RPI for 2008

Nice work. It was worth trying to get into a table, but the one on the forum is pretty cumbersome.

The [tr] operator makes rows
The [td] operator makes data cells
the [table border="x"] operator will make a border "x" pixels wide

It's probably easier to take a screen shot of an Excel section. as is on BS

The new RPI report covering games through 9/21/2008 now is posted on BigSoccer. Use the following link: http://www.bigsoccer.com/forum/showthread.php?t=650592. The report is a pdf attachment to the 9/22/2008 3:21 pm post of cpthomas.

This week, in the RPI computations, the Pilots added the win over Florida to their winning percentage. In the strength of schedule part of the computations, the Pilots added Florida's 5-1-1 record, which included Florida's Sunday win over Kansas but excluded Florida's Friday loss to the Pilots (because that game doesn't count in computing Florida's contribution to the Pilots' strength of schedule). Also in the strength of schedule part of the computations, the Pilots added its earlier opponents' weekend results, which were a hearty 9-0-1. The result was an unusually big increase in the Pilots' computed strength of schedule.

So, although we're only just short of half way through the season and things no doubt will change a lot, guess who's #1 in this week's RPI ratings?

GO PILOTS!

Is that cool or what?

Since I don't have a subscription to Big Soccer, I assume you mean the Portland Pilots are number one in the RPI this week? Which would be very good.

FANAtic it looks like it. It seems the teams we played and beat have been doing very well which helps our RPI not to mention that we are winning too.

FANatic, I don't think you need a subscription. I think if you register with a name and password, you will be able to use the link and go to the website and download the RPI Report attachment. (You do have to subscribe to be able to post attachments, I think.) In any event, here are the top 25:

1. Portland
2. Texas A&M
3. Stanford
4. Notre Dame
5. UCLA
6. North Carolina
7. Boston College
8. Florida
9. Texas
10. Illinois
11. Colorado
12. Duke
13. Central Florida
14. California
15. Florida State
16. Rutgers
17. Old Dominion
18. James Madison
19. USC
20. Oklahoma Stte
21. South Carolina
22. Brown
23. Wake Forest
24. Penn State
25. Charleston

Interesting that Rutgers has higher RPI than Penn State. Hope that Pilots can add wins over two (RPI) top 25 teams this weekend.

So Rutgers is #16 and Penn St #24. (Wrote this before I saw Martin's post ahead of mine).

I assume if we beat these two, it is very, very good for our RPI, what with both teams having good records against what I would guess are very good opponents.

Still havin' a hard time looking at that Top 25 with Portland on top. It just doesn't happen very often. Maybe I'll stare at it some more tomorrow!

You don't have to subscribe to RS to post or use the forums. You just have to register. That's free.

In addition to the weekly RPI computations, I've run a computation that deletes all intra-regional games and computes only the average team RPI by region, based strictly on inter-regional games. This has a number of limitations, as some teams (24) have played no inter-regional games and there are not enough inter-regional games to allow the calculation of all teams' RPIs based only in inter-regional games. With those limitations in mind, here are the regions' average team RPIs, using the inter-regional RPIs for those 148 teams for which it is possible to compute them with the data generated so far this year:

Central .4982
Great Lakes .5049
Mid Atlantic .4923
Northeast .4797
Southeast .4940
West .5554

These numbers are pretty consistent with the number from last year; and are supported by Albyn Jones' SoccerRatings and the Massey ratings from last year.

As you can see, these data indicate that the West region is significantly stronger than any of the other regions. This creates a problem, because the RPI, in comparing teams, is not able to take regional strength differences into account and therefore discriminates against teams from stronger regions. It does this because it is weighted in favor of assuming that all the regions are equal in strength; and there are not enough inter-regional games to overcome the effect of this weighting. Part of my "fun" is waging a long term battle to cajole, embarrass, force the NCAA to recognize this defect in the RPI and at least take regional strength differences into account in making "hard" decisions during the Tournament at large selection and seeding processes

Maybe you should send your analysis to the coaches from the strong regions - especially those on the bubble.

Let THEM do the cajoling/embarrassing/weedling/ bitching/ and forcing for you.

I did that after the season last year and I'll do it again in two weeks, with this year's data.

What I see is the West and the Southeast are the only regions that have more wins than losses. So I am not sure what makes the West region clearly the strongest region

Come play in my casino

I was, of course, being flip. However, here's one way to look at it.

UP's unadjusted RPI in UPSF's last work-up was .7059

The difference between The West region and the nearest region is .0505
You could look at it as if all the teams in the West were being devalued by that amount. which means an RPI adjusted for region strength would give UP something like .7564


A team .0505 down from UP is about 11 or 12 places down the RPI. it would make the top 10 in the RPI an almost exclusively Western affair, and could make the 16 seeds almost all Western.


It doesn't matter right now because we are #1 in the RPI, but just suppose we had Colorado's RPI of .6557 which is 11th.
That .0505 would put us back in first place, instead of 11th, assuming the teams in front of us weren't from the West.

That could be the difference between a #1 seed and no seed at all. It would have given us a home advantage last year instead of North Carolina, perhaps, which meant a comfy ride through the playoffs instead of trips to high altitude.

Since there are only about 34 teams that get at large bids, it could be the difference between tournament and no tournament for a lot of western teams.

It's a big deal.