Value of the Next Game (Geeky Engineer Alert)

[615dawg]

I'm a statistics geek and I thought a few people might enjoy this.

Our RPI is currently 0.5745, which is ranked 58th best. (You know this as our RPI is 58)
The breakdown of our RPI is as follows:
Record: (0.7143*0.25)= 0.1786
Opponent's Record: 0.5288 (108th), Our opponents have won just over 50 percent of their games overall. Our non-conference record, stunk.
(0.5288 * .50) =0.2644
Opponent's Opponents Record: 0.5260. Our opponents are playing crappy schedules as well.
(0.5260*.25)=0.1315

Factor 1: 0.1786
Factor 2: 0.2644
Factor 3: 0.1315
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Total RPI:</span> 0.5745

South Carolina's RPI is 0.5579, of that 0.1346 is their own fault. 0.2886 is their opponents (0.5772).

If we were to beat South Carolina, factor 1 would increase our RPI by 0.0024
Factor 2 is impossible to judge, although South Carolina would drop us a little, we have other opponents that could win or lose. Let's assume that our opponents keep their 0.5288 winning percentage. SEC opponents will cancel each other out, except when West teams beat East teams.
Factor 3 would increase our RPI by 0.0004

So if our opponents won 52 percent of their games Saturday, beating South Carolina would increase our RPI by 0.0028 to 0.5773, which would rank us 54th if everyone within 10 of us won. For every team ranked 48-57 currently that loses, increase this by 1 spot.

If we were to lose to South Carolina, factors 2 and 3 would change the same, but factor 1 would decrease our RPI by 0.0062 to 0.5683, which would rank us 68th if no one moved.

 

[615dawg]

I'm a statistics geek and I thought a few people might enjoy this.

Our RPI is currently 0.5745, which is ranked 58th best. (You know this as our RPI is 58)
The breakdown of our RPI is as follows:
Record: (0.7143*0.25)= 0.1786
Opponent's Record: 0.5288 (108th), Our opponents have won just over 50 percent of their games overall. Our non-conference record, stunk.
(0.5288 * .50) =0.2644
Opponent's Opponents Record: 0.5260. Our opponents are playing crappy schedules as well.
(0.5260*.25)=0.1315

Factor 1: 0.1786
Factor 2: 0.2644
Factor 3: 0.1315
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Total RPI:</span> 0.5745

South Carolina's RPI is 0.5579, of that 0.1346 is their own fault. 0.2886 is their opponents (0.5772).

If we were to beat South Carolina, factor 1 would increase our RPI by 0.0024
Factor 2 is impossible to judge, although South Carolina would drop us a little, we have other opponents that could win or lose. Let's assume that our opponents keep their 0.5288 winning percentage. SEC opponents will cancel each other out, except when West teams beat East teams.
Factor 3 would increase our RPI by 0.0004

So if our opponents won 52 percent of their games Saturday, beating South Carolina would increase our RPI by 0.0028 to 0.5773, which would rank us 54th if everyone within 10 of us won. For every team ranked 48-57 currently that loses, increase this by 1 spot.

If we were to lose to South Carolina, factors 2 and 3 would change the same, but factor 1 would decrease our RPI by 0.0062 to 0.5683, which would rank us 68th if no one moved.

 

[615dawg]

I'm a statistics geek and I thought a few people might enjoy this.

Our RPI is currently 0.5745, which is ranked 58th best. (You know this as our RPI is 58)
The breakdown of our RPI is as follows:
Record: (0.7143*0.25)= 0.1786
Opponent's Record: 0.5288 (108th), Our opponents have won just over 50 percent of their games overall. Our non-conference record, stunk.
(0.5288 * .50) =0.2644
Opponent's Opponents Record: 0.5260. Our opponents are playing crappy schedules as well.
(0.5260*.25)=0.1315

Factor 1: 0.1786
Factor 2: 0.2644
Factor 3: 0.1315
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Total RPI:</span> 0.5745

South Carolina's RPI is 0.5579, of that 0.1346 is their own fault. 0.2886 is their opponents (0.5772).

If we were to beat South Carolina, factor 1 would increase our RPI by 0.0024
Factor 2 is impossible to judge, although South Carolina would drop us a little, we have other opponents that could win or lose. Let's assume that our opponents keep their 0.5288 winning percentage. SEC opponents will cancel each other out, except when West teams beat East teams.
Factor 3 would increase our RPI by 0.0004

So if our opponents won 52 percent of their games Saturday, beating South Carolina would increase our RPI by 0.0028 to 0.5773, which would rank us 54th if everyone within 10 of us won. For every team ranked 48-57 currently that loses, increase this by 1 spot.

If we were to lose to South Carolina, factors 2 and 3 would change the same, but factor 1 would decrease our RPI by 0.0062 to 0.5683, which would rank us 68th if no one moved.

 

[mcdawg22]

..BIG IF, South Carolina beats Kentucky?Like the numbers.

 

[saltslugs]

nm

 

[615dawg]

for a total of .5784, giving us just one more spot initially.

 

[mcdawg22]

..all the math still depends on humans voting for rankings which does not factor coaches being out. (i.e Calhoun) so how can we break it down to an even better analytical level?

 

[Sutterkane]

not sure wt17 you're talking about.

 

[615dawg]

is that it is math. No human interaction at all unlike the BCS crap.

Its about who you play and essentially who you beat. For instance, if college football had an RPI, we ranked 30th despite being 5-7 because we played the toughest football schedule in college football since at least 1988.

What the math cannot predict is what other teams do. Our opponents have a winning percentage of .528 . 15 of our opponents have to play out to an even percentage minus our record. Because we play the West teams twice, when they beat an East team, it helps. Because the top of the East is 21-0 against the West, it is killing our RPI. What could be a .2800 factor if the West was as competitive as they were last year is a .2640 factor. Think about that. If the West was as competitive against the East as it was last year, our RPI would be 0.0160 better. That would rank 45th RIGHT NOW!

Little things we could have done.
Playing Jackson State (first place SWAC)instead of Mississippi Valley would have been worth .0027
A horrible Louisiana-Lafayette instead of Centenary would have been worth .0021
Those two simple scheduling changes, which would not habe been noticed, would have improved our RPI .0048, four easy spots. That's still playing UTPA, the worst team on our schedule. Replace UTPA with let's sayLouisiana Tech, and our RPI improves by .0054!

We don't have to play Texas, Duke and Illinois to have a good schedule. Playing Jackson State, Louisiana Lafayette and Louisiana Tech instead of MVSU, Centenary and Texas Pan America, and our RPI is up 0.0102 and right now we would be 50th. Eight spots by replacing extreme cupcakes with not as extreme cupcakes. Get with it.

 

[patdog]

It's an almost completely worthless formula. Who you play is worth 3 times as much as how you do. Theoretically, if you played the top 30 teams in the country and lost every game by 100 points, you'd still have a pretty decent RPI. Of course, that's not realistic, but just the fact it's possible shows that it's a ******** formula. They could improve it immensely if they changed the weights to 1/2 * your winning percentage + 1/3 * your opponents winning percentage + 1/6 * your opponents opponents winning percentage.</p>

 

[mcdawg22]

..If you lose totop rankedteams #1 and #2, that is better than beating #143 and #221 is that true? And of course if your #1 scorer sits out a game against the number 2 team in the country, the math does not account for that. I am completely ignorant as to how RPI works so thanks for the 411.

 

[mcdawg22]

..but thanks for being a dickhole in your response.

 

[DancingRabbit]

Dickhole?

 

[ScoobaDawg]

that mean something but I dont care to figure out - RPI Forecast

 

[Uncle Leo]

No human interaction at all unlike the BCS crap.

Somebody had to come up with the arbitrary weights given to your record, opponents' record, etc. So there is some human interaction, even though it's not a poll.

If you want true math based on wins and losses and nothing else, you want the Colley Matrix Rankings. Click here and here for a brief and more detailed explanation, respectively. (Extreme nerdery alert on that detailed explanation.)

 

[615dawg]

I'll take your example.

If we were to play the #1 team (Kansas) right now and lose, our RPI would go up 0.0025
If we were to play the #143 team (Auburn) right now and win, our RPI would go up 0.0064

Playing a lower ranked team and winning is worth almost three times as much as playing the #1 team and losing.

Now, playing and beating #1 would be worth 0.0110, over twice as much as beating #143. A jump of .110 is worth 10 spots by itself. If half the teams in the 10 spots ahead of you lost at the same time, you could easily see a 14-16 spot jump by winning one game. Kentucky was THAT IMPORTANT.

Playing and losing to a good team can improve your RPI, as it did when we lost to Kentucky. The cutoff is currently somewhere between RPI 9 and RPI 10. (If we played and lost to 9 we would go up a fraction, and 10 we would go down a fraction.)

It works the other way, too. If we were to play Alcorn State (dead last, RPI of 346) and win, our RPI would go up 0.0026, one-ten thousandth of a point more than losing to #1.

 

[Shmuley]

The fact that we're 3 days from March discussing that "we just need Bumfuckle College to beat Chattahoochee Institute, so our RPI will go up 0.0000011!1!!1! and then win 3 in the tournament and we're GOLD!!11!111!!!1" is so typical. So typical.

/off rant

 

[BR549.sixpack]

asfd

 

[jakldawg]

from a yuppie-infested bakery (topped with framboise ganache!, etc.) instead of the ones with the REDUCED! sticker in the middle isle of the mega-mart we're choking down now. Got it.

 

[DawgatAuburn]

Ad nauseum. This is not rocket science. We play a crappy schedule, beat up on some cupcakes, and hope like hell we can win enough of the rest of our games to be in the top 40 of the RPI so we can maybe squeeze in as a 8 seed. It's just insanity. And it's not working.

 

[dawgstudent]

if we cant beat the cupcakes consistently, then why should we expect to beat better teams? Is it because the losses won't hurt as bad?

Please forgive my laziness but I just read your reply only in this thread and if this been addressed above, ignore.

 

[615dawg]

Teams like Wright State, St. Bonaventure, Houston and really Rider and WKU are fine (as long as we win)

Playing Valley, Centenary and UTPA literally cancel out two other cupcakes. I know we can't control it, but we should make an effort to not play teams with RPIs under 250.

Take a look at last year. Some on this board considered our OOC schedule an upgrade because we added UCLA. ********. Our strength of schedule (including a much weaker SEC) was 50 where now its 106. The difference?

Instead of playing four sub-300 teams, we only had one (Fairleigh Dickinson). That's the difference. Lets play a few gourmet cupcakes, and maybe some fresh cupcakes. The reduced sticker stale ones are KILLING us.

 

[Coach34]

if we cant beat the cupcakes consistently, then why should we expect to beat better teams? Is it because the losses won't hurt as bad?

Please forgive my laziness but I just read your reply only in this thread and if this been addressed above, ignore.

losing to better teams doesnt hurt your RPI as much

And if you are worried about losing to ****** teams every year, isnt that a coaching problem?

 

[dawgstudent]

I don't care.

 

[615dawg]

that we need to go on the road or neutral sites and play top 10 teams, but the numbers are saying we need to consider scheduling Jackson State instead of Valley.

The one thing I did not include in this is if we would have done what we should have and beaten Rider and WKU, our RPI would have improved by a staggering 0.0200. That's 17 spots right now.

 

[Coach34]

have a pretty good idea if that going to happen in the next 5 days

 

[Coach34]

while we would be ok with doing that once a year, we just simply want to add more mid-level teams from BCS conferences or the A-10 and eliminate these game against teams 275 and lower RPI-wise


Nobody has even once said we should add a bunch of top 10 teams to the schedule every year

 

[dawgstudent]

if we don't make it this year and next and if I was AD, he would be gone.

 

[Coach34]

.

 

[wpnetdawg]

When discussing the weightings of the RPI and your own winning percentage counting 25%, here is thing to consider in why that particular weighting is so low.

Assuming that you play 30 games, individual games will move that factor by .033. Individual games played by your opponents will probably only move opponents winning percentage by .0011 because it is based on roughly 900 games (30 x 30). Opponents opponents winning percentage would be even smaller.

A simpler way to think about this is to look at the variance. If you look at strictly winning percentages, we have a 27-1 team (.964) and a 1-27 (.036) in college basketball. This means that this factor can range between .036 and .964.

Looking at opponents winning percentage, these values only range from .424 to .623 - a much tighter dispersion. Opponents opponents winning percentage would be even tighter - perhaps much tighter. Therefore, I will disclude the opponent opponent percentage and deal only with the other 75% of the equation.

For instance, if you were an average .500 team that played the nation's hardest schedule, you would have .4365 on these two factors.

If you were the nation's winningest team that played an average schedule, you would have .491.

If you were the nation's winningest team that played the nation's easiest schedule, you would have .453.

Despite the differences in weightings between SOS and your own winning percentage, I think what these numbers show is still far more important to win games (even against easy opponents) than to simply play a difficult schedule.

 

[DawgatAuburn]

that we need to go on the road or neutral sites and play top 10 teams, but the numbers are saying we need to consider scheduling Jackson State instead of Valley.

I would be OK with one game like that a year. But in no way, shape or form am I, or anyone that I know of, advocating a schedule of multiple road/neutral games at top 10 teams. Trim the fat at the bottom. Add some more teams in the 50-200 range that we SHOULD be able to beat. If we can't beat them, then maybe our 22 wins a year really aren't all that impressive. You would think last year would be recent enough memory for people on this point.

 

[dawgstudent]

they struggle early season. Whatever the reason is, we just don't play like we should. Could be coaching, could be us getting our legs, whatever it is, it's frustrating. With that being said, if we do play the teams you want like A-10 teams, we won't have a shot at the NCAA tourney because we would lose more games in the pre-SEC schedule. We would be what South Carolina is now or Arkansas. And then your ultimate wet dream would be fulfilled - Stansbury would be fired.

I would much rather have a shot at the NCAA tourney than beef up the schedule and have no shot at seasons end.

 

[Coach34]

they struggle early season. Whatever the reason is, we just don't play like we should. Could be coaching, could be us getting our legs, whatever it is, it's frustrating. With that being said, if we do play the teams you want like A-10 teams, we won't have a shot at the NCAA tourney because we would lose more games in the pre-SEC schedule. We would be what South Carolina is now or Arkansas. And then your ultimate wet dream would be fulfilled - Stansbury would be fired.

I would much rather have a shot at the NCAA tourney than beef up the schedule and have no shot at seasons end.

If the man can't win and make the Tourney with a better schedule, he needs to go. He is never going to do anything big if he can't win enough games against a decent schedule and get to the NCAA'S. You never know, maybe Standsbury might surprise some of you and beat these better teams

 

[DowntownDawg]

...that's been a constant since Roberts left, but before that, we were very good. To recap, in our 4 year tournament run, we lost 4 games in the early season, 3 to tourney teams. In the following 5 years, we've lost 20 games in the early season with only roughly 25% to tournament teams.

Something has changed. Lazy assistants, lazy head coach, not having a dominant scoring big man to dump the ball to (although we had Rhodes during that period). Who knows? Stansbury WAS good at winning those games. Now, we just seem to be unprepared going into the season.

 

[DawgatAuburn]

Rick is:
2-1 vs Charlotte
2-0 vs UAB
2-2 vs Richmond
3-1 vs Western Kentucky
3-1 vs Xavier

We can beat that level of a team. Not every time, a la Rider and WKU. But playing and winning these games helps us a lot more than the 250+ RPI games that we feast on now. Is it possible we would lose these games? Sure. And when we aren't good enough to beat these type of teams, maybe we aren't good enough to go to the NCAAs.

 

[8dog]

if we had beaten Bethune Cookman, JSU, TX Pan Am, and Valley on the road this year?

 

[dawgstudent]

my position is a 60% clip. If we don't make it this year, we would have made the tourney 2 out of 5 years. We go - 3 out of 5.

 

[615dawg]

[No message]

 

[futaba.79]

"Standsbury?" Did I miss a joke? or is this just you being a smartass?

 

[8dog]

and tell me what that would do to our rpi!!