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Let's say we change this into a discussion on how we get 2 bids in the tourney..
who has to win the regular season, with how many loses, and then lose the conference tournament.
I'd say right now the top two teams to give us a chance at 2 bids is ISU and Evansville. Both of those teams have no bad loses and if either one of those two run away with the conference and win by 2 or 3 games then lose in the tournament they would probably get an at large.
Is there any other team that could possibly get an at large for winning the regular season?
A lot of people forget a rather simple fact: Winning the #8 (or #9) conference in the regular season has value. There is value there.
I think anybody who can post 15-3 or so is good to go, barring an exceptional case.
Failing that, I think you look at Creighton, Evansville, and ISU at the 3 hopes. As a ballpark estimate, they need to either post 13-5 or better as a conference champion, or 14-4 or better as a 2nd place team in order to feel reasonably solid about their chances. A 13-5 2nd place team is borderline. 12-6 probably not this year.
The chances at 2 bids are still reasonably high. They were just as high last year, and it took a perfect storm of events and a bubble snub to keep us at 1 - that's an anomaly.
Well Evansville and ISU are the two teams with no bad losses...they set themselves up to be successful. Now it just depends on how they do in the conference season. They have only lost to ISU in B/N and I think all of the teams in the MVC are doomed to the same fate.
I was thinking about this last night but didn't know if it was too soon. We have IMHO a "bad" loss to UMKC, two losses that don't look bad at Michigan State and at Florida, a loss that looks bad because we got blown out at home against Butler (if they do really well that loss might not look so bad at the end of the year), and a loss to a UW Milwaukee team that is leading the Horizon league right now (5-0 in conference). IF we win the Valley and somehow dont win the Valley Tourney, but play well and don't get blown out, I think we would have a very good case to be an at large team. Of course it would be so much easier if we go out and win in St. Louis and not put our fate in the Selection Committee's hands.
If Bradley finishes the MVC season at 14-4 and wins the Bracketbuster game, that leaves the Braves with a record of 20-9 heading into the conference tourney. Then if BU was to lose in the MVC tourney, we'd be left at either 20-10 or 21-10. Depending on how everything else shakes out with the other conferences, it's conceivable that we could get an at-large bid, but it'd be a long shot. The question becomes, can we even go 14-4 in conference? I'd say something like 12-6 seems a big more realistic, which means if we want to go dancing we'll have to win the auto-bid.
I was thinking about this last night but didn't know if it was too soon. We have IMHO a "bad" loss to UMKC, two losses that don't look bad at Michigan State and at Florida, a loss that looks bad because we got blown out at home against Butler (if they do really well that loss might not look so bad at the end of the year), and a loss to a UW Milwaukee team that is leading the Horizon league right now (5-0 in conference). IF we win the Valley and somehow dont win the Valley Tourney, but play well and don't get blown out, I think we would have a very good case to be an at large team. Of course it would be so much easier if we go out and win in St. Louis and not put our fate in the Selection Committee's hands.
Even with the better play as of late from this team...I have to say I do not think BU will get an at-large bid. I think it may be possible if we only lose like 2 games in the conference, but obviously I'm not shooting for that.
It's either dominate the regular season and hope or our toughness takes us through the tourney for the auto-bid.
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