NDSU’s men’s basketball team continues to rack up the wins at home, taking care of IUPUI last night 57-48, despite falling behind 9-2, you can watch highlights of the game here. With the win, the Bison moved back into a first place tie with SDSU at 11-3 in the Summit League, each with two games remaining, while Fort Wayne and Oral Roberts have faint hopes of making the top two. Here’s what everyone has left:
SDSU: 11-3 (Saturday vs Oral Roberts, next Saturday at USD)
NDSU: 11-3 (Saturday vs Fort Wayne, Thursday at Oral Roberts)
Fort Wayne: 8-5 (Saturday at NDSU, Thursday vs Omaha, next Saturday vs WIU)
Oral Roberts: 8-5 (Saturday at ORU, Thursday vs NDSU, next Sat. vs Denver)
It’s this simple, if NDSU and SDSU win on Saturday that means they will clinch no worse than the two seed for the Summit League Tournament, which is huge since that gives you the extra day off from the quarters to the semifinals. A win tomorrow for the Bison is anything but a foregone conclusion since the Mastodons are the hottest team in the league, winners of seven straight, they haven’t lost in a month, January 21st. I know I had a couple of people ask me about the tiebreaker procedure if the top two teams are tied, here it is straight from the Summit League:
Tiebreaker Procedures
Tiebreaker procedures shall be used ONLY to determine seeds for the League tournament. Regular season standings shall stand.
If there are multiple ties, the ties shall be broken in descending order. (i.e., a tie at the #1 position will be broken before any others).
Once a tie is broken using the procedures below, it shall remain broken for purposes of all future comparisons.
Two-team Tiebreaking Criteria. The following criteria should be applied (in order) to break ties between two teams:
Results of head-to-head competition between the two tied teams.
Comparison of each tied team’s record against the team occupying the highest position in the standings continuing down through the standings until a team gains an advantage.
When arriving at another group of tied teams while comparing records, use each team’s record against the collective tied teams as a group (prior to that group’s own tie-breaking procedure) rather than the performance against individual tied teams.
If a tie still cannot be broken after applying criteria (1), (2) and (3), it will be broken by comparing each tied team’s RPI (based upon the RPIratings.com Report issued on the morning following the last regular season League game).
Multiple-Team Tiebreaking Criteria. The following criteria should be applied to break ties between more than two teams:
Results of each tied team’s collective record against the other teams tied for the same position.
If multiple ties still remain, then each tied team’s record shall be compared to the team or group (if 2 or more are tied) occupying the highest position in the standings continuing down through the standings until a team gains an advantage.
If the above results in two teams remaining, the two-team tiebreaker is used.
If a tie involving three or more teams still cannot be broken after applying criteria (1) and (2), it will be broken by comparing each tied team’s RPI (based upon the RPIratings.com Report issued on the morning following the last regular season League game.)