How to improve the Summit League?

[filbert]

Re: How to improve the Summit League?

The Summit League has improved during the time the xDSU's have been members. The conference has moved from being a likely play-in for the 16 seed to a fairly steady 13-14 seed. The conference has likewise moved up into the conference RPI of high teens rather than 20's. So now the goal is how does the Summit start getting an at-large most years? Oakland Men's and SDSU women teams have shown how to schedule to be in position to get an at-large. Still basically have to win the games vs the top ten conferences. For the lower members of the conference, they need to schedule tougher. If you're only going to attract 1000 to a game, most of the time better plan on spending most of your time OOC going elsewhere. When you do play at home need games that may interest the casual fans in the area.

I was going to call you on this one, but then I went back and looked.

SDSU, NDSU, and IPFW joined in 2007-08.

The five years previous:
2006-07, Oral Roberts, 14 seed
2005-06, Oral Roberts, 16 seed
2004-05, Oakland (7-9, 13-19), 16 seed, play-in game (ORU in the NIT, got beat by Maryland in the first round)
2003-04, Valparaiso, 15 seed
2002-03, IUPUI, 16 seed (Valpo in the NIT, got beat by Iowa in the first round)

Three sixteens, one fifteen, one fourteen seed, prior to the State U's and IPFW joining the league.

[rabidrabbit]

Re: How to improve the Summit League?

Nothin' like da FACTS der Filbert! Thanks for the research.

[Jacks-02]

Re: How to improve the Summit League?

Just did a quick comparison for league RPI using the ESPN rankings with UMKC and then replaced UMKC with Denver.

Conference RPI.jpg

Using the rankings from here with the ESPN.com RPI rankings, the Summit League would jump from 18th to 14th in the league rankings, which could be the difference between getting a 13 seed or a 12 seed come conference time. The effect on the league RPI would probably be greater than just replacing UMKC too, considering every team in the league would have played two games against a better team in Denver than those same games against UMKC.

[SF_Rabbit_Fan]

Re: How to improve the Summit League?

Just did a quick comparison for league RPI using the ESPN rankings with UMKC and then replaced UMKC with Denver.

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Using the rankings from here with the ESPN.com RPI rankings, the Summit League would jump from 18th to 14th in the league rankings, which could be the difference between getting a 13 seed or a 12 seed come conference time. The effect on the league RPI would probably be greater than just replacing UMKC too, considering every team in the league would have played two games against a better team in Denver than those same games against UMKC.

Excellent work. I agree that RPI would be even better considering every team played UMKC 2 times.

There is no doubt the Summit is improving, add 1-3 more pieces and it will be downright respectable.