New Website: RPI for Division I Women's Soccer

Just to prove how far off the RPI deep end I've gone, I've just opened the new website, "RPI for Division I Women's Soccer." Use the following link to check it out: http://sites.google.com/site/rpifordivisioniwomenssoccer/

The website has two purposes:

1. To provide a resource for Division I women's soccer fans and coaches who are interested in how the NCAA selects teams to fill at-large positions in the Division I Women's Soccer Championship Tournament, how the NCAA seeds teams in the Tournament bracket, and how the NCAA places teams within the bracket. In particular, the site will provide information on what the Rating Percentage Index is and how the NCAA uses the RPI in the at-large team selection process, in seeding, and in bracket formation.

2. To provide Division I women's soccer teams' detailed RPI ratings over the course of each NCAA season. This will allow fans and coaches to see how their teams are doing in the RPI rating process, to see how teams' RPI ratings evolve over the course of the season, and to better understand how the RPI works in real life. The first season for which the site will provide detailed RPI ratings will be the 2009 season, for which play begins in late August 2009.

In addition to a viewer "Comments" page and a "Current News" page, here is a list of the pages at the website as of today:

NCAA Selection, Seeding, and Bracketing Criteria

Describes the rules that govern the NCAA's selection of teams to fill the 34 at-large positions in the Tournament bracket and that appear to govern the seeding of teams and the distribution of teams to specific positions in the bracket.

NCAA Bracket Procedure

Describes the procedural steps the NCAA goes through in gathering game data for use in computing the RPI and in conducting the Tournament at-large selection, seeding, and bracket position assignment processes.

NCAA Actual Tournament Practices

Uses the Tournament brackets for 2007 and 2008 to show how the NCAA, in actual practice, selected at-large teams to participate in the Tournaments, seeded teams, and assigned teams to positions in the bracket.

RPI Formula

Shows how the NCAA computes the RPI and the Adjusted RPI. The detailed 2008 end-of-regular-season RPI ratings are an attachment to this page.

Non-Conference RPI

Shows how the NCAA computes the Non-Conference RPI. The NCRPI is a variant of the RPI that the NCAA uses in the at-large selection and seeding processes. The page also sets out reasons the NCAA may have for using the NCRPI. The detailed 2008 end-of-regular-season NCRPI ratings are an attachment to this page.

Non-Region RPI

Describes the computation method for the Non-Region RPI, which is a variant of the RPI. The NCAA does not use the NRRPI. The page also sets out reasons why the NCAA might want to consider using the NRRPI. The detailed 2008 end-of-regular-season NRRPI ratings are an attachment to this page.

RPI Compared to Other Systems

Compares the accuracy of the different variants of the RPI and also of two other rating systems for Division I women's soccer -- the Jones SoccerRatings system and the Massey system.

Getting the Correct Data

Describes the NCAA's data gathering process, the website's data gathering process, and the steps the website takes to synchronize the two sets of data. Also describes how problems can occur in data gathering and provides examples of data problems the NCAA had during the 2007 and 2008 seasons.

Bonus/Penalty Adjustments

Sets out the bonus and penalty adjustments the website uses in producing its Adjusted RPI ratings. (The amounts of the NCAA adjustments are secret.) Also discusses whether the NCAA should continue to use the adjustments for Division I women's soccer.

Home/Away/Neutral Issues

Provides information on home field advantage, including information on whether the top teams play more home than away non-conference games. Discusses the question whether the NCAA should revise the basic RPI formula to take game locations into account.

Effect of Conference Tournaments

Addresses the question whether, from an RPI perspective, conferences are better off having or not having end-of-season conference tournaments.

Perhaps a sticky is in order for that website.... UPSF once again attempts to outdo himself!

Nice work UPSF, as always your RPI expertise is appreciated.

Congrats, UPSF. You are the unquestioned King of RPI. I'm sure there will be many times during the season when we all refer to your site to see how the Pilots are stacking up.

Hopefully, your site becomes a national success, and you start getting the respect you really deserve!

I second ( fourth?) the accolades.

In the past couple of years I had to maintain a bunch of links to keep track of this stuff.


Now its one stop. Good work.


So- are you going to post the results from even the first couple of weeks?
It might be instructive to show how the RPI starts out before it becomes statistically meaningful.

Just make sure that Portland is #1 the last week of the season.

Purplegeezer wrote:So- are you going to post the results from even the first couple of weeks?
It might be instructive to show how the RPI starts out before it becomes statistically meaningful.

Yes, my plan is to post the RPI ratings every week so those interested can see how the RPI evolves through the season. Hopefully it will help fans understand how the RPI works, since it appears the NCAA is committed to continuing to use it.

PS: I am a purely academic, interested person, in this whole venture. But ... GO PILOTS!

I'm a little late in the game with this, but seriously... hats off to you, UPSF! The work you've put into the RPI study is nothing short of amazing and not only that, it's also really important... if no one scrutinizes what the NCAA does with its RPI, chage for the better can never be made. What you've done with this goes way beyond simple fan interest, IMO.

Anyway, I honestly think you should email coaching staffs at several schools to not only let them know about your site but also to offer to be a scheduling consultant for them. I mean honestly, since the NCAA keeps its RPI formula a secret, how can teams schedule smartly? You can provide a real service. And I'm not kidding.

I thought I'd post here the link to the RPI Report page. If everything works out, it should have an updated RPI report each Tuesday through the course of the season:

http://sites.google.com/site/rpifordivisioniwomenssoccer/rpi-reports

For an RPI report covering games through September 6, use the following link:

http://sites.google.com/site/rpiford...er/rpi-reports

An excel spreadsheet with the report is an attachment at the bottom of the page. The report remains incomplete because not all teams have played two games, which must occur before all teams can be covered. If a team's opponent, or an opponent's opponent, has not yet played two games, then the system cannot generate a rating for that team. After next weekend's games, all but Alcorn State will have played two games and the reports will cover nearly all teams.

I've just posted an RPI report covering games through September 13, 2009. Use the following link to go to the home page of the RPI website. Then, use the menu on the upper left side of the home page to go to the "RPI REPORT" page. At the bottom of the "RPI REPORT" page is an Excel spreadsheet attachment that is the 9/13 RPI Report. (For some reason, I can't give a link that will work to take you directly to the "RPI REPORT" page. Here's the link: http://sites.google.com/site/rpifordivisioniwomenssoccer/

A little later today, I'll be posting on the "RPI REPORT" page a couple of tables showing average RPIs for the different conferences and geographic regions. So, if you're interested in that kind of thing, go back later and check it out.

http://sites.google.com/site/rpifordivisioniwomenssoccer/rpi-reports/RPIReport9.13.09.xls?attredirects=0

seems to work OK with the Safari and Firefox browsers. It doen't come up in the browser, but rather downloads the .xls file to your computer.

I can't resist jumping the gun a little bit. By noon tomorrow at the latest, I should have a new RPI report published on the RPI website, covering games through today (9/20). Use the following link to the website home page and then go to the RPI REPORTS page. The report will be in the form of an excel spreadsheet attachment at the bottom of the page. Here's the link: http://sites.google.com/site/rpifordivisioniwomenssoccer/Home

A preview: as was the case last week, North Carolina will be #1 notwithstanding their tie today with Auburn, and the Pilots will be #2 notwithstanding Friday's loss to TAMU. Why? Based on how teams have done so far during the season, UNC and the Pilots have played tougher schedules than the other contenders, by a good margin.

I now have a new RPI report posted, covering games through September 20 (yesterday). The following link should take you to the RPI REPORTS page, and there's an Excel spreadsheet attachment at the bottom of the page. The attachment contains the new report.

I suggest you check out the comments on the RPI REPORTS page, in particular the comment explaining why UNC and Portland are ranked #1 and 2 respectively on the current report, whereas undefeated and untied Stanford, Boston College, South Carolina, Maryland, and Mississippi State are not ranked as high as those two teams. It has to do with strength of schedule.

In addition, farther down on the RPI REPORTS page, there are rankings of the conferences and regions based on their teams' average RPIs. These are very interesting rankings.

You'll be interested to know that 9 of the 10 Pac Ten teams are ranked in the top 30 by the RPI (as compared to 6 ACC teams) and 2 of the WCC teams (Portland and Santa Clara).

Here's the link: http://sites.google.com/site/rpifordivisioniwomenssoccer/rpi-reports

I just have posted a new RPI Report on the RPI website, covering games through September 27. The report includes teams' unadjusted and adjusted RPIs, and also their "non-conference" RPIs. The report is in an Excel spreadsheet attachment at the bottom of the "RPI REPORTS" page. In addition, the RPI REPORTS page includes conference and region average RPIs. Here is the link to the RPI REPORTS page: http://sites.google.com/site/rpifordivisioniwomenssoccer/rpi-reports

In addition, the nc-soccer system now includes unadjusted RPI ratings (RPI Elements 1, 2, and 3 plus the calculated unadjusted RPI) that are updated automatically as games data are entered on the site. Here is a link to the webpage that has the RPI ratings: http://www.nc-soccer.com/wsoccer/2009/