Monday, December 8, 2008

Their stock is rising

After spending virtually all of last year languishing near the bottom of the publicly available basketball RPI rankings, Jacksonville State is now living in the upper atmosphere.

The Gamecocks, who have the best overall record in the Ohio Valley Conference through Sunday’s games, are the highest rated OVC team in both the rpiratings.com and realtimerpi.com indexes.

They are No. 66 in rpiratings and No. 67 in realtimerpi. Murray State is second on both lists at No. 88.

The Gamecocks are also the top OVC team in the Sagarin ratings (No. 97).

What’s next? Getting points in the AP or Coaches poll?

The JSU women, meanwhile, are No. 330 out of 340 teams in the rpiratings.com list and No. 333 on the realtimerpi list.

4 comments:

Michael Amberson said...

Alright, perhaps I'm dreaming...but how high would JSU go if they could beat UAB and/or ISU? Top 50? Nice to be the #2 team in the state of Alabama.

al muskewitz said...

A lot of the RPI depends on how the teams they've played have done. So while it would look impressive to beat UAB and/or ISU, as long as UMass and Georgia State and people like that keep winning, the better it looks for the Gamers.

But, alas, they still have to win the OVC tournament to go to the NCAA Tournament no matter what their RPI is.

Ben Cunningham said...

UMass would have to start winning. According to realtimerpi.com, the Minutemen are currently 0-6. Georgia State, at 1-6 with an RPI of 255 isn't helping much either. The best-quality win on the sked so far is VMI, 4-2 at 100 RPI so far, followed by T-Tech, at 4-2 & 170.

UAB is the highest-rated opponent on the schedule, at 30 as I type. ISU is at 158, behind Murray & Austin Peay.

Michael Amberson said...

I'm a little surprised JSU has gotten into the top 100 with UMass and GaSt having one win combined. It appears that VMI and Tenn Tech are having a bigger impact than UMass and GaSt. I'm guessing the Reinhart game will not factor into the equation.

That Tech game is huge to me. It's a nice start to OVC play. Guess we won't have to worry this season about whether JSU makes the OVC tourney or not.

Good point about winning the OVC tourney to get in to the big dance (ask Austin Peay). However, you made a good point on the podcast about getting to the NIT. How big would that be for the program? I'll stop dreaming and looking ahead now, and focus on Reinhart.