The College Basketball Blog: 2012 CBI Predictions

2012 College Basketball Invitational (CBI) Predictions

This was the original additional postseason tournament and is now in its 5^th year. The CBI is a 16-team tournament, with all games played at home sites. Again, location and availability often seem to trump record/ranking when it comes to seeding and home court advantage. The CBI differs from the CIT in that it is not totally devoid of teams from BCS conferences, and usually has more teams from high-major conferences.

If the CIT’s (rather unfortunate) identifiable quirk is that future matchups are determined at the end of each round, the CBI’s “trademark” is the final “series.” Instead of having 1 national final, the two finalists play a best-of-three series, in a home-away-home format. Obviously, if either team goes up 2-0 the series is over. This is an interesting twist that is virtually unique to college basketball, and it helps to lessen the home court advantage (although obviously one team will have the advantage in a potential rubber match to decide the series).

The good thing about the CBI is that, as opposed to the CIT, there is something like a bracket from the start. The 16 teams are split into 4 regions and those regions play out through 2 rounds until there are 4 national semifinalists. For the first 3 years, teams were seeded within each region. Unfortunately, the last couple of years the seeding hasn’t been given, so I do have to guess a bit to determine the location of the 2^nd round games.

Once the semifinals are set the teams are reseeded and I’ll have to guess on this as well. I’ll also have to guess home court advantage for my finals matchup. In addition, I have added titles to each region just to make things easier. Here are my picks.

First Round

Midwest

#1 Oregon State over #4 Western Illinois

#2 TCU over #3 Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Northeast

#1 Pennsylvania over #4 Quinnipiac

#2 Butler over #3 Delaware

West

#1 Wyoming over #4 North Dakota State

#2 San Francisco over #3 Washington State

East

#1 Pittsburgh over #4 Wofford

#3 Princeton over #2 Evansville

Second Round

Midwest

#1 Oregon State over #2 TCU

Northeast

#2 Butler over #1 Pennsylvania

West

#1 Wyoming over #2 San Francisco

East

#1 Pittsburgh over #3 Princeton

Semifinals

#1 Pittsburgh over #4 Butler

#2 Wyoming over #3 Oregon State

Finals

#1 Pittsburgh over #2 Wyoming (2-1)

So those are my predictions for the 2012 CBI. Here’s a list of the conferences represented in this year’s CBI (ranked by conference RPI ranking), along with the teams from each conference (RPI listed for each team in parenthesis). That list is followed by this year’s CBI field of 16, listed by RPI rank.

2012 CBI Conference Breakdown

#2 Big East (1) [Pitt (95)]

#5 MWC (2) [Wyoming (82); TCU (113)]

#8 MVC (1) [Evansville (132)]

#10 Pac-12 (2) [Oregon State (131); Washington State (184)]

#11 WCC (1) [San Francisco (134)]

#13 Ivy (2) [Princeton (88); Penn (98)]

#14 Horizon (2) [Butler (114); Wis-Mil (125)]

#15 CAA (1) [Delaware (152)]

#16 Summit (2) [Western Illinois (153); North Dakota State (181)]

#23 Southern (1) [Wofford (179)]

#25 NEC (1) [Quinnipiac (154)]

2012 CBI Field-of-16 by RPI Ranking

#82 Wyoming

#88 Princeton

#95 Pittsburgh

#98 Pennsylvania

#113 TCU

#114 Butler

#125 Wisconsin-Milwaukee

#131 Oregon State

#132 Evansville

#134 South Florida

#152 Delaware

#153 Western Illinois

#154 Quinnipiac

#179 Wofford

#181 North Dakota State

#184 Washington State