Believe your eyes -- Memphis should be dancing
Memphis has 15 losses and an RPI of around 100, and no team has ever received an NCAA Tournament at-large bid with those numbers. The at-large record for losses is 14, last done by Georgia in 2001. The at-large record for RPI is 74, set in 1999 by New Mexico.
Records are made to be broken.
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| Shout it out loud: John Calipari's team belongs in the NCAA tourney. (AP) |
The NCAA Tournament selection committee probably won't invite the Tigers. Committee members will hide behind Memphis' RPI and its 15 losses, unless they choose to delve deeper into the numbers and see that Memphis has reinvented itself after jettisoning troubled star Sean Banks two months ago.
The Tigers have beaten Louisville and Charlotte, and they should have beaten Louisville on Saturday, and if they get a No. 12 seed in the NCAA Tournament they will become everyone's pick to pull off the annual first-round upset of a No. 5 seed.
So do the right thing, selection committee. Put Memphis in the NCAA Tournament. Don't pander to anyone or anything but your own college basketball expertise.
In other words, forget what the RPI says about competing bubble teams like Miami (Ohio), Holy Cross, DePaul and UAB. The RPI is broken. The RPI should be used as the most blunt tool imaginable, to clump conferences together, but should be tossed out on a team-by-team basis.
The RPI says Memphis is either the No. 111 team in the country (new RPI) or No. 94 (old RPI), thereby proving itself to be a farce in duplicate.
The RPI has spoken.
Turn a deaf ear to it, selection committee. You saw the Conference USA title game. You know what to do with Memphis.
Have the guts to do it.
