Husky Men's Basketball Blog

It may be insane to even worry about RPI this time of year, but with no game until Saturday there's some down time here, so figured this is worth some discussion.

After Saturday's loss to Pitt, UW is at 179 in the RPI and the Huskies have little oppportunity any time soon to improve that number.

UW's next three games are at home against Portland, Portland State and Cal State-Northridge, which all loom as fairly easy wins, but not likely to help the RPI much.

Then comes what may be UW's most critical game of the season, a Dec. 29 date at LSU. Other than a Dec. 31 home game against Idaho State, that will be UW's last non-conference game of the season.

It was thought that due to the strength of the conference that this would be a year when a Pac-10 team might finally get an invite to the NCAA Tournament with less than a winning conference record, something that has never happened.

But if UW doesn't beat LSU, even if it went 10-8 in Pac-10 play --- to date, the minimum needed to get an invite out of the Pac-10 --- it would have 13 overall losses and no quality non-conference wins.

Seems like an awful lot to ask to get an invitation --- in fact, no Pac-10 team has ever been invited to the NCAA Tournament with that many total losses.

All of which means that if UW wants to get to the NCAA Tournament this year, it has to beat LSU and probably win at least 10 conference games. Otherwise, it may have to do even better in Pac-10 play, such as 11 or 12 wins and a top five finish, which obviously won't be easy with the Pac-10 as strong as it is; or win the conference tournament.

All of which also means that Saturday's loss, and that .1 second too early that the game ended for the Huskies, might have been a fateful blow.