The following in an excerpt from a piece I wrote over at the Student Section. I recommend heading over there to fully check out the entire piece. Of course I do, I wrote the damn thing after all. Here I covered every league in the nation, right below I cover the AAC.
AAC
Locks: SMU, Cincinnati
Cincinnati has four top 50 wins. The only top 50 loss is the same day that Mick Cronin told the team he wouldn’t be coaching. If the tournament was today, they wouldn’t be excluded. Nor would SMU, whose worst loss is at Indiana.
Tulsa Golden Hurricane 14-5, 7-0 (RPI: 49 / SOS: 123 / KP: 59)
Good Wins:
50) Temple
Bad Losses:
197) Oral Roberts
Tulsa famously lost a game to Southeast Oklahoma State in December. That doesn’t count on their bad losses since it wasn’t a D-1 team. The next game was a beating by Oklahoma. Tulsa hasn’t lost since, winning nine straight. Oral Roberts was the season opener, so that comes with some leniency… or so you would expect. There’s a large number of wins but none of much quality. Tulsa doesn’t play SMU until February 7. Wins against Temple, UConn and Memphis look nice, but that’s all the Golden Hurricane has in the top 100. This is probably an at-large team, but it’s tough to say for sure. We just saw an AAC team with a shiny record and nothing significant in the non-conference end up in the NIT.
Connecticut Huskies 11-7, 4-2 (RPI: 79 / SOS: 51 / KP: 58)
Good Wins:
26) Cincinnati
28) Dayton
Bad Losses: None
The worst loss UConn currently sports is to Ivy League leader Yale. The buzzer beater losses to Texas and Yale look huge. The Huskies play a gigantic game at Cincinnati Thursday night. UConn also hosts Tulsa and still has all four meetings with Memphis and SMU, as well as a road game at Temple. There are chances for the Huskies to get wins.
Temple Owls 13-7, 4-3 (RPI: 50 / SOS: 39 / KP: 82)
Good Wins:
1) Kansas
Bad Losses:
110) UNLV
170) St Joe’s
The Owls are perched at 3-5 against the top 100. A three-game losing streak in the league against the top three teams dented their resume. There are road games at Memphis, SMU and Tulsa waiting, as well as home games against Cincinnati and UConn. Anything more than two losses leaves them very vulnerable. This seems like a classic bubble team which ends up on the outside looking in.
Memphis is 2-6 against the top 100 with one of the wins being North Carolina Central — there just isn’t enough there.
Add The Sports Daily to your Google News Feed!
