I’m using my ratings and Bill James’ log5 formula to estimate the chances of each participating team advancing to a particular round of its conference tournament.
Atlantic 10 Conference
Location: Brooklyn (Barclays Center)
Dates: March 12-16
Chance of bid thief: 6 percent
Current kPOY: Treveon Graham, VCU
Projections:
Rd1 Qtrs Semis Final Champ 2 VCU 100 100 81.9 54.7 36.6 1 Saint Louis 100 100 71.8 44.4 21.5 3 Geo. Wash. 100 100 58.6 24.6 13.1 4 St. Joseph's 100 100 52.9 23.5 8.7 5 Dayton 100 76.7 40.8 19.4 7.7 6 UMass 100 69.2 32.6 12.9 6.5 9 St. Bona. 100 55.2 16.6 6.8 2.0 7 Richmond 100 61.3 12.6 4.4 1.5 8 La Salle 100 44.8 11.6 4.2 1.1 11 Rhode Island 100 30.8 8.7 2.1 0.7 10 Duquesne 100 38.7 5.5 1.4 0.4 12 George Mason 66.7 18.1 5.4 1.4 0.3 13 Fordham 33.3 5.2 0.9 0.1 0.02
The Atlantic 10 features the RPI’s team of the year, UMass. No team has benefited more from the NCAA’s choice of objective metric than the Minutemen, who entering this week, were 17th in the RPI. As of this writing, Kenneth Massey has 50 rankings listed in his college basketball comparison, and exactly zero have UMass ranked higher. If Tennessee is on the bubble, then UMass should be on the bubble, but the Minutemen are not on the bubble. They are safely in and should give the RPI a nice gift should they lose early in the A-10 tourney.
In fact, the conference has a whole has the RPI to thank for its many bids this season. The RPI has each of the six tournament-bound teams ranked significantly higher than the computer consensus. This includes VCU, who at 13th, is also rated no higher by any other system.
Saint Louis has had the lion’s share of the publicity for most of the conference season, but regardless of the RPI inflation, VCU is playing the best hoops in the conference right now. The Rams actually beat out the Billikens for honors of the best defensive efficiency in the A-10. VCU gets the nod as the favorite, although any of the top six seeds have a realistic shot at a title.