Post Regional Observations on Selection Sunday

[DieHard 1280]

Actually, no ... and this is the paradox of the RPI that folks struggle with. If every team in the Sun Belt played a Top 75 schedule (a proxy for a more difficult schedule), you would see higher individual RPI rankings for the respective teams (due to higher SOS NC schedules) ... most evident immediately before conference play starts ... but this would damage teams' RPIs during conference play because each team's OWP contribution would be lower than it otherwise would be (vs. if the schedules were weaker).

A perfect example of this is Marshall. What Marshall did to themselves by assembling a weak NC schedule helped their conference mates immensely (that played them). In this case, it helped conference opponents considerably more than Marshall playing a Louisiana type non-conference schedule and losing a bunch of games (even though their RPI ranking would be higher by scheduling that way). Similar can be said for Coastal Carolina.

When I was coaching the coaches on how to optimize their RPI, I would also instruct them to look for teams (historically) that schedule weak NC and win ... as opposed to a team that schedules tough (hurting their W/L % accordingly but has a higher RPI) and are better than their record because of it. Obviously your entire NC schedule is not constructed this way ... but a part of it should be (complemented by some number of higher ranked RPI teams) ... while avoiding the teams that are "better" than their record due to a difficult schedule ... or are simply bad period. The mathematical modeling comes down to optimizing risk/reward.

Brian

You are making my brain hurt again, Brian. Do any schools offer to pay you for schedule consulting? If not, they should.

[R1Letterman]

so if ncaa has acknowledged the rpi is flawed and done away with in basketball, could sports that still use it sue? how can they, the ncaa, continue to use a product that they themselves deem as inferior. seems like an equal protection issue.

[Grantvb]

I had an observation too about the finals…..the classic scripted Cajuns across the shirt. Throwback to Yvette