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Tuesday, March 07, 2006
Spin doctor
For want of a better RPI, Lehigh ended up playing on the road in the Patriot League semifinals, leading Corky Blake to point out in his column today in the Express-Times:
You have to wonder how Sunday's Patriot League men's semifinal would've played out had the game been contested in Bethlehem instead of Worcester, Mass.
But Lehigh coach Billy Taylor, last seen trying to convince Andre Williams of the Morning Call that his team deserves an NIT bid, tells Blake
:"I don't put much merit in the RPI."
Hey, nobody is saying the RPI is a perfect formula. But while Taylor and his team are on the practice green working on their putting, Holy Cross and Bucknell are still playing hoops.

Taylor defends his team's schedule, pointing to games against Villanova and Washington. But the truth is, the Mountain Hawks played two Division 3 teams and their out of conference strength of schedule ranked No. 168, while Holy Cross played none and had a OOC SOS of 94. For two teams with identical 18-11 regular season records, that proved to be the difference between sleeping in your own beds for the first two rounds of the tournament and riding a bus six hours to spend a weekend in a hotel.

Lehigh's OOC schedule included two teams in the RPI top 50 and two others in the top 100. But it also included 8 teams that were above 200 in the RPI, including one, Stony Brook, with an RPI above 300.

Taylor points to RPI 22 George Washington, with its non conference strength of schedule of 323, as an example of how winning is more important than strength of schedule. That is true. But Lehigh lost home games against 227 Princeton and 224 Towson, and road games against 212 Cornell and 262 Sacred Heart.

Granted the Mountain Hawks were without Joe Knight for those games, but whose fault was that? And they certainly expected to have Knight available when they made their schedule.
Published at 9:37 AM by Hoop Time.
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