Typical Lax Dad wrote: ↑Thu May 19, 2022 11:31 am
It backfired on ND this season.
All the Irish had to do was win a game against one of the Top 5 RPI teams they played. Or just have beaten OSU in their head-to-head.
Hoxwurth wrote: ↑Thu May 19, 2022 10:41 am
I think most agree that wins and losses should be the most important category. The issue becomes differentiating between various wins and losses. Tweaking RPI will still lead to the problem where scheduling is a large determinant as opposed to results of playing. Score differentials are important for determining the best teams, and therefore the best wins.
I would still use strength of record (actual wins and losses) to determine which teams get bids, but the quality of those wins and losses needs to be based on something more than RPI, which didn't work in a 40-game basketball season.
Otherwise, how do you improve on RPI?
The RPI is an amped up strength-of-schedule (SOS) metric. A team's win percent only counts for 25% of the formula. The rest is based on opponents' and opponents opponents' record. Perhaps the 25-50-25 percentage weightings could be re-calibrated so that the team's winning percent carried more weight.
Or just use the NCAA's SOS metric as a data point to contextualize any team's wins or losses. It seems the RPI is a de facto attempt at that, but past committees have solely used it as an inclusion-exclusion criterion. When this year's committee didn't do that, it caused an uproar.
When IL or Patrick Stevens release their bracketologies, they include the T5, T10, T15, T20 wins columns and a bad losses column along with the RPI and SOS metrics. It seems, in retrospect, that the selection committees paid more attention to the "Top" win and "bad" losses columns when making their decision. I don't think that's particularly bad. It actually makes quite a bit of sense.
The issue is that previous committees didn't seem to do that over the past couple of years, and now everyone is freaked out because of it.