten up their won/lost record early in the season, while others want to test their teams early to toughen them up for conference play.

Now it's time for conference tournament play to begin, essentially the THIRD season of college basketball. The first season was November and December, non-conference games, plus coaches trying to figure out their personnel and strengths and weaknesses. The second season has been conference play the last two months, and now it's tourney time! This is where the weak links drop off, while the better and more motivated teams advance.

For example, Youngstown State of the Horizon League started off poorly (2-8), but has played much better since, on a 5-2 run. It's more important to look at how a team is doing lately, rather than their overall numbers. Washington started 2-3, but just took control of the Pac 10 race with a 5-1 SU, 4-1-1 ATS run culminating in a 73-70 OT win over Arizona State this week.

Another factor to examine is power ratings and RBI rankings. Some small schools can have a mediocre record, but a strong RPI rank because they played a string of tough competition early in the season. Teams like that can be in better shape come tourney time, even though their overall record might not be that impressive.

A few years ago Ball State started the season with a 7-4 record and an unimpressive 4-3 against the spread mark. Yet, the team was highly ranked in the national polls, as was their RPI rating (ratings percentage index). Why? Ball State, of the Mid-American conference, played a tough non-conference schedule to begin the season. And what the Cardinal did the first two months of the season shook the basketball world. Ball State beat Kansas 93-91 as a +15 dog, smashed UCLA 91-73 as +9 dog, then lost to #1 Duke 83-71 as a +13 dog. That 3-0 ATS start turned a lot of heads, and Ball State went on to play competitive games against Indiana and Oklahoma State team before losing.

Teams that are battle-tested early can have an edge when tournament play gets going, while the pretenders will wilt away faster than a snowball in the spring thaw, which is just around the corner!