Will Davidson Make the Tournament?

Everyone wants to see Stephen Curry in the NCAA college basketball tournament. But his Davidson Wildcats lost in the semifinals of the SoCon conference over the weekend and appear headed for the NIT. Is there a chance they can get an at-large bid to the big dance?

There is absolutely no way that Davidson is making tournament and getting an at-large bid. If they do, it’s for one reason, and one reason only: Stephen Curry.

Let me explain why Davidson won’t make it.

Yes, Davidson won the SoCon conference by 3 games, but truth be told, the SoCon conference sucked this season. The conference was the 21st ranked conference in the nation in terms of RPI, so winning this conference means virtually nothing in terms of being one of the 34 at large bids.

Second, Davidson’s RPI is only 69. Now that is in large part due to the 20 games they have to play against the 21st ranked conference, but they had plenty of opportunities to get that RPI below 50 had they knocked off a few of the top teams they played earlier in the season. Davidson played 8 RPI Top-100 teams this season and only went 2-6 against them. Their single impressive win was against West Virginia, a team that is not ranked in the polls and was playing without their second-best player (Alex Ruoff), and Joe Mazzulla (a top player and point guard) was hurt and only played 6 minutes. Thus, Davidson really has no impressive wins, as their sole Top 50 win appears to be tainted.

Davidson’s only hope is that a lot of good teams go bad over the next few days, as well as the hope that no long shots make the tournament by virtue of stealing any automatic bids. Nevertheless, even a few instances of that would not be enough, as it would take a miracle for Davidson to move all the way up the needed 19 spots in the RPI rankings that Davidson would need to be considered for post-season play.

As a result of all of this, I can’t put Davidson down for the tournament. I would love to see him work his magic in the tournament again too, but the fact is that this team isn’t as good as last year’s, and that has shown on the court. So goodbye to Curry, as we have probably seen him play in the college basketball spotlight for the last time. He’ll be NIT bound, which isn’t all that bad for those of us living in New York City!

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