Conference USA this season has "adopted a 'pod' scheduling format that will pit the best teams against one another for the final four games" in an effort to "boost its post-season chances," according to Ed Miller of the Norfok VIRGINIAN-PILOT. The new format "should be interesting," with teams "not knowing who they’ll play until the league is divided into three groups after 14 games." The idea is to "prevent the league’s top teams from hurting their power rankings by having to play bottom feeders that have annually ranked 300 or worse in RPI" (Norfolk VIRGINIAN-PILOT, 11/6). In N.Y., Victor Mather notes C-USA's format shift is "part of a new, innovative approach designed to finally get the conference an elusive second NCAA Tournament bid." C-USA teams in the last four years "have knocked off two, three, four and five seeds," but for the "last six years it has earned just a single bid annually." C-USA Commissioner Judy MacLeod said, “The knock on our teams has been you don’t have enough top 50 wins, top 100. Well, we don’t have an opportunity to play those opponents.” MacLeod: “How can we take our own schedule and make sure our better teams are playing our better teams?” Mather notes the new scheduling "may help the teams that do make the NCAA Tournament get better seeding as well" after the "last four teams to make the tournament from the conference were seeded 12th to 15th." In the end, only four games for each team "will be affected by the new schedule." But MacLeod believes that "might be enough to make a difference" (N.Y. TIMES, 11/6).
Marshall was C-USA's lone bid to last year's NCAA Tournament, advancing to the Round of 32getty images
