Posted by alblack56 on 7/6/2011 8:34:00 AM (view original):
If you conference is weak, schedule tougher. Your conference schedule won't help your RPI so you need a good OOC schedule. You'll get your share of wins when you face all those SIM teams.
Every opponent doesn't have to be super-tough but you want at least 7-8 teams that will end up with good RPIs.
I would correct that: you want teams that end up with good W-L records, their RPI is irrelevant.
First, the lion's share of their RPI comes from SOS which only manifests itself in your RPI as OOWP, which is 25% of your RPI and the contribution from one team is about 1/30 th of that. Not too mention that OOWP doesn't have a lot of play to begin with (it will be between .400 and .600 almost certainly). So trying to improve based on your opponents SOS is pointless.
Second, a team's RPI is affected by their adjusted winning percentage. Their effect on your SOS is based on their UNadjusted winning percentage. So you could play team A that is 7-3 all at home and team B that is 3-7 all away with identical .500 SOS; they will have identical RPI's (.5000) but team A will boost your SOS while team B will hurt your SOS.
So the trick is to play teams with a good W-L record while still giving yourself 7+ wins. You don't need to play world beaters to end up with a good SOS. Playing teams just above .500 will give you a decent SOS. You may need to be a tougher if your conference is that bad, but the most important thing is to get your wins.