Bilas was on Mike and Mike on ESPN2 and had this to say:
Apparently after Kentucky's 41 point loss at Vanderbilt they rose 8 spots in the RPI. (Yes he realizes it doesn't take score as a factor.)
Bilas went on to say the highest RPI not making the tourny was Dayton at 32. Kentucky made it with an RPI of 57. Said the fact that there is a 25 spot difference and the better RPI was out proves the RPI is useless.
Yeah, the commitee says they don't look at RPI as a deciding force, use it more as a tool....but when asked why Arizona St didn't make it one commitee member said their RPI was to high (83). RPI may be high but they beat arizona twice and finished higher then them in conference, they also beat stanford.
RPI is a joke, Marquette was 18 and probably would have gotten a 7 or 8 seed had they not beat ND.
Actually I beleive Mu may have been higher seeded if not for the fact that 8 BE teams made it. All the teams were in the 3-4-5-6 range and the commitee had to adjust to make sure they would not play right away. Putting them all 4 and 5 would have assured second round matchups. Therfore some got moved to 6's or 3's. And who cares there is really nothing different than a 4-5-6 seed, the 4 will get a 13 but a 6 benefits by possibly getting a weaker 2 seed in the sweet 16. You do not sneak thru the NCAA's be prepared to beat 4 very good to great teams to make the Final 4 or dont bother showing up.
Georgia winning the SEC tourney also shuffled a lot of seeds around as well.
Also, Nova getting a 12 seed eliminated any shot of MU getting a 4 or more likely a 5. With ND, Pitt and UConn as 5s and 4s, there would have been one 4 or 5 left for MU, but Nova getting in as a 12 made that impossible. You could argue that MU, by virtue of beating ND 2 of 3 times and having a higher RPI deserved NDs 5. I certainly think so. :P