Stanford vs. Washington St

So it appears to me that Washington St. lost to Stanford in overtime. I really don't understand RPI (not for lack of people on this board explaining it, I'm a History major, numbers and I don't get along) but from what I've heard on this board doesn't this count as a tie? With Stanford ahead of us in the RPI and us needing Washington State to get into the playoffs isn't this good news?

I think what you are referring to is only games that go to a shoot out in a conference tournament. Those are treated as a tie, statistically.

Unfortunately, games in OT, as far as I understand, count the same as games won/lost in regulation...

It's even worse than that. WSU's overtime loss, for purposes of its RPI, counts the same as a 10-0 loss. On the other hand, Stanford's win not only counts as a win, but Stanford gets bonus points added to its "unadjusted" RPI because WSU is one of the top 80 teams. So, instead of an overtime win for Stanford counting as less than a full win and WSU's loss counting as better than a full loss, Stanford gains extra distance on WSU. This also happened to the Pilots when they lost in overtime to UCLA, at UCLA. UCLA got a good sized bonus because the Pilots are a top 40 team -- albeit a lesser bonus because they won at home rather than away or at a neutral site.

It's only if a team loses in a shootout that the game counts as a tie -- which, in the RPI, counts as half a win and half a loss for each team.

One interesting aspect of the RPI is that if a high-RPI team wins by a shootout in a season-ending tournament (as Texas A&M did this week), it lowers the team's RPI and also gives the team another opportunity to lose. So, from the Pilots' perspective, if A&M manages to lose its next game, the Pilots actually are better off with A&M having won its first game in a shootout and then losing than it would have been if A&M simply had lost the shootout. Go figure!

If you are interested in seeing how Texas A&M does in it's next game you can apparently watch it over the internet today according to this from the Big 12 website:

"Watch the Big 12 Soccer Championship semifinals live on Friday. The games will be available at no charge on big12sports.com. Top-seeded Texas A&M will face No. 4 seed Missouri at 5:30 p.m. CT, while Texas, the No. 2 seed, will play sixth-seeded Oklahoma State at 7:30 p.m. The 1 p.m. championship match on Sunday will be telecast tape-delayed on Fox Sports Net. Check local listings for more information on the telecast. "

Here is a link to the page to see the game:

http://www.big12sports.com/sports/w-soccer/spec-rel/big12-soccer-championship.html

You have to have Internet Explorer as your browser to see the game.

Strictly speaking, Internet Explorer isn't necessary. A browser that uses the latest Quicktime should enable you to view the games.

I watched at least parts of the last A&M game and the Oklahoma St. game in the first round using The Safari browser on a Mac , and tried Foxfire, where it also worked. Both times, the browsers used quicktime. Also, you may need to have JAVA enabled.

The games were well done. Professional sounding announcers who seemed to know the teams and their styles of play well.

I would imagine the professional sounding announcers had something to do with the fact that FSN broadcast the game.