MBB: Northwest Conference

[warriorcat]

Just stumbled online to the overtime of the Whitwirth/Lewis and Clark game.  Very entertaining and well played extra period.  There should be no question that Conference play is the best time of the season.

What really stood out to me was the announcers for Whitworth.  The best I have heard this year. 

Impressive all around.

[CMSfan]

Shameful display from Whitworth tonight in Walla Walla

[Greek Tragedy]

https://d3datacast.com/npi/

I imagine their NPI ranking dropped considerably after last night's loss. They now sit at number 34 and still have the Pool A. However they are in between Pool C 18 at Pool C 19. I think anything less than losing in the conference championship will cost Whitworth the tournament bid. None of their conference foes are above the 53 NPI for bonus points, so they won't get much help the rest of the way.

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

Wow.  They dropped even further than I thought.  A conference tourney loss and they're probably out of the NCAAs altogether.

[ziggy]

Wow.  They dropped even further than I thought.  A conference tourney loss and they're probably out of the NCAAs altogether.

They went from 40.2% Pool C if needed in yesterday's bubble watch to 2.8% in this morning's run of simulations.

https://d3datacast.com/npi/mbb-projections/

It's a much different outlook for Virginia Wesleyan, who also lost last night and is ranked below Whitworth in the current NPI rankings. They took a much smaller hit to their Pool C odds and are still in our "bubble-in" group above 50%. The key difference is the quantity and quality of opportunities still on Virginia Wesleyan's potential path.