Can somebody tell me, definitively, if rankings make a difference in NT seedings?

My Pitt. St. team in DII Phelan is 23-4, with a 3 RPI and 8 SOS. Our conference is currently ranked #1 in RPI and I finished second in the regular season.

Currently I am not ranked and I have a chance of winning the CT. I would assume that if I did win the CT, I would be ranked, but probably not very high. I would also assume that if I won the CT, I would have a good shot at a #1 seed in the tourney.

To be honest, I don't know why I'm not ranked. I have a feeling it's because I had two off games in a row and I lost the game before and the game after. Before the off day I was ranked #14 and then dropped to #24 before losing again which put me out of the top 25.

Can somebody explain to me 1) am I crazy for thinking I should be ranked and 2) will I get a lower seed because I'm not ranked?

Thanks for reading this rant. Here's my team:

http://www.whatifsports.com/hd/TeamProfile/Ratings.aspx?tid=14178

No, ranked or not has nothing to do with your seeds. I'll find the old ticket from CS.


10/14/2008 1:25 PM furry_nipps
Does being ranked have any effect going into NT on seeding? For example, if I have 20 wins and am unranked and got a 10th seed if I was ranked with everything the same would I of gotten a better seed? In the FAQ it seems like ranking has 0 effect on it, but just double checking.
10/14/2008 4:16 PM Customer Support
Thanks for your note. In general, Ones NT seeding is based on RPI, wins vs. top 25, wins vs. top 50, wins vs. top 100 RPI teams and to a lesser extent metrics such as conference performance, margin of victory against tourney teams, etc.
10/14/2008 6:25 PM furry_nipps
Ok so does being ranked going into the NT help your seeding at all?
10/15/2008 1:28 PM Customer Support
Ranking in and of itself does not but when it comes to seeding we do look at some of the same criteria that go into rankings, the biggest of which is margin of victory which is completely ignored by RPI.

So while what gets you ranked and what helps with seeding are the same, being ranked or unranked would not have changed your seeding if all things were the same.


Edit - and yes, you probably should be ranked but they are meaningless until the end of the season anyways.

heres a question i would like to know.. If you beat a team that was not ranked when you played them, but they became ranked at some point in time during the season and stayed ranked, does that count at all?

No

aight, i know it does not count toward a win against a 25 team if he is not ranked, but was just curious if it added anything towards getting a good seeding in the NT...

Thanks dude

You can pretty much ascertain your seeding by looking at what line your on in the RPI and rankings. For example if your RPI is #4 and so your on the 1 seed line, and your ranked 18th, so your on the 5 seed line according to your ranking, you can predict with a pretty good degree of accuracy that you'll be a 3 seed. Of course this isn't an 100% accurate way of predicting your seed but it's probably the best way without doing extensive research.

thanks kmasonbx, appreciate it

Biggda, your team will probably end up with a #1 or #2 seed in the NT. The only thing that may hold you from getting a #1 is the 4 losses. As kmason pointed out rpi is generally pretty close to what seed you will get i.e. RPI 1-4=#1seed, 5-8=#2seed and so on. The only thing that messes this up is by having a really strong SOS and many losses. In this case you may have an RPI of say 24 and should get a #6 seed, but you have 8-9 losses so you end up with a #9 seed.

As for your actual situational it's weird because of where your losses came. You had back to back losses sandwiched around a double off day, so that's like losing 4 games in a row. I'm sure you'll jump back into the rankings with 1 more win. If you win the CT you'll probably jump into the top 20. The fact that you're 23-4 with the #3 RPI and a good average margin of victory you will get seeded more closely to your RPI. If you win the CT you'll probably be a #1 seed if you lose you'll be looking at a 2 or 3.

Thanks for all the input guys. I ended up losing in the semifinals of the CT, to a team that a beat up twice in the regular season. Oh well, that's how the postseason goes.

It'll be interesting to see where I seed now.

My prediction is a #2 seed with a 25% chance of being dropped to a #3 seed based on non-ranking.

You woulda lost to me in the CT finals if you had won anyway big! ;)

I don't disagree with you there cheez.