With just over a month left in the regular season, its time to really start considering where our teams stand in the RPI. As a whole, the conference has been in a jousting match with the Atlantic 10 for the title of 8th best conference in the land. As it stands today, Conference USA holds that title. Individually, teams have already begun to make their moves. The only problem is that some of those moves were made in the wrong direction.
Its time. Now, it's survival of the fittest. Our teams up top need to make a push, and pick up as many wins as they can. What happens to the rest, well it happens. From now on, I will go ahead and give the RPI rankings from three different sites; Realtimerpi.com, ESPN's InsideRPI, and CBS Sports RPI. That will give us multiple points of view on where our teams stand. Here are this week's Conference USA RPI rankings.
| Team | ESPN RPI | RealTimeRPI | CBS Sports RPI |
|---|---|---|---|
| Memphis Tigers | 44 | 44 | 42 |
| UAB Blazers | 53 | 52 | 53 |
| UTEP Miners | 60 | 64 | 59 |
| Central Florida Knights | 61 | 65 | 63 |
| Marshall Thundering Herd | 77 | 75 | 75 |
| Southern Miss. Golden Eagles | 85 | 76 | 76 |
| Tulsa Golden Hurricane | 113 | 112 | 113 |
| East Carolina Pirates | 110 | 114 | 114 |
| Rice Owls | 163 | 162 | 154 |
| Houston Cougars | 181 | 180 | 178 |
| Tulane Green Wave | 218 | 220 | 218 |
| SMU Mustangs | 247 | 266 | 264 |
Two things of note here. Memphis made the best jump over the last week jumping over 30 spots from no. 77 into the low to mid 40s. While UCF took the hardest fall. They continued their skid, losing both their games last week to take it to 4 in a row. The Knights dropped over 40 spots from no. 21 into the mid 60s. Southern Miss, Marshall, Tulsa, and Houston joined the Knights in moving the wrong direction. While UTEP, ECU, Rice, Tulane, and SMU all made moves for the better.
One thing is for sure. Our conference is pretty solid from top to bottom. Its not bad to have your worst team somewhere around 250. If Tulsa and ECU can join the top 6 in the top 100, that would be huge for the conference. Eight teams in the top 100 RPI would be amazing. The only way to do it, just keep winning. This is great for the conference, and hopefully it continues to get better.