17-11 Team with 77 RPI in over a 19-9 team with 53 RPI and another with 47 RPI? No other major discernable differences.  WTF is that?

Did they even test this?

(BTW this is not my team, just noting this as WTF)

It's been stated repeatedly that there's more than just looking at the RPI's now.

Yeah, like the fact that they're 0-5 against top 25 teams? And to make things worse, there's about five potential second round match ups between conference mates.... definitely needs some tweaking

Naismith bracket looks like a mess at first glance.

Note that the 0 - 5 against top 25 would be against the teams who were top 25 at the time vs top 25 now according to the new calculation.

Could people have a link to the teams so they can compare?

in naismith D2 i have the top overall seed in the tournament and have a potential second round matchup with the 8 (17rpi)/9(22rpi) winner...nice reward for having the best season...

Margin of victory/defeat seems to be heavily weighted.  My Wilkes team in D3 Naismith went 16-11, but we lost 7 of our games by fewer than 10 points and 5 by 6 or fewer, all to good teams.  Despite that 16-11 record we have a 5 seed.  I'm happy to have it, but in fairness I should have probably been closer to the 8/9 range.  RPI ws 30.  SOS was 5.  We have 11 wins over top 100 RPI teams, but only 1 of those was vs. a top 50 RPI team.  I have a decent squad, but it still needs some work to be good (I'm in my 2nd season there).  I'm happy with my 5 seed, but the 12 I'm playing looks just as good (or better) than my 5.

I'll take a closer look at the logic using the Naismith data.  The move away from just using RPI was intentional though.  It's a limited metric of how good a team really is, and can be very misleading.  To me there's a big difference between winning/losing by 20+ points vs. winning/losing by 3 or 4 points.  Maybe there's a little too much weight on opponent strength.

I'll also see what I can do about spreading out teams from the same conference, but that's not easy to do when some conferences have 7 or 8 teams in.

ACC D1 has 4 in one region.
CAC D3 has 4,2,1,0 spread of it's 7 teams.
Freedom D3 has the 1 and 2 seed in the same region.

OK I am going to limit my emotions and just list facts about Florida State and their 7-20 record that is included in the PIT in Naismith. Their  7 wins.  8 point win in OT vs. 14-14 82 RPI at Pitt.  13 point win vs. 16-12 183 RPI at UTEP.  4 point win vs. 21-8 60 RPI at Mercer.  2 point OT win at 40 RPI 23-6 at Monmouth who by the new formula was left out of the NT and is in the PIT.  16 point win vs.21-8  88 RPI at West Kentucky.  1 point win vs. 123 RPI 18-10 E. Carolina.  And 1 point win versus 8-19 124 RPI home vs. georgia tech.  All other games are losses, including 6 losses that were 18 points or more.  and another handful that were 10 points losses.  So this is not a team that beat any top 25 teams, best win was versus a team that got into the PIT, and got blown out in more games than they won.  I think they got in on one reason and one reason only it was because their SOS was so tough and somehow these specifics were not enough to overcome the SOS.

Posted by seble on 12/4/2011 9:45:00 AM (view original):
I'll take a closer look at the logic using the Naismith data.  The move away from just using RPI was intentional though.  It's a limited metric of how good a team really is, and can be very misleading.  To me there's a big difference between winning/losing by 20+ points vs. winning/losing by 3 or 4 points.  Maybe there's a little too much weight on opponent strength.

I'll also see what I can do about spreading out teams from the same conference, but that's not easy to do when some conferences have 7 or 8 teams in.

Well, what you DO about hte opponent should massively weigh more than just playing them.  In fact. . if you get blown out by 20 something by a ranked opponent I would go so far as to say you shouldn't get credit towards going to the postseason for getting crushed by a good team.  three point loss?  Loss in overtime?  Ok, arguable.  But your postseason prospects improving because you were crushed by the best?

 

Posted by rusticity on 12/4/2011 9:59:00 AM (view original):
ACC D1 has 4 in one region.
CAC D3 has 4,2,1,0 spread of it's 7 teams.
Freedom D3 has the 1 and 2 seed in the same region.

All projection report rankings have a predetermined seed and region.  You can look at that rank and figure out exactly where you will be in the bracket.  It appears nothing was changed for conference affiliation.

Posted by seble on 12/4/2011 9:45:00 AM (view original):
I'll take a closer look at the logic using the Naismith data.  The move away from just using RPI was intentional though.  It's a limited metric of how good a team really is, and can be very misleading.  To me there's a big difference between winning/losing by 20+ points vs. winning/losing by 3 or 4 points.  Maybe there's a little too much weight on opponent strength.

I'll also see what I can do about spreading out teams from the same conference, but that's not easy to do when some conferences have 7 or 8 teams in.

seble, I definitely agree margin of victory/defeat needs to be weighted, but not so heavily that it moves teams up maybe 3 or 4 seeding lines from where they would be in real life.  I think you just need to lower the weighting on that a tad.  Probably not a lot, just a little.  It benefited me this season so I'm not complaining too very much, but in an effort to make HD better I do think it needs to be looked at.  A team needs to win some of those games to earn the higher seed.  It almost seems as though the outcome of the game has been lessened (the binary event of W or L) and the margin of the final score now carries more weight.

Posted by seble on 12/4/2011 9:45:00 AM (view original):
I'll take a closer look at the logic using the Naismith data.  The move away from just using RPI was intentional though.  It's a limited metric of how good a team really is, and can be very misleading.  To me there's a big difference between winning/losing by 20+ points vs. winning/losing by 3 or 4 points.  Maybe there's a little too much weight on opponent strength.

I'll also see what I can do about spreading out teams from the same conference, but that's not easy to do when some conferences have 7 or 8 teams in.

seble, I agree that RPI isn't by far a perfect metric, but I think the early returns are that there is significantly too much emphasis being put on who you play rather than how you actually do. A 7-20 Florida State team made the PIT, basically just as a result of getting beat up all season by their ACC brethren. That's not good and really can't happen.

Right now it seems that you've replaced one issue (over reliance on RPI) with another (over reliance on SOS, and perhaps other things, like "good" losses). And so far, the new issue seems worse than the old one -- at least that one was something that people could understand and jibed semi-reasonably with real life. But in real life, a 7-20 team would be thinking about firing their coach, not about the postseason. Ever.

As far as spreading conference teams out within a bracket, can be challenging, but no conference mates should ever be meeting up in the 2nd round. That never happened before, either.

Posted by lwbraun on 12/4/2011 10:20:00 AM (view original):

Posted by rusticity on 12/4/2011 9:59:00 AM (view original):
ACC D1 has 4 in one region.
CAC D3 has 4,2,1,0 spread of it's 7 teams.
Freedom D3 has the 1 and 2 seed in the same region.

All projection report rankings have a predetermined seed and region.  You can look at that rank and figure out exactly where you will be in the bracket.  It appears nothing was changed for conference affiliation.

There has GOT to be something in the seeding logic to keep teams from the same conference from matching up too early in the tourney and there should NEVER be a 1 and 2 seed in the same bracket from the same conference with the only exception being if one conference has all four 1 seeds and at least one 2 seed.  In real life the selection committee does their very best to spread teams from the same conference out as much as they reasonably can.

I understand this can get tough in HD when some conferences get 6-8 teams into the NT, but this happens in real life too and the committee spreads them out.