The ESPN Bubble Watch by Eamonn Brennan is one of my favorite weekly College Basketball pieces.  It does a great job of analyzing teams that are locks, have a little more work to do and longshots for the NCAA Tournament at-large bids.  In my mind, aside from Bracketology, it is is one of the only pieces that removes a majority of power conference bias from the discussion (some still remains).

I found it interesting that this week it has Davidson as an at-large contender.  I examined some of the numbers and compared them to OHIO.  Here is what I have come up with:

Please note that I used the Realtime RPI for the numbers and they could vary depending on your source
OHIO (RPI: 80, SOS: 231)
vs Top 150 RPI - 6-3 (3 Road Wins, 1 Home Loss)
vs Top 100 RPI - 5-2 (2 Road Wins, 0 Home Losses)
vs Top 50 RPI - 0-1 (On the Road)
Key Wins (RPI Top 100): Lamar, Marshall (Away), Northern Iowa (Away), Buffalo, Kent
Bad Losses (RPI 200 or higher): None

Davidson (RPI: 65, SOS: 164)
vs Top 150 RPI - 3-4 (1 Road Win, 1 Home Loss)
vs Top 100 RPI - 1-2 (1 Road Win, 1 Home Loss)
vs Top 50 RPI - 1-2 (1 Road Win, 1 Home Loss)
Key Wins (RPI Top 100): Kansas (Away)
Bad Losses (RPI 200 or higher): Samford

A few conclusions off of this:

1. The only reason I can see that Davidson is considered in the Bubble Watch is the sexy win against Kansas on the road.
2. I like our consistency! No "bad" losses or at least not real bad and more key wins.
3. If we had defeated Louisville we would be very much in the discussion right now.
4. Northern Iowa's upset of Creighton will hopefully get them rolling. The more they win the better we look.
5. Although I think a lot of us disregarded them earlier this season, Lamar could have a major impact on us. One thing that is looked at is how you did against teams in the field, so it would be great if they could win their conference and also beat George Mason (out of a more respected Mid-Major conference than the MAC in their road bracketbuster)
6. If we come out of the West unscathed, we are in great position! Buffalo, Kent and Akron are all RPI Top 100 and should boost our SOS as well as our RPI.  If we lose 0 or 1 game between now and MAC Champ game (not counting MAC Champ Game) we are very much in the discussion IMHO.  If we lose 2 we are a longshot and 3 or more losses will no doubt require a Tourney title.

Still want to win and let their be no doubt, but I enjoy the number crunching and comparisons.  They always seem to look at records against Top 150, Top 100, Top 50 and how you did against teams in the tournament.  If you put our resume and Davidson's resume up next to each other blind...every analyst in the country would pick us over them!

That SOS number is killing us. Too bad we have to play the NIUs and CMUs of the world.

But I'm wondering how much our SOS affects our RPI. If we had Akron's SOS and a 19-4 record would our RPI be significantly higher? Would we have lost a few more games, evening it all out? I have no idea, but I'm sure somebody here could comment.

From Wikipedia:

RPI = (WP * 0.25) + (OWP * 0.50) + (OOWP * 0.25)

In its current formulation, the index comprises a team's winning percentage (25%), its opponents' winning percentage (50%), and the winning percentage of those opponents' opponents (25%). The opponents' winning percentage and the winning percentage of those opponents' opponents both comprise the strength of schedule (SOS). Thus, the SOS accounts for 75% of the RPI calculation and is 2/3 its opponents' winning percentage and 1/3 times its opponents' opponents' winning percentage.

This explains why RPI tends to be the biggest discussion point.  SOS is a major factor in RPI.  The reason they also then look at your record vs the RPI Top 150 when assessing teams in the discussion is that, like in OHIO's case, a team may have performed very well against quality opponents while having teams on their schedule that have performed poorly really pull their SOS down.  So by looking at RPI you get a sense of the team's complete body of work.  The record against the Top 150 can then be used to enhance your argument or destroy it.  In OHIO's case it most definitely enhances it.

There is one more aspect to this formula that was changed in 2004. for the WP calculation, Home wins and Road losses count as 0.6. Home Losses and Road wins count as 1.4

So if Ohio had Akron's Opponent's winning percentage and Akron's Opponents Opponents winning percentage but maintained the 19-4 record(18-4 against division 1 teams, 12 home wins, 6 away wins, 1 home loss, and 3 away losses), the Bobcats would have an RPI of 0.6071. According to udpride.com website, that would have ranked the Bobcats at #30 in the country, just ahead of Wisconsin.