You could ask yourself, what choice did the BE teams have but to schedule strong OOC resumes? Very high risk/reward as Higgens stated in the quote earlier. Well, the American is in the same position. It's new and there is certainly no reason to just assume it's going to be a great basketball league. The league cannot have so many teams with RPI's that high, or a league RPI of 8 is the result.
If a league can just get it's member teams in a position where say 7 or 8 out of 11 have RPI's below 50 when league play commences, you basically protect the RPI's of those highly regarded teams. In a sense, it allows you to game the RPI system among yourselves in league play. So you get a good % of your teams in. But then your league needs to demonstrate it's teams with those high RPI's really deserved them in the regular season, or not. If 5/6 BE teams all fail to get out of the round of 32, their whole season blows up in their face. They maintained high RPI's among their teams, but if they fail miserably in the postseason, it says your RPI's were not really accurate after all, apparently. They have to make noise this year. But what choice did they have? High risk/reward in scheduling OOC is required if they are to earn respect again. Well, it's the same with the American. The league cannot enter league play with that many real bad teams and expect to do that well on Selection Sunday. The NBE may fail in March, but they set up their member teams to get to March in the first place. Smart planning, even though ya gotta be good, and ya gotta be lucky. The NBE is probably both.
If seeing the league champ earn a 6 seed doesn't wake this conference up to the fact that you can't do it without improving the overall RPI of the league, then nothing will wake the conference up. As long as the damn RPI is so important, do whatever it takes to boost it. We simply cannot be an 8 at the end of the regular season. Do that every year, and our goose is cooked. Cooked very well done. That may happen to the NBE, they may fail this year. But it's likely they will continue to try and max out their RPI's in the manner described, fail this year or not. You've got to roll the dice and schedule schools you know will be huge victories as seen by the committee in March.
The league and it's member schools need to help themselves more if it wants better results come selection time. I don't blame the committee for concluding the American was a weak league or the NBE a strong league. RPI and SOS mean a great deal, whether they are true measures or not. If those are the measures used, then do what ya gotta do to boost RPI and SOS.
No reason the American can't do a whole lot better. The NBE succeeded following the "formula" described in the USA article I left a link to above. There is absolutely no reason the American cannot do the same. It has to if it wants to avoid being labeled a low Mid-Major. That's a ridiculous outcome, completely avoidable.
