A-10 Tourney Bids

At the request of a few others, I've taken a closer look at the Atlantic 10's tournament acceptance rate (for lack of a better term). For this little study, I compiled all the records of A-10 teams from 2002 - seven years and 90 teams - and looked at which ones made the NCAA, NIT and CBI basketball tournaments. All cited records are WITHOUT postseason games factored in. Let's get to the stats...

Teams in the NCAA - 17.78 percent (16/90)
Without automatic bids - 13.95 percent (12/86)

As a reference, the four automatic bid winners were 2008 Temple (21-12), 2007 George Washington (23-8), 2006 Xavier (21-11) and 2005 George Washington (22-7). GW 2007 probably played itself on to the bubble with its tournament run, but none of the four were considered tournament locks at the time, if I recall correctly.

This alone doesn't tell us much. It's not surprising that, as a whole, the A-10 doesn't get wide acceptance in the NCAAs, especially considering the bottom-feeders involved. For example, in the seven year time span, St. Bonaventure had an average season of 9-19 (overall record 62-136). Duquesne, Fordham and La Salle have not made ANY postseason tournament in the past seven years, and the Bonnies have only managed one NIT bid in 2002.

Like the other day's exercise, let's look at NCAA tournament rate filtered by win total:

27 wins - 100 percent (2/2 - Xavier 2008, St. Joe's 2004)
26 wins - 100 percent (1/1 - GW 2006)
25 wins - 100 percent (2/2 - Xavier 2002 and 2003)
24 wins - 100 percent (3/3 - Xavier 2007, Dayton 2003 and 2004)
23 wins - 75 percent (3/4 - GW's 2007 autobid, St. Joe's 2003 and Xavier 2004)
22 wins - 100 percent (1/1 - GW's 2005 autobid)
21 wins - 50 percent (3/6 - St. Joe's 2008, autobids by 2008 Temple and 2006 Xavier)
20 wins - 25 percent (1/4 - Richmond 2004)
19 wins - 0 percent (0/5)
18 wins - 0 percent (0/9)

Mirroring the results of the NCAA teams en masse, 25 wins seems to be the magic number, and even 24 overall wins has always gotten you to the dance in the past seven years. All eight teams were clearly at-large picks. The fact that only eight teams have even gotten to the 24-win plateau in seven years shows how unique the feat is. Therefore, it's not surprising that they've all made the NCAAs.

The first level a team didn't make it was at 23 wins, and George Washington needed an eight-game win streak, with the last three in Atlantic City, to earn an automatic bid. In the same year, UMass won 23 games and didn't make the NCAAs. A poor showing in the Atlantic 10 tournament is probably to blame, as they had an opening round loss to St. Louis. The only 22 win team is an autobid.

At 20 and 21 wins, things get dicey and seemingly random. St. Joe's 2008 team had three wins in Atlantic City, but still seem a bit weak on paper, as they lost to Temple in the finals and went 3-5 in their final eight A-10 games. Their only good out of conference came against Villanova, but they played Creighton and Gonzaga tough.

Richmond's 2004 selection came during a historic year, as it featured St. Joe's run at perfection with a team led by Jameer Nelson and Delonte West. While Richmond's overall record wasn't great, they did have wins against tournament teams Xavier and Kansas, and had a tough loss in the A-10 finals against Dayton at Dayton.

Just for kicks, here are the NIT percentages for various records:

23 wins - 100 percent (1/1 - UMass 2007)
22 wins - No applicable teams
21 wins - 100 percent (3/3 - 2008 for URI, Dayton and UMass)
20 wins - 66.67 percent (2/3 - Dayton 2002 and Charlotte 2008)
19 wins - 60 percent (3/5 - Richmond 2002, URI 2004 and St. Joe's 2005)
18 wins - 55.56 percent (5/9 - St. Joe's 2002, Rhode Island 2003, George Washington 2004, and St. Joe's and Charlotte in 2006)
17 wins - 50 percent (2/4 - Bonnies 2002, Temple 2006)
16 wins - 33.33 percent (2/6 - Temple 2005 and Richmond 2008, CBI tourney)
15 wins - 50 percent (3/6 - Temple in 2002, 2003 and 2004)
14 wins and below - None (0/37)

Most of the teams that did not qualify had overall records below .500, which is a criteria for the NIT. The NIT seems to reward reputation - how else to explain Temple's three berths with 15 wins? - but is otherwise fairly random once you hit 16+ wins and have a winning record. 21 wins seems to guarantee an NIT spot though.