Tuesday rooting guide plus a little travel discussion

So here's what we know going into tonight's games:

Total automatic bids given out: 9
Teams definitely below Penn: 3 (Belmont, Niagara, Eastern Kentucky)
Teams definitely above Penn: 5 (Winthrop, VCU, Creighton, Davidson, Gonzaga)

So Penn (ESPN RPI of 86) will not be playing in the play-in game, and will need loads of help to move further up then it is now, which is probably around the 13/14 line. Obviously, the Quakers need to win tonight to keep that hope alive.

Here's the rest of tonight's games with the Penn-centric rooting preferences:

Hampton vs. Howard, 6:30 and Bethune-Cookman vs. Coppin St., 9:00 -- these games in the MEAC are irrelevant, because even if top seed Delaware State wins the tournament, it will be seeded below Penn.

Montana vs. Northern Arizona, 7:00 and Portland St. vs. Weber St., 10:00 are also irrelevant, with Weber State, the top seed in the Big Sky, well behind Penn.

Oakland vs. Oral Roberts, 7:00, Mid-Continent final -- Root for Oakland (No. 122) to win, although if ORU (no. 93) wins, it still may not pass Penn, but we'd rather not take any chances.

North Texas vs. Arkansas State, 9:00, Sun Belt final -- Doesn't matter, either team will be well below Penn.

Butler vs. Wright State, 9:00, Horizon League final -- This one is tough. Wright State (no. 81) is ranked just above Penn right now, and Butler is way ahead of the Quakers. I suppose that you should root for WSU because if it gets in, there is a chance that it can be below Penn, while if Butler wins, Wright State's spot is taken by a bubble team that will definitely be above Penn.

Idaho vs. San Jose State, 9:30, WAC 1st round -- This game is irrelevant, as is the WAC tourney, with the winner being above Penn unless it comes from one of the lower four seeds in this nine-team event. More on that tomorrow.

New Mexico vs. TCU, 10:30, Mountain West 1st round -- Penn will be helped if one of the top four seeds doesn't win this tournament. This 8-9 game doesn't matter.

By the end of tonight, there will probably be seven teams in the field below Penn, which with a win against Princeton, can assure itself of no worse than a 14 seed. Therefore, here's some more details about what Zachary was talking about below.

Penn won't be playing one of the top eight teams, and probably not any of the top 10 teams. With the pod system, and the fact that we know who most of those teams are, we can be relatively sure where they will be playing. Unless anything seriously surprising happens, we can be fairly sure that Wisconsin and Kansas will be in Chicago, Florida and Texas A&M will be in New Orleans, Ohio State will be in Lexington, North Carolina will be in Winston-Salem, and UCLA will be in Sacramento.

If Penn doesn't end up playing one of these teams, which I think is unlikely, then that leaves one spot in Lexington (which will be Memphis as a 2 or 3 as long as the Tigers don't lose their first C-USA tourney game, and therfore not likely to play Penn), one spot in Sacramento (probably for Wash. St), two spots in Buffalo (one probably for Pittsburgh), one spot in Winston-Salem (probably for Georgetown), and two spots each in Columbus and Spokane.

As the week continues, we'll try to have some more travel analysis.

Finally, if you've made it this far I won't bore you with more about Princeton's uniforms; you can just look at the first post here. Penn is looking to go 4-1 against this design this season.

One note though -- Penn will be wearing blue tonight, and the Quakers have not lost in that color to Princeton since at least 1998. I went back to 1999 and was able to find Penn's uniform color at Princeton, and the Quakers have gone 3-0 in blue and 3-2 in red since then. In the home whites, Penn is 6-3 since 1999.