Rule 3: All St John's games are either gimmes, must wins, or must win gimmes.
If this is considered a road game it is worth as much in the RPI as a home win over Duke. SJU has to win one of the games this week or they will have dig a very deep hole and are likely out of NCAA tournament contention.
Someone said that this wasn't a road game. Hopefully that's incorrect and we come away with a convincing win.
The RPI used to count our holiday tournament games at MSG as neutral court games but that changed a few years ago. I hope it's the same for the Grand Canyon game given the proximity to their campus.
It depends on if it is part of the Grand Canyon season ticket package. If it is, this is a road game. If not, it's neutral.
Now, if the RPI considers it neutral, some of the other rankings (like KenPom and Sagarin) will at least consider it "semi-road", since it's still in Grand Canyon's market, so those rankings will be friendlier to us either way. The game against Central Florida worked the same way.
Thanks for the explanation. That seems like a very arbitrary method for determining whether a game should be counted as a home game or not. The St. John's game is not part of the GCU season package. So they will have 10k fans there 10 miles from their campus and we won't even get the huge away game boost in the RPI. And the game v. Iona is offered as part of at least our mini-package, so it will get us twice. Terrific.
The method the NCAA uses, is they look at games played there by a team. If it exceeds a certain percentage it is considered a home game. A BE Tourny game played by us at MSG is considered a home game for us because we play a lot of games there. Whereas if we played at Barcleys it would be a neutral game. GCU doesn't play there, hence the game is a neutral court.
I looked into it. Here is the official NCAA policy:
http://fs.ncaa.org/Docs/stats/ForSIDs/Policies.pdfSome sections are susceptible to multiple interpretations, such as the conference tournaments. It does allow the school to appeal for the determination of the contest to be changed for the RPI. I don't know if SJU has the type of talent in the athletic department to get that done, though.
Here are the relevant sections:
It's considered a home game for Team A if the site:
"Is in the same city or a reasonable distance within the metropolitan area of Team A, and its opponent, Team B is from outside the metropolitan area. "
However, the contest is considered a neutral-site contest for both teams if the site:
"Is at a venue other than Team A's and Team B's home venue and is hosted and organized by a third party."
This game hits both of those sections, but I'd argue that the proximity to the GCU campus and the disparity in fan support (10k v. <100) combined with GCU season ticket holders, students and alumni receiving discounted admission render this a home game for GCU.