Or look at Arizona this season. It had a 19-11 record because of a brutal performance against a brutal nonconference schedule — 1-6 against teams ranked in the top 20 in RPI, including two losses at home.

If playing and losing to great teams counted for something, then the Southwestern Athletic Conference would send a bunch of teams to the tournament for going a Division-I worst 8-75 (.096) against the toughest nonconference schedule in the country.

There’s nothing wrong with scheduling one or two games against elite teams to get a little jolt in your RPI, especially on the off-chance you win, as Northern Iowa (RPI: 25) did against top-15 RPI-ranked Iowa and LSU. But Missouri State got its MVC-best RPI of 21 with a nonconference schedule that featured only one top-50 team, Arkansas, against which it lost. But an 8-0 nonconference record against a schedule with only one team (Wisconsin-Milwaukee) with an RPI greater than 101 more than made up for it.

Which brings us to the third key, which is dominating the dregs.

If beating elite teams, in your conference or out, guaranteed an NCAA tournament berth, then Florida State still wouldn’t still be on the bubble after beating Maryland and Duke. However, it sandwiched those wins with a loss to ACC bottom-feeder Virginia Tech, which shows what makes a bubble team, a bubble team — losses to bad teams.

Wichita State (RPI: 28), the MVC’s regular-season champion, is on its third straight 20-plus win season in which it lost in the conference tournament. In each year, Wichita State had a .500 record against teams with an RPI ranking of 100 or greater. But this season, the Shockers went 15-0 against teams with RPIs of 101 or worse, and is a lock to get into the tournament. In 2005, they were 14-3, and in 2004, they were 14-4, and each year they were NIT-bound.

Meanwhile, Missouri State this year was also 15-0 against teams rated 101 or worse, while Northern Iowa was 12-1. Creighton was omitted because it lost two games to such cellar-dwellers, and Southern Illinois likely couldn’t have gotten in without winning the conference tournament (boosting its RPI to 31) because it lost four.

In the Washington Post article about the MVC’s success, Houston coach Tom Penders bitterly chided: “What is RPI, garbage in and garbage out?

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How do you build RPI, go out and play no one? ... If teams are rewarded for playing no one in the computers, then we should all do that.”

Penders is upset because his Cougars are 19-8, yet with an RPI of 58 probably need to win the Conference USA tourney to get into the NCAAs.

Houston’s RPI went up with wins over Louisiana State and Arizona, but it got killed by a home loss to No. 191 Central Florida and a road loss to No. 201 Rice, not to mention a road loss to No. 96 UNLV. California, at 18-9, wouldn’t be a bubble team if it hadn’t lost to No. 166 Arizona State and No. 181 Oregon State at home, and No. 304 (out of 334) Eastern Michigan at the Eagles’ not-especially-unfriendly confines.

The reason the Mountain West might not send more than one team this year, despite a nonconference winning percentage of .612, is because its regular season champion, 21-8 San Diego State, was only 6-5 in nonconference play (not counting two non-Division I wins, which don’t count toward RPI), including a measly 6-4 against teams 101 or below.

Second-place Air Force lost two games to similarly ranked teams, while Brigham Young lost three. (For the same reason, the Mountain West failed to send more than one team in 2001 despite a .600-plus winning percentage, the last time a team breaking that barrier has failed to send multiple teams.)

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