57-45 with 1:10 left. Hall and Trpcic have already taken a bow.

Announcer says it's unknown if the seniors will return now but the academic logistics may play a role

Actually getting dicey and now Hall and Trpcic are back in

62-53 final. Cal Poly is good.

I'll take it. Undefeated in league play headed to HI.

Irvine split their series with UCSD, so they fall back another half game.

Just need to hope next weeks games happen. I feel pretty confident we'll at least win one down there. We've got one loss coming for the adjusted standings so splitting with Hawaii puts us at 9-2 (81.8 winning percentage). Irvine beating LB twice puts them at 12-3 (80.0 winning percentage).

If both games get cancelled we're screwed unless LB turns their season around. We'd be 8-3 (72.7 winning percentage) and a Irvine split puts them at 11-4 (73.3 winning percentage). Both sets of games getting cancelled would also give Irvine the title (8-3 for us vs 10-3 for them).

So basically hope there aren't any Covid issues and we'll win the regular season title unless we crap the bed twice. And while we'd obviously like to win the regular season title, if for some reason we do finish second, there doesn't appear to be any opponent benefit to 1st vs 2nd. UCSD (5-8, 7th) and UCR (5-9, 8th) seem pretty similar. LB seemed like the clear 3rd a couple weeks ago but they've lost 6 straight so shouldn't be a huge deal playing them.

That being said, hope they get the games in and take another title.

those don’t count, do they? That’s the case on the men’s side

Someone on the Irvine forum was saying that the women's games do count--I don't know for sure one way or the other. The conference standings on the BW website show UCI's conference record as 10-3 now, so it looks like they count?

cmt, I'd rather see the Aggies take both games. :D

Irvine thread seems to think they're mathematically alive for the 1-seed but the title is most likely going to Davis.

There's a noticeable lack of information about chasing the five peat in the UCD website writeups and recaps I've seen. Also the KDVS commentator vaguely said "the Ags still don't know what seed they're going to get" during a discussion of the adjusted W/L system, again without mentioning title hopes. It's all a bit uncertain and weird and sounds very much in the air whether the Aggies will be called the champions this year regardless of wins.

Don't get me wrong, I'm thankful to have a season at all and that this great group of players got to play together safely for a dozen more games. But I think there should be a little bit of justified outrage if this team finishes with the best win percentage in conference (and especially if they finish undefeated) but get the streak taken away from them due to a conference formula that specifically penalizes them for following local health restrictions.

I can’t find the “tie breaker” rules on the Big West site - can someone provide a link on this situation?

Also - Hawai’i hasn’t had an on-island cancellation in BW. I think the men will actually be the only team not to have had a COVID cancellation in BW play?

https://bigwest.org/documents/2021/2/12//2020_21_BWC_Manual_Section_7_Womens_Basketball_1_15_21.pdf?id=4566

It's on page 28. Inspection reveals the procedures are the same for Men and Women.

I get that this setup seems very fair in abstract, but it was written (especially on the women's side) in the context of being perfectly aware that their top-ranked team was in the middle of a required hold (these rules were dated January). So this rule section is basically just a roundabout way of formalizing how much they'd penalize Davis, the most likely team to not meet the threshold, in the event the Ags returned and started going on a rampage -- which is what happened on the Women's side and starting to look like is happening on the Men's side.

Irvine does still have a chance, it just requires us to either have both games canceled or lose the games that are played. When I ran the numbers a couple weeks ago, if no games were cancelled (so the max number was played the rest of the way), the average is 15 games. So teams that have played more than four games less than that average would have losses added to reach that minimum number. So the minimum number is 11 games. We’re 8-0 with two games left so we’ve got 1 loss for sure being added. Irvine can get to 12-3 (.800 winning percentage). Us adding one more loss (either via actually losing or having a game cancelled) puts us at 9-2 (.818 winning percentage). So if the games get played, we’d have to lose both for Irvine to pass us. That’s why we just need the games to be played. If they get cancelled, we’d be at 8-3 and then Irvine would only need to win 1 to get the 1 seed.

Shorter version: Irvine can catch us but it probably requires both of our games to be cancelled for it to happen because Hawaii isn’t beating us twice. So win Friday and celebrate.

Thanks for the great analysis! That does seem very hopeful. So if Aggies get on the plane at all we're in good shape sounds like.

Still don't like this system. It has the potential for punishment against teams that did nothing wrong; for example if Irvine had a slightly better record and was our final opponent they could game the system by not making the trip out of "an abundance of caution" and then have it hurt our record worse than theirs -- effectively getting away with a forfeit that counts against the other team's record.

I don't think any team would do that in this conference, but the rules should be crafted to explicitly discourage or render obsolete that kind of gamesmanship