Davis, who also appears on CBS, has a Sports Illustrated column on bubble teams, and in it, he ranks 24 bubble teams that are fighting for around 16 NCAA tourney spots. He ranks the Bruins 11th on the list, six spots BEHIND Notre Dame. He then has this comment regarding the Bruins:

"RPI ranking is somewhat inflated because Bruins played (but lost to) Boston College and Michigan State."

Now this is quite possibly the dumbest thing I've ever read from a sportswriter at a major publication. Perhaps he is simply trying to justify the fact that all ten teams he believes have a better chance of making the tournament have LOWER RPI rankings than the bruins. But how does playing (and losing to) teams that turn out to be very good "inflate" a team's RPI? That's like saying the Bruins' RPI is too low because we played (and beat) weak teams like Chicago State. The fact is that the RPI compares teams with similar W-L records: our 16-9 record is better than some other teams' 16-9 record because our losses were to opponents who are very good. "But," one might argue, "UCLA has only beaten one really good team (Washington), and that was at home." Well, the RPI takes that into account too. "But," the detractors continue, "UCLA also lost to a terrible team (Cal) at home." News alert: the RPI takes this into account as well. The RPI analyzes a team's entire performance.

Davis' comments imply that UCLA is not as good as their RPI. if that's his argument, the least he can do is back it up instead of just stating that we lost to two good teams in Michigan State and Boston College. And what concerns me is that Davis and other popular analysts are using their preconceptions of the Pac-10 to invalidate the RPI, when they could just as easily be using the RPI rankings to invalidate their preconceptions of the Pac-10. It's as if using the RPI is fine, as long as it supports what they already believe. That's great analysis.

By the way, Davis is a graduate of none other than...Duke University.