Happy V-Day, Cougars: Love KU

Kansas gave BYU a nice Valentine's Day gift today: they lost.  So BYU should more than likely wake up tomorrow morning as the #1 team in the land.  In RPI.  The Jayhawk loss should probably hurt them more than playing a road game against a top-50 RPI opponent will help them.  The Cougars started the day .0037 points behind KU and .0045 ahead of #3 Georgetown.  If BYU does move to #1, they should probably remain perched there until their game at TCU on Saturday hurts their Strength of Schedule, win or lose, and they drop to 2 or 3.  Though if Georgetown wins at Connecticut on Wednesday, they may jump the Cougars on Thursday morning.

BYU was also helped by a Mississippi Valley State win tonight.  Hawaii also leads Nevada by 5 at halftime.  Those are two of BYU's worst RPI opponents, so any win they get is gravy.  As BYU's opponents win, it helps their RPI.  Also helping the Cougars is this little factoid: BYU played, and beat, 5 teams currently on top of their conference standings, including 3 ranked teams (Arizona, Utah State, and Saint Mary's).  That may not be as impressive as a run through the Big East gauntlet, but how many top 10 teams can say they have played and beaten 5 (potential) conference champions (6, if you count SDSU)?  The correct answer is 0.  The most I could find was, surprisingly enough, SDSU's 3 wins over teams currently leading their conferences.