Basketball Tiebreaking Procedures

The league released the tie-breaking scenarios for the league’s basketball tournament.

The following is from the conference:

Ties in winning percentage, and thus for seeding positions shall be broken according to the following:

1. Between TWO teams
   a. Head to head
   b. If still tied, compare records versus teams with highest winning percentage in Conference play and descending order until tie is broken. When arriving at a set of tied teams (i.e., winning percentage) while comparing records, use each team's record versus the COLLECTIVE tied teams as a group (prior to that group’s own tiebreaking process).
   c. If tie remains, seeding will be based upon the most recent RPI standings.
2. Between THREE or more teams
   a. Conduct a mini round robin among the tied teams. Team with the highest winning percentage will receive the higher seed (#).
   b. If a three-way tie still exists after conducting the round robin, follow Step 1b, then Step 1c if needed. If at any point the number of teams tied reduces to two, steps 1 a-c are followed.

(#) When comparing records against single teams or groups of teams, the highest winning
percentage prevails, even if the number of games played is unequal.

If WKU beats Middle this week we will have to consult the above. Right now the way this reads, WKU will have the tiebreaker because of the win over Marshall and Middle’s loss to the Herd. If UTSA were to climb above Marshall, then Middle would be the first seed thanks to their win and WKU’s loss in San Antonio.

There is still a ton of basketball to be played, so we will refrain from discussing this too much at the moment. The biggest seeding tiebreaker at the moment is easy to determine: Marshall lost to UTSA on the road and so will lose any tiebreaker if they tie with UTSA. The Roadrunners will need any advantage they can get after losing future league Freshman of the year Jhivvan Jackson.