The value of the ranking services

In a year like this, it is nice to be able to compare ourselves to other teams vicariously. How good are we? Who knows. We are one of the better teams in the Sun Belt, but what does that mean, considering that the Belt is the 18th ranked conference? By this time in the year, though Sagarin and RPI have enough data to compare the relative strengths of teams fairly accurately. So, we can say that we could go head to head with such teams as Arizona State, Georgia Tech and Ohio State, and it would be a good ballgame. Yes, even with Fayetteville. So, that is nice to know. Even if we were to make the NCAA tournament, we may only be there for one game, and that is not enough to know how we would fare against better competition week in and week out. But the ranking services give us an idea how we would do.