One of these teams is a big name nationally. The other is better known for some of the guys who have coached there.
Neither belongs within hailing distance of an at-large berth, as this chart illustrates:
| Team A |
Category | Team B |
| 16-6 | W-L | 15-5 |
| 73 | RPI | 74 |
| 0-0 | T25 | 0-3 |
| 0-4 | T50 | 0-3 |
| 1-4 | T100 | 3-4 |
| 7-0 | 200+ | 6-0 |
| 7-2 | Road | 4-2 |
| 8-4 | R+N | 4-3 |
| 130 | SOS | 131 |
| 8-3 | Conference |
5-1 |
| St. Peter's (142) @Canisius (189) |
100+ losses |
@UMass (192) |
So, yeah, two decent enough teams with severe deficiencies in their resumes. Neither is a tournament team unless it wins its league.
The record, RPI, top-50 performance, 200+ performance and strength of schedule are nearly identical. Team B has a couple more top-100 victories, but those victories include Oakland and IUPUI. Those are good teams, but they're not going to stand out to anyone.
Both teams have bad road losses, but for the most part have done well away from home. Team A does have an extra dubious loss, and it came at home, no less. (It should be noted St. Peter's just gave Siena a nice run last night).
So if you had to choose, you'd probably take Team B based on a couple extra moderately decent victories and one less loss against a team outside the top 100.
But you wouldn't have to choose, because both teams would be in the NIT bargain bit pretty quickly.
So who are they? Scroll on down.
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Team A is ...
(IONA)
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And Team B ...
(MEMPHIS)
Nice, huh?
Look, there's nothing wrong with the Tigers scuffling along. If the NBA raided a good portion of your projected roster and your former coach took most of his good recruits with him to his next job, you wouldn't expect to be all that great. Josh Pastner is to be commended for holding things together.
That said, the best thing on Memphis' resume is close losses to Kansas and Tennessee. And as my high school orchestra teacher always said, close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.
In short, someone will float Memphis as an at-large possibility when it gets to 22 wins or so. But unless the Tigers run the table in the regular season (with two defeats of UAB and one of Gonzaga), the only way they're reaching the field of 65 is with a perfect week at the Conference USA tournament.
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