{"id":28686,"date":"2024-03-15T13:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-03-15T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/heres-a-look-at-why-fort-lewis-didnt-get-top-seed-in-south-central-region\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T06:37:00","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T06:37:00","slug":"heres-a-look-at-why-fort-lewis-didnt-get-top-seed-in-south-central-region","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/heres-a-look-at-why-fort-lewis-didnt-get-top-seed-in-south-central-region\/","title":{"rendered":"Here\u2019s a look at why Fort Lewis didn\u2019t get top seed in South Central region"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Fort
Fort Lewis College celebrates its Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference tournament championship win on Saturday, March 9, 2024, against Colorado Mesa University in Grand Junction. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald)<\/span>Jerry McBride<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

For the second year in a row, the Fort Lewis men\u2019s basketball team won\u2019t host its regional tournament after having great seasons to the chagrin of the Skyhawks fan base.<\/p>\n

The Skyhawks finished 28-3 overall and 20-2 in the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference. They won the RMAC tournament title as well.<\/p>\n

However, the selection committee awarded the top seed to West Texas A&M for the second straight season, even though the Buffaloes finished 26-4 overall and losing three of its last four games.<\/p>\n

To gain more insight, the Durango Herald<\/em> spoke with Philip Myers, a Division II basketball bracketologist who runs inkblotsports.com. That website posts data on Division II men\u2019s and women\u2019s basketball teams.<\/p>\n

In Myers\u2019 final bracket before the selection show, he had West Texas A&M as the South Central region\u2019s top seed.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I was looking at it, I did not see any specific reason not to just go with the team that is No. 1 in both of the metrics,\u201d Myers said.<\/p>\n

The metrics Myers was referencing were RPI (rating percentage index and PI (performance index). These two metrics are what the committee relies upon the most, he said.<\/p>\n

West Texas A&M barely beat out Fort Lewis in RPI with an rating of .621. The Skyhawks have an RPI of .620. In performance index, West Texas A&M was first in the region with a rating of 32.767, and Fort Lewis\u2019 was second with a 32.621.<\/p>\n

Both metrics have different calculations, according to Myers, but both are based on the team\u2019s wins and losses, opponents\u2019 wins and losses, among other things.<\/p>\n

\u201cPerformance indicator tends to end up with more weight on actual wins and losses than RPI,\u201d Myers said. \u201cRPI ends up with more weight on strength of schedule.\u201d<\/p>\n

Strength of schedule is an area where the Skyhawks are lacking compared to West Texas A&M. Fort Lewis finished seventh in the South Central region with an SOS of .528, while West Texas A&M finished third in the region with an SOS of .544.<\/p>\n

The Lone Star Conference also helped West Texas A&M because in the South Central Region, which features the RMAC and Lone Star Conference, 10 of the top 15 teams in RPI were from the Lone Star Conference. Therefore, West Texas A&M had a chance for more high-quality wins to help its RPI compared to Fort Lewis.<\/p>\n

Myers also noted how a team finishes its season does not factor into the selection committee\u2019s process.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you\u2019ve got a program like that, they\u2019re going to be near the top every year and it might take almost a perfect season to be able to reach the top spot in front of them,\u201d Myers said about West Texas A&M. \u201cFort Lewis has come really close these last couple of years, and I think this year, definitely 27-2 would have been good enough.\u201d<\/p>\n

Myers also reiterated that if Fort Lewis hadn\u2019t lost against UCCS on Jan. 12, the Skyhawks would be hosting. UCCS is 21st in RPI in the South Central region. West Texas A&M\u2019s worst loss was against St. Edward\u2019s, which is 13th in RPI in the region.<\/p>\n

bkelly@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Skyhawks received the second seed; West Texas A&M received the top seed<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28687,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[600,992,132,28,991,346],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-28686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-basketball","tag-college-sports","tag-fort-lewis-college","tag-headlines","tag-mens-college-sports","tag-sports"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28686"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28686\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":80497,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28686\/revisions\/80497"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28686"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=28686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}