Real life seeding vs. RPI Topic

girt25
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Posted by udm_mike on 3/14/2011 3:27:00 PM (view original):
Posted by girt25 on 3/13/2011 7:42:00 PM (view original):
What's clear is that (for the most part), the committee rewards teams that have played more difficult schedules and have more wins against quality teams on their resumes (i.e. Marquette, Cuse, etc.)

And the teams that they penalize are the ones that haven't played tough schedules and/or don't really have quality wins ( (i.e. Utah State, Memphis, ODU).

I think WIS should work on taking a page from this book.
I disagree.  I think WIS (and real life) already reward teams far too much for losing to good teams.  Anybody can lose to Kansas, so what does that losing to them prove?  Nothing other than they're better than you (and a few hundred other teams).

I do agree that quality wins should mean a lot.  But quality losses are counter intuitive.
Well, if you play a tough schedule, some quality losses are going to be inevitable.

If you have two teams with similar rpi and W/L, and one is 5-5 vs. top 50 rpi and the other is 1-1, I don't think it should be a close question which team should get the bid or be a higher seed.

Now, if you're 1-9 vs. the top 50, I agree that should hurt more than it helps.
3/14/2011 6:27 PM
isack24
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I'm not sure it's that simple.

If the 5-5 team beat 5 teams by one point who went 16-0 in crappy conferences to end up with a 40-50 RPI, then how much value are those wins really worth?  Does it matter if it lost to 5 20-40 RPI teams by double digits? 

That's kind of the point about being able to watch and appropriately value the games that I would be worried about with a formula that doesn't consider all aspects of a win or loss.

3/14/2011 8:56 PM
girt25
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Posted by isack24 on 3/14/2011 8:56:00 PM (view original):

I'm not sure it's that simple.

If the 5-5 team beat 5 teams by one point who went 16-0 in crappy conferences to end up with a 40-50 RPI, then how much value are those wins really worth?  Does it matter if it lost to 5 20-40 RPI teams by double digits? 

That's kind of the point about being able to watch and appropriately value the games that I would be worried about with a formula that doesn't consider all aspects of a win or loss.

Could that theoretically happen? I suppose. Is that the norm, or anywhere close? Definitely not. To discount quality wins because of a relatively far-fetched scenario like that strikes me as silly.
3/14/2011 11:37 PM
isack24
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Posted by girt25 on 3/14/2011 11:37:00 PM (view original):
Posted by isack24 on 3/14/2011 8:56:00 PM (view original):

I'm not sure it's that simple.

If the 5-5 team beat 5 teams by one point who went 16-0 in crappy conferences to end up with a 40-50 RPI, then how much value are those wins really worth?  Does it matter if it lost to 5 20-40 RPI teams by double digits? 

That's kind of the point about being able to watch and appropriately value the games that I would be worried about with a formula that doesn't consider all aspects of a win or loss.

Could that theoretically happen? I suppose. Is that the norm, or anywhere close? Definitely not. To discount quality wins because of a relatively far-fetched scenario like that strikes me as silly.
Sure, that's an extreme.

But it's not that crazy to believe that a majority of those games are against 40-50 teams, expecially if a couple of those teams are in their division.

Then, another team could be 1-1 against a top-ten team, and be 4-0 against teams 51-60.

Is that really that crazy of a scenario?  I'll bet things like that happen all the time.

My bigger point is that without taking everything into account, you're leaving something out, or not looking at it in the whole context.  And is it really better to weigh some things more heavily without a full context than to use RPI?  I don't know, but I have some serious concerns.
3/14/2011 11:52 PM
girt25
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Wait -- no one was suggesting to just take top 50 wins into account. You're still taking everything into account. Just giving some extra weight to quality wins vs. the current system. And no one is saying to ditch rpi. We're basically talking about it as an important differentiating factor for schools that are pretty comparable -- similar rpi's, etc.
3/15/2011 7:11 AM
doomey
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I think it boils down to two things as far as what they need to tweak, the first has been discussed - quality wins (however you want to define them). The other is just plain old SOS. It's sitting right there, use it. No point in seeding a 23 win team with a 200 SOS, even with a quality win, higher than a 19 win team with a sub-30 SOS. Just no reason.
3/17/2011 2:39 AM
isack24
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Well isn't that taken care of by RPI?

There's almost no way a 23-win, 200-SOS team is going to have a better RPI than a 19-win, 25-SOS team.
3/17/2011 10:44 AM
billscnb
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There's ways to manipulate the rpi to do what you want and it doesn't necessarily mean you played a tougher schedule.
3/17/2011 10:57 AM
hitman1979
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Doesn't the same apply to SOS?  If I play a team not-so-great team who goes 16-0 in their own conference, that still reflects well on my SOS, doesn't it?

I agree with isack, highly unlikely that doomey's example would ever happen, unless he's saying that the 23-win team would have a better seed while having a worse RPI.  Suppose that could happen, but not sure.
3/17/2011 11:20 AM
isack24
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Posted by billscnb on 3/17/2011 10:57:00 AM (view original):
There's ways to manipulate the rpi to do what you want and it doesn't necessarily mean you played a tougher schedule.
It may not literally be tougher, but it certainly means your SoS is better.  You can't drastically manipulate your RPI without also manipulating your SOS.
3/17/2011 11:49 AM
billscnb
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True. But I had two years in a row with UND in tark where I ended the non-conference schedule with the #1 rpi, so I know what I'm talking about. That being said, you have to have a very good team to do that, so even if you try, you may fail, just saying there's ways to manipulate computer numbers.
3/17/2011 1:39 PM
doomey
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Posted by isack24 on 3/17/2011 10:44:00 AM (view original):
Well isn't that taken care of by RPI?

There's almost no way a 23-win, 200-SOS team is going to have a better RPI than a 19-win, 25-SOS team.
Wrong on both points. Just as an example USC with 19 wins, 18 RPI and 9 SOS was a 9 seed; below New Hamshire (27 wins, 33 RPI, SOS 255) and 5 seeded Furman (27 wins, 30 RPI, 135 SOS), among others.

RPI in no way tracks SOS, it deals only with winning percentage augmented by location. It dances around SOS only slightly by including opponents opponents winning percentage, but the RPI can be gamed by a team in a ghost confrence very easily by just scheduling beatable teams they think will have winning records (usually second-third place teams in other ghost conferences).

If you look at what WIS says they look at SOS is included, but if you also concider that it is vastly outwieghed by valuing wins over 20 (which IS included in RPI) and other blind win-based criteria (conference champ regardless of strength of conference is a big boost), you realize that more emphasis needs to be put on SOS as a smell test. SOS and quality wins is what the real committee uses primarily with RPI being primarily a guage of what the initial pool looks like.
3/18/2011 12:56 PM
Iguana1
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RPI is:
25% - your W-L % with location factored in
50% - your opponents W-L (with location included)
25% - your opponents opponents W-L (with location included)


So the example of a 19 win team with a 25-SOS almost always having a better RPI than a 23 win team with a 200-SOS is true, both in Real Life and HD, since 75% of your RPI comes from your opponent.

But seeding in HD, although it still may use the RPI a bit more than Real Life, basically values Wins over poor competition much more than Real Life does.


3/18/2011 1:15 PM
doomey
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Exactly. If those mid-lows have a high winning percentage, and they play a light NC with decent sims who can win in a ghost conference, who then also have bs schools in THEIR nc, you can get some high rpi numbers without playing a good team all season. HD doesn't do enough to counter what is done intuitively by the committee by just looking at SOS and quality wins.
3/18/2011 2:25 PM
hitman1979
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doomey, just wondering, how do you think SOS is calculated?
3/18/2011 3:47 PM
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