Talk:Cal State Fullerton Titans women's basketball

Why fifth in NWIT in 1985
The media guide list the individual game results but does not state that they finished fifth. This mathematically follows although some might feel this is intruding on original research.

Here are the final three games of the season as reported by the media guide ("M" means March M21 % Texas Tech L 71-68 M22 % West Virginia W 75-71 M23 % West Texas A&M W 71-64

The % is a footnote identifying that there were at a tournament in Amarillo Texas. Unfortunately it refers to the tournament as the Women’s NIT. There is a tournament called the W an IT but it wasn't held in 1985 and it wasn't held in Amarillo Texas. However, there was a tournament called the MW IT, national women's invitational tournament that was held in 1985 and it was held in Amarillo. It seems reasonable to assume that the footnote intended to refer to the national women's invitational tournament and accidentally called it the women's national invitational tournament.

The next step is to identify the number of participants. In a single elimination, "loser goes home" format (the most common format for postseason basketball tournaments in the US), one cannot determine the number of participants (with a few exceptions) by looking at the results of a single team in the tournament. A team losing in the first round will have one entry, and one doesn't know whether it's a two team, four team or whatever number. However, it used to be common for all teams, even losing teams to continue to play in the tournament, to determine the overall place for every team. (This is common in FIBA tournaments.)

In such tournament, the number of participants is almost always two raise to the number of games. This will obviously only result in powers of two and other formats a possible but rare. In this particular case, the team played three games of the number of participants was too cubed or eight played. This also matches the statement in National Women's Invitational Tournament, which states it is an eight team tournament. (Unfortunately, that page also says it is a double elimination tournament which is an strictly true.)

Given the number of participants and the order of the wins and losses one can derived the finishing position for each team. Teams that win on the first day will going to the winners bracket and will end up in positions one through four. Teams that lose on the first day, as did Fullerton, or go into the losers bracket and end up in positions five through eight. Fullerton then went on to when the next day and the final day so they did the best of the losers bracket or fifth.

(A colleague also went through each of the team's media guides and reproduced the results, which can be done if someone chooses to conclude that the mathematical necessity is not good enough.)-- S Philbrick (Talk)  00:11, 3 June 2018 (UTC) ____________________________________________________________________________________________