Travel back in your mind to how we all felt the night of January 29th. 7-0 Liberty and 7-0 Lipscomb met in Lynchburg in one of the most anticipated regular season games in school history. The Flames were blitzed pretty much from the onset, falling behind by as much as 29 before losing by 20. We all felt the likelihood of Liberty winning the ASUN regular season title, ensuring an automatic bid to the NIT at the worst, and clinching home court advantage through the ASUN Tournament was virtually zero.
It didn’t look like Lipscomb would lose again, maybe once to Liberty in the rematch, and the Flames had to win out just to force a tie. Oh well, let’s just ensure the 2-seed.
Then, the Flames got the upset win in Nashville over the Bisons and we all got a renewed sense of optimism.
But we still knew it would be an uphill battle. If both teams finished tied for first place at 15-1, the tiebreaker would go to the NET Rankings. Following the win at Lipscomb, Liberty was still 16 spots behind the Bisons in that metric. That’s a lot of ground to make up in the final 4 regular season games.
Again, we thought best case scenario was for the 2-seed. If you’re like me, you started planning how you could get to Nashville for the ASUN Championship game provided both the Flames and Bisons advanced that far.
Then came Wednesday night. FGCU provided the upset, as 11-point underdogs, that we wanted so bad. Now, Liberty controls its own destiny for the program’s 3rd ever regular season title, NIT automatic bid as a consolation prize, and clinching home court advantage through the ASUN Tournament.
At 12-1, Liberty has just 3 games remaining in the regular season, but their path won’t be easy.
The Flames first test comes Saturday at North Florida. The Ospreys provided Liberty its first true challenge of ASUN play on January 19th in the Vines Center. The Flames trailed throughout much of the first half, by as many as 8, and the game was tied with just 5 minutes to play before Liberty pulled out a 6-point win. That began a 6 game losing streak for UNF, but they have rebounded to win 4 in a row entering Saturday’s contest. At 7-7 in ASUN play, the Ospreys have their eyes set on 3rd place in the jumbled middle part of the league standings.
Senior night for Liberty is Tuesday against 2-11 Kennesaw State. The season finale is on March 1st at NJIT. At 7-6, the Highlanders are currently sitting alone in 3rd place.
If the Flames win out, it’s simple, they win the regular season outright at 15-1, clinching home court throughout the ASUN Tourney and ensuring at least an NIT appearance.
If Liberty slips and goes 2-1, it gets dicey.
Lipscomb, currently at 12-2, has just 2 regular season games remaining – a home game Tuesday against NJIT and a trip to North Alabama on March 1st.
If they win both of those, Liberty finishes 2-1, both teams will finish in a tie at 14-2. The tiebreaker formula is as follows:
- Head-to-head
- Compare the tied teams’ win-loss percentage vs. the top ranked team not involved in the tie, or teams as a group if they finished tied in the regular season standings, descending to the next highest placed team (or teams should they be tied), until the tie is broken.
NET Rankings would only come in to play if a tie remains after these steps.
Since the teams’ split the head-to-head matchups, we would use criterion 2.
With Lipscomb’s loss to FGCU, we become fans of the Eagles. If they finish 3rd, for example, the Flames would win the tiebreaker because FGCU would be the first team used to try to break the tie under criterion 2 and Lipscomb was 1-1 while the Flames went 2-0.
NJIT, UNF, and FGCU are all separated by just a half a game currently. Things get complicated if trying to use these teams to break the tie if they end up in a multi-team tie for 3rd. So, Liberty, let’s just win out and make it easy.
