RPI Reports

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

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.