Harvard, oh so close to making NCAA tournament last season, tries again for its first appearance since 1946
So, so very close to making the NCAA tournament last season, Harvard tries once again to punch its ticket to the Big Dance for the first time in 66 years. Last year, Harvard had a 9-point, early second-half lead in its playoff game with Princeton but saw it disappear with just over 5 minutes remaining. After a seesaw remainder of the game, the Crimson had a 1-point lead with 11 seconds left, only to have the Tigers drain a jumper at the buzzer to win the game and the Ivy League's automatic tournament berth.
Will the Crimson finally see that bid come through this season? They were in a three-way tie for first place with Yale and Penn in the Ivy league with 2-0 records through games of Jan. 26, and only time will tell how the conference race ends. Harvard had a 16-2 overall record and ranked No. 47 in the RPI and No. 40 in Sagarin's ratings through games of Jan. 23. While Harvard has the current longest drought of any school that previously made the tournament, five Ivy League schools have not made the NCAA tournament since 1986. Dartmouth is working on a 53-year absence, Yale is trying to make it after 50 years, while Columbia (1968) and Brown (1986) have also been away for some time.
Twenty-two schools that previously competed in the NCAA tournament but have not made the Big Dance since 1990 will continue to try to make it in 2012. Arkansas-Little Rock made it last year for the first time since 1990. Many other schools have never been to the tournament, but most of them are relatively new to Division I basketball. When the NCAA tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1985, there were 282 teams in Division I, and this season there are 338 teams eligible for the tournament. Most of the schools teams that have never been to the tournament are included in the 56 institutions that have joined D-I since 1985.
Schools that have not been to the NCAA tournament since 1990:
School
Year
School
Year
Harvard
1946
Mercer
1985
Dartmouth 1959
Loyola-Chicago 1985
Yale
1962
Jacksonville 1986
Tennessee Tech
1963
Brown
1986
Bowling Green 1968
Marshall 1987
Columbia 1968
Idaho State 1987
Rice
1970
Marist
1987
VMI
1977
Middle Tennessee 1989
Duquesne
1977
Idaho
1990
Furman
1980
Loyola Marymount 1990
Toledo
1980
Oregon St. 1990
Bracket Bits from The RPI Report and The Women's RPI Report
Tidbits from recent issues of The RPI Report and The Women's RPI Report
From The RPI Report: The NCAA
recently made several decisions on game locations that we had questions
about, mainly regarding non-conference games. CBN uses
the NCAA’s location determinations so the RPI that we calculate is
identical to the NCAA’s. The NCAA even has a document titled “NCAA
Statistics’ Policies & Guidelines”, with another one called
“NCAA Division I Men’s and Women’s Basketball Championship -
Determination of Home, Away and Neutral Sites”.
While these questionable games are little more than a nuisance
early in the season, there can sometimes be a large difference in teams’
rankings when the game location is changed. CBN does not
expect many additional changes from this point until the end of the
regular season.
From The Women's RPI Report: It may
seem that since the bulk of the non-conference season is over, the
non-conference ratings would be almost static from this point forward.
While this seems reasonable, it is incorrect. The reason is that while a
team’s non-conference opponents may not change from now until Selection
Sunday, most teams at this point in time are still playing new conference
opponents. If they are playing conference opponents a second time, that
still adds another game to an opponent’s schedule. Since this is the case,
the schedule strength of all teams is constantly changing, albeit much
more slowly than at the beginning of the season. Remember that a team’s
non-conference schedule strength includes all games that each opponent
played against, not just against each opponent’s non-conference opponents.
Teams with No. 1 schedule strength rankings can usually look forward to NCAA tournament invitation
Georgetown ended 2011 with No. 1 schedule strength rank, but as No. 6 seed was knocked out in 1st round
Georgetown ended up with the No. 1 regular-season schedule strength in 2011 and was awarded a No. 6 seed in the NCAA tournament even though they finished the season with a 21-10 record finished in 8th place in the Big East Conference standings. However, the Hoyas could not advance beyond the first round of the NCAA tournament, losing 74-56 to eventual Final Four and tournament sweetheart VCU. Since 1991, 16 of the 21 teams holding the No. 1 regular season schedule strength rank have been in the NCAA tournament, and 17 of 21 teams have been in post-season play. In six of the last eleven years, the team holding top schedule strength honors has lost in the first round of the NCAA tournament. In the ten years prior to that, no teams that made the NCAA tournament lost in the first round. List
Several conferences use CBN's RPI data to break tournament seeding ties
Administrators have complete confidence in CBN's RPI
Nearly all conference offices subscribe to both The RPI Report and The Women's RPI Report because they know they can count on the most accurate weighted RPI for the men and the women anywhere this side of the NCAA tournament selection committees. CBN first made the Adjusted RPI ratings (which are no longer used for either the men nor the women) available to The RPI Report and The Women's RPI Report subscribers during the 1998-99 season. The NCAA used the Adjusted RPI ratings from the 1993-94 through the 2003-04 season for the men and have used the weighted RPI since the 2004-05 season, while the women used the Adjusted RPI through the 2010-11 season and began using the weighted RPI during the 2011-12 season. The weighted RPI gives more credit to teams that schedule tough opponents and that beat good teams at home and on the road. Story
AP carried the Men's RPI Ratings for 16th consecutive year during the 2009-10 season
2009-10 was the 13th season that AP distributed the Women's RPI Ratings
During the 2009-10 season, the Associated Press (AP) carried the CBN's RPI for both men's and women's college basketball, for the 16th consecutive year, for at least part of the season. In addition, 2009-10 was the 13th consecutive season that the AP distributed the women's RPI for at least part of the season. Story
