new thread up for Friday

1. “Play the best team in a bad conference and one’s RPI will take a hit. Lose that match and it’s a disastrous free-fall.” This is not necessarily true. If you play a 27-3 team from a bad conference, that 27-3 record will do more to boost the RPI (50% weighting) than the impact of the bad conference’s overall won-loss record (the second 25% factor in the RPI). And the difference between winning and losing that match is approximately .008 (to be adjusted for opponent’s opponents’ won-loss record), hardly enough to warrant a “disastrous free-fall”. In fact, you can’t even say if a team’s RPI ranking will fall if the team wins vs. loses that match because you don’t know the relative RPI values for teams ranked around it. I agree from a human voting perspective that a loss to a non-power team will be punished more harshly than a loss to a highly ranked team, but that has nothing to do with RPI. I agree you would prefer to schedule stronger conference opponents than weaker conference opponents to increase the opponents’ opponents’ won-loss value and boost that portion of the RPI, all other things being equal.

2. “Beat a middle-of-the-pack team in a highly ranked conference and good things can happen. Lose “as expected” and the damage is palatable.” Not sure what you mean by good things can happen, but beating a middling team in a good conference is less valuable that beating that conference’s leader. And per #1 above, you would prefer to schedule teams from strong conferences. The second sentence again reflects what human voters would do, not how the RPI formula works.

3. “Plus the Rainbow Wahine’s RPI will get a boost just by playing teams in the power conferences, regardless of how those opponents fare the rest of the season.”
The first part is true if the power conference teams have really good non-conference seasons (also, this statement relates to the 25% part of the RPI related to the won-loss record of one’s opponents’ opponents). However, the last part is blatantly false. If UH beats Florida and then Florida proceeds to lose a bunch of games, that will really hurt UH’s RPI versus Florida winning those games (and those losses will outweigh any positive impact from playing a team from the SEC). Opponent’s won-loss records are the 50% factor in the RPI and you want your opponents to win as much as possible.

4. “Where Hawaii’s RPI will take a hit is when playing two Big Sky teams in Idaho (picked to finish fifth in the conference) and Eastern Washington (eighth), and when hosting the WAC’s Cal State Bakersfield (fourth) twice and San Diego State (sixth) of the Mountain West.” Maybe, maybe not. If the teams actually have great seasons, then RPI could be improved regardless of conference affiliation. Again, that 50% RPI factor comes into play (opponent’s won-loss record). If the teams are middling or terrible, then UH’s RPI will suffer vs. those teams having excellent won-loss records. I remember a couple of years ago when American had that great season and a very strong RPI, despite being in a weaker conference. Much of that had to do with its excellent won-loss record.

To understand how UH can maximize its RPI, I like to use the following rules of thumb:

1. UH must win as many matches as possible. A win has the biggest positive impact to RPI versus what an opponent does or the scheduling impact related to playing strong conference vs. no-name/poor conference opponents. It is also the only part of the RPI that UH has any control over, other than scheduling.

2. UH’s opponents need to win as many matches as possible (50% RPI factor), excepting their matches with UH. Does not matter which conference they are from. They all need to win as much as possible. For Big West opponents, UH needs them to win as many non-conference matches as possible–conference season becomes a wash as everyone plays each other (as an aside, UH would prefer the other Big West teams schedule more cupcakes and rack up more wins than play the top teams, to maximize its RPI).

3. UH’s opponents’ opponents’ won-loss record needs to be as high as possible. Generally, you will see this in conferences which tend to play a lot of lesser teams in the preseason and rack up the wins prior to conference play. For example, Big 10 and Pac 10 (they can afford to hold tournaments and get lesser teams to come and play). So that is generally why you want to schedule power conference teams. However, that positive impact will be nullified if you lose to that power team and/or that power team has a bad year.

4. If the NCAA awards win bonuses for victories over top 25 competition, as is strongly rumored, then definitely beat Florida, UCLA, etc.

Your article is strongest when it describes the challenges of trying to schedule “good” teams a year or two into the future and the resulting uncertainty. However, it suffers from the issues above and seems to confuse how RPI will be impacted by a loss versus how human voters will be influenced by that same loss.

I know you have disagreed with me on this in the past, but I am just going by the mathematics of the formula. Happy to discuss further and expound on the above in a constructive manner, as has been the case with you and the other posters on this blog. Thx.