December 16 Update: Philly Women's Ball

It's a pretty good time for women's basketball in Philadelphia right now. St. Joseph's is on an eight-game winning streak, finding themselves fourth in RPI thanks to some decent scheduling of good mid-major teams like Wichita State, Princeton and Quinnipiac.  Two of their wins have come against fellow Philadelphia teams Temple and Villanova, which puts St. Joseph's on top of the Big 5 leaderboard.  Villanova currently holds the best overall record in the Big East, and Temple will be in contention this year for the best non-Connecticut non-Louisville team in the new American Athletic Conference.  Drexel has wins over Providence and St. John's and looks in okay shape to have another pretty good season, Penn is on a four game winning streak, and La Salle ... well, five out of six ain't bad.

Now in:
Princeton
Oregon State
Virginia Tech
St. Mary's

Now out:
Auburn
West Virginia
BYU
Harvard

Conferences with multiple bids:
ACC: 9
SEC: 7
Big Ten: 7
Pac 12: 6
Big 12: 4
American: 3
West Coast: 3

Last Notes Before the Conference Tournaments

 - The Big 12 regular season wrapped up on Tuesday, and the conference tournament starts tomorrow in Dallas.  After West Virginia's unexpected loss to Texas on Tuesday, for the first time all season, the S-Factor is showing only five Big 12 teams to make the tournament: Baylor (1), Iowa State (5), Oklahoma (6), Texas Tech (8), and Oklahoma State (11).

 - Backing into West Virginia's place in the tournament for now is Illinois, but St. John's is a much more likely candidate for a slot in the field. With an impressive 11-5 record in the Big East, all but three of their 11 losses coming against NCAA tournament teams, 34th ranked RPI, and an important first round hosting slot, St. John's is pretty much a no-brainer for a tournament bid (an anomalous loss to RPI 203 Seton Hall is currently costing them about 5-6 S-Factor points, which would have put them somewhere around an 8-seed in the S-Factor had they won). 

 - I think Illinois, South Florida, St. Joseph's, and Oklahoma State are the bubbliest teams right now that I have shown in the field.



 - Conferences where the conference tournament has little chance of altering the selection of at-large bids: SEC, ACC, Pac-12.  The SEC is very likely getting 7 teams in: there is a huge gap between 7th place Vanderbilt (9-7 SEC) and 8th place Arkansas (6-10 SEC).  Likewise between 5th place Miami (11-7 ACC) and 6th place Virginia (8-10 ACC), and between 4th place Colorado (13-5 Pac-12, 23 RPI) and 5th place Washington (11-7 Pac-12, 83 RPI). 

Now in:
Illinois

Now out:
West Virginia

Conferences with multiple bids:
Big Ten: 7
Big East: 7
SEC: 7
Big 12: 5
ACC: 5
Pac-12: 4
Atlantic 10: 4
Missouri Valley: 2

Atlantic 10 Ruling; Mountain West Drooling

Of all the mid-major conferences (defined as conferences that are not the Big East, Big 12, Big Ten, Pac-10, Atlantic Coast and Southeast Conference), two of the 26 (counting the Great West) rank higher than all others in terms of the number of at-large bids garnered over the past few years: the Atlantic 10 and the Mountain West. It seems like it's a rare year when the Atlantic 10 doesn't get three teams into the NCAA tournament, and the Mountain West is so full of parity that the annual conference tournament is often completely up for grabs.

But this year there is no question as to which conference is better. The Atlantic 10 is having a great year as a whole. As of right now, eight teams from the 14-team conference are ranked in the top 75 of RPI. Three Atlantic 10 teams are in Charlie Creme's field of 64, and two more are on the cusp. While the College Women's Hoops S-Factor only lists two, the S-Factor is unreasonably stingy to mid-major conferences at this point in the year. Xavier is being talked about as a 2 seed; Duquesne has been on everyone's list since they beat Ohio State; Temple, Charlotte and Dayton are all very close to being in the big dance; and St. Joseph's, St. Bonaventure, and Richmond have all been competitive in their biggest games.

The Mountain West, however, has been pretty weak as a conference whole. Many of the traditional powers are having off years. Both the Utes of Utah and the Lady Lobos of New Mexico lost a lot of games in a difficult non-conference schedule, but kept losing once the conference season began. San Diego State has achieved an 8-8 record so far with their best win coming against Dayton and a loss to the non-aligned Roadrunners of Cal State Bakersfield. BYU and Wyoming are the only two challengers to what is looking like a dominant run by TCU this year. Wyoming was crushed by TCU last week, and BYU travels to Fort Worth to play the Horned Frogs tonight. With only a single top-50-RPI win in the entire conference this season (that being TCU's victory over 50th ranked Oklahoma earlier this year), the Mountain West is looking like a one-bid conference this year.

Now in: Vanderbilt
Now out: Missouri State

Conferences with multiple bids:
Big East: 9
ACC: 7
Big Ten: 7
Big 12: 6
SEC: 5
PAC-10: 4
Atlantic 10: 2