Just got a 7 seed in Wooden DII.  Pretty obvious that seeding must be based only on rankings and not on RPI at all.  I am unranked RPI 13.  The 4,5,and 6 seeds all have worse RPIs than I do but are ranked.  Their RPI's are 17, 25, and 30.  I assume this will be part of the fix Seble talked about, but in the mean time what is the point of making a difficult schedule?

I'm sure I'm in the minority, but I like the fact that wins mean something.  Anyone can get a "good loss" against a good team.  It proves nothing.

Posted by udm_mike on 10/21/2011 11:26:00 AM (view original):
I'm sure I'm in the minority, but I like the fact that wins mean something.  Anyone can get a "good loss" against a good team.  It proves nothing.

Fair enough, but wins against horrific teams shouldn't mean anything either. And I'm not sure seeding does a great job of balancing those two extremes.     

cburton- I don't quite have time now, but I would assume someone here will- in the FAQ's it has what seeding is based on.  How does your team perform in all of those measures?  How do the teams seeded higher then you perform?  Without that data, and only going off RPI and rankings, there isn't a complete picture.

I agree.  I think they do a good balance, to be honest.  I see instances all the time of teams that won 24 games against crap competition that don't get top seeding. 

But to your point...it's harder to beat a bad team than it is to lose to a good one.

I think cburton's argument would be better made in discussing the amount of top 50 and top 25 teams he did beat.  I think there's more weight to that (IMO).  I'm just not impressed with 9 losses, regardless of who they were against.

Ranking isn't used in seeding. Record, rpi, and wins against top 50 rpi, top 100, etc. are used. I had a #6 ranked team getting a 7th seed before. 

I was 6-4 against the top 25 and 9-1 over my last 10 games.  Yes the CT semis loss hurt.  What I am saying is that  had a made an easier schedule and won maybe 3-4 more games but had a worse RPI I would be better off.

Lets look at some other teams-

Millersville 23-4- 5 Seed- RPI 25 9-1 L10 0-2 vs T25

Grand Canyon 21-8- 4 seed RPI 21 9-1 L10 1-6 vs T25  And I beat them

Hawaii Hilo has an even better case than I do.  They are 22-7 RPI of 14 but unranked.  10-0 and 4-2 vs Top 25 and they are below these two as well.

Posted by tianyi7886 on 10/21/2011 12:11:00 PM (view original):
Ranking isn't used in seeding. Record, rpi, and wins against top 50 rpi, top 100, etc. are used. I had a #6 ranked team getting a 7th seed before. 

So it says, even though signs point to the contrary.

Ranking are essentially used for the NT seeds in my opinion ever since the change was made to how the top 25 is formulated.  There is enough overlap in the criteria in how the rankings and the seedings determine the better team that I think its easier to assume that the rankings play an unofficial role in the NT seedings than to pretend that the rankings are a separate process.  Technically true they are separate but they are built on similar logic.

Of course, I'm not sure why that is a bad thing.  I'm pretty impressed with how the top 25 looks at the end of the season.  I think more often than not it does a better job of ranking top 25 teams than RPI does.  Essentially you want RPI to be the metric used first, second, third, and fourth in choosing seeds and I'm not sure why you think that's much better.  RPI is heavily influenced by schedule and that often is out of control of the coach and says little about the strength of a team.  And the sim already uses RPI to an extent that is several times greater than it would be in real life.  And you want it to be even more?

And your statement about "an easier schedule and won maybe 3-4 more games but had a worse RPI I would be better off." is misleading and potentially false.  Three wins against the bottom of the barrel is going to sink your RPI enough that you'd definitely be worse off.  If you could swap three top 20-25 RPI losses and exchange them with wins against three top 70-80 RPI teams, then yes you would be better off.  But it can be tricky to pull off that kind of swap because those borderline 100 RPI teams can often turn into pumpkins and you should consider yourself lucky that you even have that option.  For those that are in empty conferences they don't have that luxury.

I think it was OR who had a formula that could approximate a NT seeding.  I've found it to be quite accurate within +/- a single seed, at least for the top 32 seeds or so.  The formula, iirc, is:

Seed = (Rank + RPI + 5) / 8

The obvious question is what if your team isn't ranked.  I think OR said he used 30 for such teams, but maybe the first team receiving votes should get a Rank of 26th, and so forth.

Posted by udm_mike on 10/21/2011 11:26:00 AM (view original):
I'm sure I'm in the minority, but I like the fact that wins mean something.  Anyone can get a "good loss" against a good team.  It proves nothing.

One small problem with this point as it relates to the OP ... he beat a bunch of good teams. He had wins against RPI #7, 18 (2x), 21, 24, 32 and 35. He also lost to the #1 team by two. So he played a hellacious schedule (#1 SOS) and faired quite well against it.

The reality is that in real life, a team would get rewarded by the selection committee for playing this type of schedule and having this much success with it. In HD, they are penalized, and teams that rack up relatively empty wins against weaker schedules are rewarded. The bottom line is that the HD selection committee (such as it is) operates in a way that is diametrically opposed from the real selection committee, and that's unfortunate and illogical.

So while I agree that a team shouldn't be rewarded for an artificially inflated RPI that is simply buoyed by losses to a bunch of good teams ... that's not what happened here. This example is symptomatic of the long-standing problem I described in the previous paragraph, and hopefully will be addressed in the next update.

Alright- your vitals for seeding

                            ENMU
Record               20-9
RPI                      13
Non-conf            8-2
Non-con RPI     ?
Conf Rec            10-6
Conf RPI             ?
Road Rec           9-3
L10                      9-1
v. 1-50 RPI          6-6
v. 51-100             5-2
v. 101-200           5-1
v. 201+                 3-0

Record vs. top 25 and head to head are not counted, so citing those won't help the case.  I'm not in Wooden, so I can't look at the 6 seeds, but if they have worse vitals in those categories, then you have a beef.  Also note if seeding went off RPI alone, you'd be a 5 seed, so two spots is not this drastic drop.

"The bottom line is that the HD selection committee (such as it is) operates in a way that is diametrically opposed from the real selection committee, and that's unfortunate and illogical."

Occasionally, the real life selection committee is illogical.  Each situation should be independently reviewed for logic, both in real life and HD.  Frankly, I think the difference isn't that the selection processes are "diamterically opposed " - they're not - it's that you can actually watch the teams in real life to know how good they are.  Here, we have no choice but to rely on some sort of ranking formula.

My major problem with the seeding is that it too heavily weights CT results. 

As an aside, RPI is a flawed metric, and weighting it heavily in seeding is a bad idea.

Posted by asher413 on 10/21/2011 1:11:00 PM (view original):
Alright- your vitals for seeding

                            ENMU
Record               20-9
RPI                      13
Non-conf            8-2
Non-con RPI     ?
Conf Rec            10-6
Conf RPI             ?
Road Rec           9-3
L10                      9-1
v. 1-50 RPI          6-6
v. 51-100             5-2
v. 101-200           5-1
v. 201+                 3-0

Record vs. top 25 and head to head are not counted, so citing those won't help the case.  I'm not in Wooden, so I can't look at the 6 seeds, but if they have worse vitals in those categories, then you have a beef.  Also note if seeding went off RPI alone, you'd be a 5 seed, so two spots is not this drastic drop.

This is a 6 seed by my eyeball test.  Bad loss, some good wins, by 20-9 isn't going to get you a top 4 seed.  The schedule was tough, but you were .500 vs. the top teams.  Better to be 3-1 vs. the top and 26-3 for me.