New Website: RPI for Division I Women's Soccer

I just have posted an unofficial RPI Report covering games through the end of the regular season, on the RPI website.

I wish the NCAA would publish an official report so that I wouldn't have to worry about my having data errors and so on. But, they don't, so hopefully my report will be very close to what their report would be. As those who have followed my reports know, I have had to guess the bonus and penalty "adjustments" the NCAA makes to the basic RPI, so my rankings may be slightly off (apart from the potential for data errors). For the teams under consideration for the NCAA Tournament, I usually am either right on or within a position or two with my rankings.

UPSoccerFanatic wrote:I just have posted an unofficial RPI Report covering games through the end of the regular season, on the RPI website.

Thanks for all your work.

If your numbers do indeed reflect the actual RPI, the Pilots are about midway between UCLA (3rd) and Florida State (5th). UP could conceivably be seeded #3 overall since we have a better common-opponent record than UCLA (9-0 vs. 8-0-1), but there should be no basis for FSU to jump the Pilots, since UP and FSU have no head-to-head record, and their common opponent records are identical (2-0). The Pilots should therefore get a #1 seed, and (assuming the #1 seeds advance), be matched up against either Stanford or UNC in the College Cup semis.

Would that be your take?

I read the section on seeding criteria and I figured out what the committee did and how UP ended up as a #2 seed. It appears that the committee decided to have an east coast/west coast College Cup, arranged the respective teams into pods, and then determined that UP was weaker than Stanford and UCLA - hence the #2 seed. If the bracket had been fairly determined based on rankings and RPI, then the odds were good that the College Cup would have a been a West Coast show down. I don't like it, but I guess I understand their deeply flawed logic in setting up the bracket the way they did.

You're way more generous than I am.

fwill wrote:I read the section on seeding criteria and I figured out what the committee did and how UP ended up as a #2 seed. It appears that the committee decided to have an east coast/west coast College Cup, arranged the respective teams into pods, and then determined that UP was weaker than Stanford and UCLA - hence the #2 seed. If the bracket had been fairly determined based on rankings and RPI, then the odds were good that the College Cup would have a been a West Coast show down. I don't like it, but I guess I understand their deeply flawed logic in setting up the bracket the way they did.

It's pretty interesting the committee decided that this was the year to make the change, after all those years of having no problem with 3 teams in the East.

fwill wrote:I read the section on seeding criteria and I figured out what the committee did and how UP ended up as a #2 seed. It appears that the committee decided to have an east coast/west coast College Cup ....

I'm not sure what you're referring to by "the section on seeding criteria." Can you give me a reference? I've never seen anything about an east/west College Cup or anything like that. Or, were you being facetious?

Here's the section that comes from the RPI website set up by UP Soccer Fanatic under the subheading on seeding:

"I also have been told, however, by an authoritative source, that it is not unintentional that the Handbook does not state how the Committee is to seed teams. Thus although the Committee almost certainly considers the at large selection criteria in doing the seeding, the Committee is not bound by the criteria, nor is it foreclosed from considering outside polls and rankings.

As quoted under "Bracketing Criteria" below, the Handbook states that the Committee seeds 16 teams, in pods of four -- in other words, four #1 seeds, four #2 seeds, four #3 seeds, and four #4 seeds. When the bracket is set up, this is how it appears. It is not clear, however, that this is what the Committee actually does. The placement of seeded teams in the bracket suggests that the Committee in fact may identify the four pods of seeds and then internally rank the teams within each pod, thus effectively seeding teams in positions #1 through #16 and placing them in the bracket accordingly, but then publicly identifying true seeds #1 through #4 only as four #1 seeds, true seeds #5 through #8 as four #2 seeds, and so on. In response to a question "whether the Committee internally ranks the teams within each pod for placement in the bracket," the response of the Committee and the NCAA women's soccer championships staff was that they "cannot comment on the ... question ...."

Based on this section it appears that the committee is really not beholden to much of anything when setting up the brackets and therefore can set up a tournament however they want. 2002 and 2005 were both West coast showdowns, and last years was more or less an East side match-up.

Btw, I really like the work you did with the RPI website!

UPSF, Do you have the whole RPI and NCRPI for 2008? I found 2007 in the archives on your site but not '08?

I am assuming the NCAA doesn't archive the past years anywhere either. I know that they post the one after the tourney and not the one after the reg season so those would not be comparible.

gnarly wrote:UPSF, Do you have the whole RPI and NCRPI for 2008? I found 2007 in the archives on your site but not '08?

I am assuming the NCAA doesn't archive the past years anywhere either. I know that they post the one after the tourney and not the one after the reg season so those would not be comparible.

The 2008 end of regular season RPI report is on the archive page at the very top of the attachments, "11.9.2008 RPI Rank." I just have added an attachment with the 2008 NCRPI report, "11.9.2008 NCRPI Rank." It looks to me like it will appear at the bottom of the attachments, but maybe it will end up at the top. (I haven't figured out Google's system for ordering attachments.) I did not do NCRPI computations for the 2007 season, although I might be able to do them if someone really wants them.

IN looking at 3 year averages in RPI noticed some big moves.

One on the biggest postive was our OSU at RPI 168 in 2007 and 23 this year.

MD one year turnaround of 20 this year and 131 last year.

Fall offs include: Clemson 27 in 2007 and 190 this year. Louisville 23 in 2007 and 153 this year. HI was 56 in 2007 and 199 this year.

In three year scheduling window teams can really change their position in the universe.

For those interested, I just have posted on the RPI website a new RPI report covering all games through the NCAA tournament round of 16.

Of more interest, in response to a suggestion on BigSoccer, I calculated the average RPI (using the RPI calculations through the round of 16) of the first three opponents of each of the "elite eight" teams. Here are the results, starting from the team with the easiest road to the "elite eight" and ending with the team with the toughest road:

North Carolina: 0.5718
Florida State: 0.5721
Notre Dame: 0.5772
UCLA: 0.5830
Stanford: 0.5834
Boston College: 0.5901
Wake Forest: 0.5904
Portland: 0.6118

Just to be clear, the difference between the Pilots 0.6118 and the team with the next toughest road, Wake Forest, at 0.5904, is a very large difference.

WOW, GO PILOTS!

To be fair, the first round game was probably the difference, and nobody figured any top team would lose their game in that round.

Although it is curious that Santa Clara and Portland had the two toughest first round games.

TAMU, as host, had one of the easiest.

Hmm....

Geezaldinho wrote:To be fair, the first round game was probably the difference, and nobody figured any top team would lose their game in that round. ....

Good thought, so here are the average RPIs of opponents of the "elite eight," excluding their first round opponents, in order from easiest to most difficult:

Notre Dame: 0.6053
Boston College: 0.6076
Florida State: 0.6147
UCLA: 0.6147
Stanford: 0.6288
Wake Forest: 0.6330
North Carolina: 0.6335
Portland: 0.6356

Again, WOW, GO PILOTS!