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RPI Numbers...

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Post by Stonehouse Tue Oct 23, 2007 2:30 pm

This is really interesting to look at:

http://web1.ncaa.org/app_data/weeklyrpi/2007WSOrpi1.html

These are the top 20 teams in the latest RPI (second number is last week's ranking):

1 2 Stanford
2 3 Southern California
3 8 North Carolina
4 1 Penn St.
5 5 Tennessee
6 14 UCLA
7 4 Virginia
8 9 Texas A&M
9 11 Santa Clara
10 6 Georgia
11 19 San Diego
12 12 Indiana
13 15 James Madison
14 21 Wake Forest
15 25 South Carolina
16 7 Missouri
17 20 Portland
18 35 Notre Dame
19 18 Texas
20 49 Florida St.

Wins against San Diego and Santa Clara will surely improve our RPI, which will be a determining factor in seeding for the tourhament... and consequently whether or not we will be hosting during the tournament. I'm surprised our RPI is so low... games against USC, UCLA, Purdue, Florida State, Purdue... you'd think that would equate to a stronger strength of schedule.

Anyway... interesting for sure.
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Post by FANatic Tue Oct 23, 2007 6:23 pm

Agree wholeheartedly, Stonehouse. I would have thought we would be much higher, too. However, I haven't, (and I'm not going to), gone through all the other schedules of other highly ranked teams. I'll leave that to your source link and other computer programs.
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Post by Geezaldinho Tue Oct 23, 2007 6:25 pm

Ahh --- one of my favorite subjects.

There are liars, damn liars, and statisticians.

There's a professor of statistics right here in town named Albyn Jones (Reed College) who has done statistical studies on how soccer teams are ranked(or as he calls it, "dynamic generalized linear models for discrete even time series"). Using the same data as the NCAA uses, he comes up with pretty different results as to what the data means.

If you are interested, take a look at these sites:
http://people.reed.edu/~jones/
http://www.soccerratings.com/index.php/Women%27s_NCAA_Division_I_Soccer_Ratings
http://www.soccerratings.com/index.php/Main_Page

There's even a java APP that does predictions on the soccer main page:

I've worked the APP for SD and SC.

For San Diego, since we are at home, the numbers come out:
59.42% chance we win
25.42% chance they win
14.86% chance of a tie


For Santa Clara:
51.73% we win
31.11% they win
16.16% tie



Interestingly, for UCLA, it depends on where we play as to who wins.


Now, I admit this doesn't mean squat when the teams step out on the field this week, but it does show how different folks can skew the data for their own purposes. The NCAA committee makes a preseason ranking (based largely on politics), and all future RPI ratings are based on that. Jones just uses the results of competition to predict future results, a somewhat more level rating system IMO. There is a seed, but it's quickly overwhelmed by the data.

The results have been pretty good over the last Three years or so since I started following his methods. Only 1 or 2 misses with UP games late in the season, and we won those. The down side is that results are only valid for the 2nd half of the season or so. Also these results don't include last week, don't take into account that we just got better with our players back, and they don't allow for the power of a UP crowd.

My point is---His results show a bit of difference in the strength of teams and their schedules from the NCAA RPI---using the same data.

I prefer to use our own liar statistician right here in town, rather than depend on one somewhere in the NCAA offices back east. Wink
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Post by FANatic Tue Oct 23, 2007 9:21 pm

Thanks for the links, Geezer. Boy you sure have a lot of tricks up your sleeve. I'll be checking out those sites when I get a chance.

Very, very interesting. I don't like all the politics involved in these things. Sounds like your guy has a much more pure approach, though not perfect as you have stated.
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Post by Geezaldinho Wed Oct 24, 2007 12:17 am

Prof. Jones is one of the reasons I get all in a lather when it comes to rankings, tournament selections and seedings. He's handy to have around when the committee says they left Oregon out because of strength of schedule, or when they make us travel against teams who are clearly inferior, or say we didn't deserve a seed and those teams did.

Whenever they say stuff, I check him to see if it passes the sniff test. Sometimes I feel like calling the gas company.

Last year, for the tournament, he correctly predicted we were better than the teams from BYU, Utah, and Texas, and would beat them even on the road.
He also predicted we would lose to UCLA on their turf.

And lastly, his numbers say that even if money considerations said we should travel, we shouldn't have faced any of those teams until the round of 16 or 8, it should have been at home, and we should have faced UCLA on neutral turf in the College Cup, where our odds would have been much better.

Much as I hate to admit it, you could also infer from his figures that North Carolina got shafted the year before.


Come tournament time, you can be sure I'll be checking to see if 5 or 7 Pac10 or ACC bids is justified.
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