When we signed up for the Continental Tire Las Vegas Classic, one of the appeals was the possibility of a matchup with Houston on a neutral court. After all, they were an over .500 team in the American Athletic Conference last year, knocked off SMU in the conference tournament, and had a respectable 138 RPI. Plus, they hired Kelvin Sampson in a renewed committment to basketball. But over the past four days, Houston has lost to BOTH Arkansas-Pine Bluff and South Carolina State at home. In the process, their RPI has dropped from the 130s to 256. Yikes! Now we'll either have to beat Texas Tech or hope Houston upsets Boise State on Monday to avoid facing them.

I know RPI is just about everything--but in Ramblers' case , I want us to just plainly WIN . We are not so quietly building a nice win/loss ecord. If we sweep in Las vegas--entirely possible, I then will start looking at RPI and us. I must say though, that beating Abilene C. did us no good whatsoever So teams worse than 200 should not be scheduled.

A question--Before the onset of the season should not all teams be ,000. eg if we played and beat Butler and say Va Tech and Kentucky played and beat Wich St and Santa Clara,
why would Kentucky have a lower (good) RPI than us ? Nobody really knows except by perceived reputation that KY should be rated better than us.

Help me out . John or somebody Please.

In the meantime--Just win win win RAMBLERS !!

Everybody's RPI starts out at zero. Rankings or any preconceived opinions don't factor AT ALL. The formula is: (Winning Percentage * 0.25) + (Opponent's Winning Percentage * 0.50) + (Opponents' Opponents Winning Percentage * 0.25).

Going 35-0 on the season (giving you a winning percentage of 1.000) only counts for 1/4 of the formula. The main component is your opponent's winning percentage. If your 35 wins came against 35 teams that went winless on the season, you've got a ZERO for half of your RPI formula. The record of the teams your opponents play is another 1/4 of the formula, so if the winless teams you beat were winless because they were playing teams that won nearly all their games, then at least you get some credit for also defeating them. As of today, for instance, Kansas at 9-1 (with their only loss to Kentucky) has a better RPI than Kentucky at 12-0-- mostly because Kansas has only played one team with a losing record and Kentucky has played three teams with a losing record (and another at .500).

Thanks 63 ! I get it--I THINK !! Its math purely and simply--- Its not fool proof as I believe I would pick KY regardless of RPI---

One thing tho--We had better sched better now that WE are becoming better.

One other thing about the RPI, Brot. It's the lingua franca of college basketballl because that's what the NCAA uses for selecting teams for the tournament. I'm not saying that I support or particularly admire it, because it has a lot of problems. A win is a win, whether it's by a bank-in three pointer at the buzzer in overtime or a 45-point smackaround. Probably most important, there's no difference between home, road, or neutral games (although the NCAA has adopted complicated semi-secret adjustments to compensate). Should winning percentage be half as valuable as opponent's winning percentage? Should opponents' opponents winning percentage be just as valuable as your own winning percentage?

Because of all these questionable elements, it has the tendency to support big conference teams that have more control over who and where they play-- like Syracuse, who almost never plays non-con games away from the Carrier Dome-- teams that pay for more home games, the ability to demand 2-for-1 (or 3-for-1) deals, only playing top teams from other big conferences at neutral sites, etc. The MVC has-- maybe more than any other conference-- tried to compensate for these inequities by making RPI a point of emphasis (through more circumspect scheduling, incentives, advice, and better education about the RPI) thus helping the better league teams when it comes to possible at-large bids. If the HL, for example, had the same kind of emphasis on RPI, Green Bay might have gotten an at-large bid last season, and the HL conference tournament wouldn't have to be stacked to absurdly support the top seeds.

You're right about the Valley putting an emphasis on RPI. And it has gotten a few years where multiple Valley teams made the tournament. However, it's also worked to our detriment because we have had more teams snubbed (based on top 40 RPI rankings) than any other conference. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NCAA_baske ... _the_field

Also hurting our RPI this weekend: Texas Southern's win over Michigan State

One minor correction here, there IS a difference between home, road and neutral games. I believe Neutral is figured at 1.0. Home in .7 and road is 1.3. Road wins get you a little boost over a home win, all other things being equal of course. Losing on the road then isn't as harmful as losing at home. This is where being able to schedule SEC teams is coming in a little handy. The SEC hasn't been near as strong as they want to be based on RPI and have paid the price for it come tournament time. Some of those teams are more willing to schedule better teams and even go on the road at times in an attempt to help their numbers.

I will say that when the RPI was first being used, it didn't matter where the games were played, they were figured the same. But I want to say about 10 or so years ago they changed the formula a bit because home teams statistically win at a higher rate. It was also in hopes that maybe it would encourage some teams to play on the road a bit and help scheduling for nonBcS teams.

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The Roundhouse

As I understand it, the corrections between home and road games are less drastic than what you say they are, and they even vary according to the strength of RPI. The numbers you're citing are what they're using in other sports, especially baseball. The numbers I've seen for basketball are less dramatic, and vary according to RPI to give a bonus for quality wins. This is the chart that most people think was in effect back when there were 324 teams.

I'm reading between the lines here, but is RPI determined by some secret formula, like Coca Cola?