Never before has a mid-major conference put four teams into the tournament. The least amount of teams the Big 12 has ever gotten is also four.
This year, both of those statistics will probably change, as the Missouri Valley is a better conference than the Big 12.
Really, let that sink in for a second – a BCS conference that routinely sends five teams to the tournament is not as good as a conference that recruits second-tier players after the Big Ten and Big 12 sign who are more or less the best of the Midwest. Who am I, Dr. Seuss?
I mentioned this in my “dirty little secrets” column a couple of weeks back and received some face-to-face and e-mail backlash saying I was an idiot. Although my idiocy is a point that cannot be refuted, I think I have a couple of facts that defend my point in this case.
Before we get started, I will readily admit that the class of either conference is Texas by far. Barring a late collapse, the Longhorns will be a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament, due to their final record that will have no more than five losses, an RPI in the top seven and wins against Memphis, Villanova and West Virginia, who are all competing for No. 1 seeds themselves.
Texas has been fantastic since the back-to-back drubbings handed to them by Tennessee and Duke. P.J. Brown, in my humble opinion, should be Big 12 player of the year, because he is more consistently dominant and more important to his team than LaMarcus Aldridge or Daniel Gibson.
What makes the Missouri Valley so special is the unbelievable depth it currently has, an amazing thing for a mid-major conference.
The conference has five teams with RPIs in the top 38 teams in America while the Big 12 has only two, Texas and Oklahoma. Top 50 usually means a team has a chance to be selected for an at-large selection, meaning if the tournament started today, Wichita State, Southern Illinois, Northern Iowa, Missouri State and Creighton would all put on their dancing shoes.
The Big 12 would have only the aforementioned Longhorns and Sooners while Kansas, Colorado and Iowa State would be proverbial bubble teams with their RPIs between 45 and 59. In fact, the Missouri Valley has more teams in the RPI Top 40 than every conference but the Big East and Big Ten, the best conferences in America this season.
Also, the conference RPI sits at five, a spot ahead of the Big 12 who sits at six (admittedly, this fluctuates almost daily). The MVC had the fifth-best winning percentage in the non-league portion of the schedule, despite the fact not a single team in the league had a guarantee game at home.
Guarantee games are he BCS conference’s way of plumping up its winning percentage is by paying small schools to come get drilled.
Even Conference-USA requires its teams to have two guarantee games so it will help the conference’s RPI, which this season backfired on the league with C-USA’s RPI sitting at 14th. For the MVC teams, this lack of guaranteed wins means they took to the road, winning games at opponents’ buildings to build their impressive records.
No one personifies the conference better then the current co-leader Northern Iowa. The Panthers sit at 21-4 on the year and own an RPI of 14. They have won at current SEC leader, LSU, and beat the current Big Ten leader, Iowa.
The Panthers have been to the tournament the last two years and boast a starting line-up of four seniors, led by Ben Jacobson, a 6-3 senior shooting guard that was deemed too small for the major conferences. All Jacobson has done is be All-Valley first team twice, and he leads his team in scoring and assists with 14 and 4 in a balanced attack that sees four guys averaging in double figures.
The other conference leader, Creighton, has gotten by on toughness, guile and the unbelievable coaching of Dana Altman. In just his sixth game of the season, the BlueJays lost their do-everything senior Nate Funk for the season with a torn labrum. At the time, Funk was averaging 17 a game, and the loss that night left his team 7-4.
Funk’s previously missed five games prepared the team to play without him, but no one was ready for the 10 wins in an 11-game stretch that the Blue Jays pulled off to get to 17-5 and 11-3 in the MVC.
Only two players average in double figures for a team that routinely plays 10 guys, and Altman has his team playing incredible defense without its star.
Missouri State is led by the conference’s leading scorer, Blake Ahearn, but needs to get some big wins down the stretch to give the Valley a chance at five NCAA squads because their RPI of 38 lacks marquee wins. Southern Illinois plays the best defense in the country. This is so definitive, it isn’t even an opinion anymore.
The Salukis, who are the first mid-major in history to have gotten at-large NCAA bids four years in a row, have shot under 30 percent twice this season in wins (simply amazing) and allow only 56.3 points per game.
Wichita State completes the tourney hopefuls with a 19-6 record and an RPI of 24. The Shockers are led by the inside tandem of Paul Miller and Kyle Wilson, who combined for 40 points and 15 rebounds in their recent nationally-televised double overtime win over SIU.
That, my friends, is the biggest problem with this argument. The Big 12 is automatically assumed to be better because its teams are on TV, and it has traditionally been good. At any time someone can turn on the TV and watch a Colorado or Iowa State highlight because they have been ranked despite being inferior to their MVC brethren.
So far, I have used technical data to prove the Missouri Valley superiority, but the eye test backs me up. Take the time to watch the best of the Valley play, and you will see a superior product than every Big 12 game, save for the Texas-Oklahoma battles.
Once the tourney begins, America will see what the computer formulas already know – the Missouri Valley conference plays better basketball than the Big 12.
