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No. We are not getting a 7 seed or an 8 seed or a 9 seed under any circumstances.
The RPI was created as a formula to justify selecting almost exclusively large conference teams to backfill NCAA Tournament fields once the conference auto bids were decided. They didn't want to use the AP poll or other measures made by unregulated outsiders, so they had to come up with a system that was ostensibly fair. However, the RPI formula made no provision for the difficulty of playing games on the road. Some of the better thinkers at the Power conference schools figured out they could simply never play a non-conference road game ever again. So they started buying home games from non-con opponents.
The system got entirely out of whack, because the weakness of mediocre teams from P5 conferences was masked due to never playing on the road. Schools like Syracuse were especially cagey about refusing to play on the road. That was one of the reasons for the proliferation of upsets by 12 seeds (who were usually excellent teams that could never rise higher because they had to play top schools on the power conference team's home floor) over 5 seeds. The 5 seeds were very often the teams who had some home "upset" wins over the teams with big names in big conferences that looked great on paper. So in 2005 or so, the NCAA added a healthy bonus to the RPI formula for a game that was won on the road.
Once the road game benefit was added to the RPI, some teams figured out how to finesse the RPI formula to get great numbers without actually beating excellent teams. The MVC was perfect for this technique, because they were large enough to attract home games from good quality teams, they worked on building their strength of schedule as a group, and they would play (and often beat) mid-level P5 teams. The MVC had multi-bids for nine years from 1999 to 2007, averaging 2.44 bids per year.
To counteract this, the committee started adding footnotes, caveats, and new benchmarks to their analysis-- top 100 and top 50 wins, predictive and efficiency numbers, and now, four quadrants. The predictive and efficiency metrics (KenPom, BPI, Sagarin, etc.) use formulas looking at stats like field goal percentage, strength of schedule, margin of victory, defensive efficiency, etc. to try and counteract for RPI manipulation or luck. Every year, they're inventing new metrics to have handy in case they need them, like "Tournament Quality Wins." Missouri State (RPI of 21 in 2006), Hofstra (30 in 2006), Air Force (30 in 2007), and Illinois State last year (33), but 11 teams from the Old Big East got into the tournament in 2011, 8 from the Big East in 2013, 7 from the Big 10 in 2013, etc. Now that there are more than 10 teams in all the power conferences, they're starting to take a lot more schools as at large bids who finished BELOW .500 in conference.
When it gets down to it, however, it's all a giant contraption that tries to justify injustices, cover over for greed, fear and selfishness, and let everyone who's bullied the little guy sleep better at night. Without the system, the big money schools can pay coaches millions, can't pay to not play mid-level teams who fulfilled their ends of bargains, and can't have a Rube Goldberg excuse to believe they're entitled to it all in perpetuity.
So that's why we're going to get a 12 most probably, or maybe an 11 if the powers that be are sufficiently amused by our plucky little team.
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