NCAA Monday RPI 2018-19 Season

Donate To GopherHole
Shades said:
Realtime has Indiana at 12-0 when they’re actually 11-1. I wonder how many other errors they have.
Click to expand...

Interesting. For starters, they also have Grambling State (the team who beat Indiana) wrong, at 2-9 when they're actually 3-8. Obviously RealTime's data source is not clean.

This data error (wrongly) puts Indiana at a current RPI rank just ahead of Mississippi State and Iowa.

Even more interesting is how sensitive (and inconsistent) their Gamer algorithm is to this error. Their Indiana detail page predicts an end of season RPI of 4; going with a season of one loss. Yet the game predictions show them predicted to be undefeated both in preseason and Big Ten. So they call Indiana winning the Big Ten.

So parts of their algorithm know about the Grambling loss, other parts don't. And it totally throws off their Gamer prediction, which is quite sensitive to the data error. Garbage in, garbage out.
 
Last edited:

Shades said:
Realtime has Indiana at 12-0 when they’re actually 11-1. I wonder how many other errors they have.
Click to expand...

Regarding RealTimeRPI (in)accuracy, I did find some other blog that said it's well known that RealTime often has data inaccuracies of various types. I've kept an eye on its Indiana stats, and after over a week it finally corrected its bad Indiana W/L record to 12-1, reflecting its Grambling State loss and its overtime win over Illinois. Adding the missing loss and the win drops its RPI ranking 6 slots to 16, while Minnesota's win over Badgers raises its RPI rank 4 slots to number 23. Indiana still has the highest B1G RPI since it has the most difficult SoS in the B1G.

It predicts end of season RPIs of 10 for Minnesota and 7 for Indiana. It also still predicts Indiana will be undefeated in the Big Ten. Gamer still predicts Minnesota to have a 5 loss season. It thinks 4 of those 5 losses will be by only 2-4 points. But it thinks the Gophers will lose @Indiana by 21 points.

By its behavior, it's clear that Gamer quite literally uses (its possibly erroneous) raw RPI as the ranking estimator from which to predict wins and losses.

And RPI is mostly a measure of SoS and only partly a measure of team basketball quality. So Gamer has Indiana cleaning house in the Big Ten merely because Indiana has the strongest schedule.

This is a good example why RPI is only partially useful for ranking basketball teams, especially this early in the season.
 

Here’s some good news. Incarnate Word finally got their first win and are now 1-0 in conference.
Now for the bad news. Coppin St is still winless at 14-0. :confused:
 

Shades said:
Here’s some good news. Incarnate Word finally got their first win and are now 1-0 in conference.
Now for the bad news. Coppin St is still winless at 14-0. :confused:
Click to expand...

Poor Coppin State - everybody's favorite cupcake opponent. Gamer projects they will win 6 of their 17 league games though. Bad news for the Gopher RPI is that they predict Coppin State to have an end of season RPI rank of 304 out of 351.

In looking at their record, I noticed another RealTimeRPI data error. They have Minnesota down as currently having a 2-1 record in the Big Ten, although they do have the correct overall record. Gamer now has us predicted for 7 losses, including @Michigan State, @Northwestern, @Indiana, @Purdue, @Maryland and @Rutgers. But an end of season RPI rank of 25.

Aided by their first win, Incarnate Word is now projected by Gamer to have an end of season RPI rank of 285. Both of these cupcake teams are dragging down the Gopher SoS, so I guess we should cheer them on.

I was curious who had the #1 Strength of Schedule currently. Turns out it's Southern University with an SoS of 0.7149. In addition, Southern has record of 7 losses and no wins (a sparse schedule, apparently). That's good enough to give it a current RPI of 0.5362 for an RPI rank of 116. That RPI ranking puts it ahead of Penn State (7-7), Ohio State (5-7), and Wisconsin (10-5).

Right next to Southern in the #2 SoS slot is Notre Dame with an SoS of 0.6878. That currently gives ND the #1 RPI of 0.7372. Also, ND's #2 SoS is enough to flip it's RPI relative to UConn, putting ND at RPI #1 and UConn RPI at #2 in spite of the fact that UConn beat Notre Dame for its only loss. Remember, RPI is 50% correlated to SoS (opponents won/loss record), and 25% correlated to opponents SoS, but only 25% correlated to the given team's won/loss record. And lowly UConn only has the 8th ranked SoS (0.6280), which makes RPI call it the second-best team in spite of it's undefeated record against a set of good teams, giving it an SoS only 0.0596 lower than ND's SoS.

As a point of reference, Minnesota currently has an SoS of 0.5156. That's 0.1722 lower than ND's SoS. Or about 3X bigger delta than between ND and UConn. But Minnesota has an RPI rank of #25 right now. So 3X bigger SoS delta gets you a 24X bigger offset in RPI ranking number. And technically speaking, Minnesota has a better won/loss record (13-1) at the moment than Notre Dame (12-1).

Moral of the story: If the Gophers had only refrained from playing lowly Coppin State and lowly Incarnate Word, there's a pretty good chance that right now the RPI ranking order would be:
#1: Minnesota Golden Gophers
#2: Notre Dame Fighting Irish
#3: UConn Huskies

That's what we get for being Minnesota Nice. "Send us your poor, your downtrodden, your crappy basketball teams - we'll play them anyway, even if it does kick us from 1st place down to 25th place (in RPIville)."

Fortunately, the purpose of basketball is to win.

The purpose of RPI is to inform us whether we played a sufficient number of winning basketball teams (but without getting beat by too many of them). RPI is like a game of chance, really, which is played at scheduling time (with the dealt cards revealed at game time). Like a poker game with many tables containing poker players of increasing skill. You get to pick what set of tables you play at (or in our case, the previous coach gets to pick). The payout ratio is higher at the better tables. On the other hand, if you play at a table over your skill level, you might get beat and maybe lose your stake. So RPI is a partial measure of basketball skill, but mostly a measure of scheduling skill.

The purpose of the new NCAA men's NET metric is to give us all a good laugh about how ludicrous of an idea it was to lock a committee of mathematically/statistically incompetent basketball coaches in a room, and expect them to come up with something better than the already ridiculous RPI metric.
 
Last edited:

https://extra.ncaa.org/solutions/rpi/Stats Library/DI WBB Nitty Gritty 1-6-19.pdf

Through Sunday's (1-6-19) games with SOS and B1G record:


12 Indiana 70 (3-0)
15 Iowa 17 (1-1)
21 Rutgers 37 (2-1)
28 Michigan State 93 (1-2)
38 Maryland 210 (2-1)
71 Purdue 72 (1-2)
72 Northwestern 77 (2-1)
73 Minnesota 214 (1-2)
79 Nebraska 79 (2-1)
83 Michigan 159 (1-2)
84 Penn State 14 (1-3)
122 Illinois 118 (1-2)
145 Wisconsin 240 (1-3)
161 Ohio State 19 (0-3)
 


With the Illinois loss, we got the RPI double whammy. Played a team in the lower half of the B1G, thus impacting SoS, plus lost. This dropped us from RPI #25 to #73. Gamer predicts us at a 7 loss season (only 5 more at this point), but its predictions are still a bit funky. Its predicts we beat Iowa, for instance, which may be hard to achieve.
 

https://extra.ncaa.org/solutions/rpi/Stats Library/DI WBB Nitty Gritty 1-13-19.pdf

NCAA RPI through Sunday's games with SOS and conference record:

14 Iowa 13 (2-2)
16 Indiana 83 (4-1)
20 Rutgers 47 (5-0)
21 Michigan State 92 (2-3)
25 Maryland 152 (4-1)
46 Purdue 62 (4-1)
64 Michigan 92 (2-3)
80 Penn State 16 (2-3)
83 Minnesota 206 (1-3)
92 Northwestern 56 (2-3)
95 Nebraska 24 (2-3)
129 Ohio State 17 (1-3)
148 Illinois 103 (1-4)
153 Wisconsin 165 (1-4)
 

Edit: I found a typo, plus RPI was updated, before the Iowa game. So updates are provided in-line.

Gamer predicts Gophers at an end of season RPI of 64, with an updated B1G record prediction of 8 wins and 10 losses. I've learned to have a healthy disbelief of Gamer, but to the extent that its prediction might at least be in the ball park and if the NCAA selection committee sees little on our resume besides a Syracuse win and a 64 RPI, then we are indeed likely to be just off the bubble.

Gamer still predicts us beating Iowa tonight (go Gophers, make that prediction true!).

But (via its bias toward guessing teams lose road games) it thinks we lose all B1G road games. It thinks we lose @Wisconsin and @Nebraska by one point.

I think we win more road games than that, so how well we do so, plus how well we protect the Barn, pretty much determines our NCAA fate (unless we also do really well in the B1G tourney).
 
Last edited:

https://extra.ncaa.org/solutions/rpi/Stats Library/DI WBB Nitty Gritty 1-20-19.pdf

The drop reaches triple digits. Through Sunday's games with SOS and conference record.

12 Iowa 13 (5-2)
16 Rutgers 35 (7-0)
27 Maryland 140 (5-2)
28 Michigan State 53 (3-4)
29 Indiana 78 (4-3)
34 Purdue 31 (5-2)
65 Michigan 91 (3-4)
71 Nebraska 25 (4-3)
80 Northwestern 63 (4-3)
99 Ohio State 26 (3-4)
113 Penn State 22 (2-5)
116 Minnesota 210 (2-5)
161 Wisconsin 142 (1-6)
164 Illinois 92 (1-6)
 



https://extra.ncaa.org/solutions/rp... WBB Nitty Gritty 1-27-19.xlsx&action=default

Through Sunday's (1-27-19) games, RPI, SOS and conference record:

10 Iowa 10 (7-2)
16 Rutgers 35 (8-1)
20 Maryland 114 (7-2)
23 Michigan State 54 (5-4)
28 Purdue 19 (5-4)
38 Indiana 69 (5-4)
63 Northwestern 83 (6-3)
71 Michigan 62 (3-6)
98 Nebraska 30 (4-5)
101 Penn State 20 (3-6)
118 Ohio State 23 (3-5)
133 Minnesota 204 (2-6)
170 Wisconsin 155 (2-7)
180 Illinois 106 (1-9)

8 Syracuse
78 Boston College
187 Xavier
 

https://extra.ncaa.org/solutions/rpi/Stats Library/DI WBB Nitty Gritty 2-3-19.pdf

NCAA RPI Through Sunday's (2-3-19) games with SOS and conference record:

13 Iowa 11 (8-3)
16 Rutgers 29 (9-2)
18 Maryland 104 (8-2)
24 Michigan State 55 (6-4)
32 Indiana 64 (6-5)
44 Purdue 28 (6-5)
55 Michigan 60 (5-6)
85 Northwestern 92 (7-4)
100 Nebraska 34 (5-6)
109 Ohio State 35 (5-6)
114 Penn State 19 (3-7)
129 Minnesota (4-7)
178 Wisconsin 145 (2-9)
189 Illinois 116 (Gophers-9)


10 Syracuse 17-4 (6-2 in ACC)
102 Boston College 14-8 (3-6 in ACC)
169 Xavier 11-11 (2-9 in Big East)
 

Note that although this looks like we improved from #133 to #129, we actually went there on a route that took us through #138 - which is in Texas Tech territory. That's why we've been talking about that on the "#1 Baylor versus Texas Tech ..." thread.
 
Last edited:

From our worst RPI rank of #138, and our subsequent improvement to #129 (at which point the B1G leaders were Iowa (#13), Rutgers (#16), Maryland (#18), MSU (#24), Indiana (#32) and Purdue (#44)), RealTimeRPI granted us a $-win for beating Indiana, who was 6-5 in B1G at the time (with Gophers being 4-7 at the time). Apparently, the only advantage in being in the lower quartile of the conference is receiving a $-win for beating a team in the middle of the pack.

By the way, we were granted two $$-wins for beating Rutgers and Syracuse.

That currently (before the Northwestern home game) puts us at an RPI rank of #117. We'll see where we go from there on Monday.

Our overall record is currently 16-7, as compared to, say, Indiana with an only slightly better record of 17-7. But Indiana has an RPI rank of #39 versus our RPI rank of #117. The difference-maker, of course, is Indiana's SoS rank of #57 versus Gopher SoS rank of #150. The stronger Indiana SoS is also evidenced by Indiana having 5 $-wins plus 1 $$-win; whereas Minnesota has 1 $-win plus 2 $$-wins. [That's $7 for Hoosiers and $5 for Gophers.]

Starting from nearly identical win-loss records, the Indiana #57 SoS rank bumps it up to an RPI rank of #39, while the Minnesota #150 SoS rank drags it down to an RPI rank of #117.

This is a simple consequence of the fact that RPI is 3/4 a measure of SoS and only 1/4 a measure of win-loss record. RPI is evil. But NET is, surprisingly, slightly more evil. Both are very close to useless in comparing quality of basketball teams.

Another intriguing mathematical oddity in the case of Indiana is that although being a middle-of-the-road team like the Gophers are at the moment, Indiana's SoS rank of #57 pushes it all the way up to an RPI rank of #39. How can Indiana be considered to be the 39th best basketball team just because (on average) it played the 57th best opponents? That (as Spock would say) is highly illogical.
 
Last edited:



CutDownTheNet said:
From our worst RPI rank of #138, and our subsequent improvement to #129 (at which point the B1G leaders were Iowa (#13), Rutgers (#16), Maryland (#18), MSU (#24), Indiana (#32) and Purdue (#44)), RealTimeRPI granted us a $-win for beating Indiana, who was 6-5 in B1G at the time (with Gophers being 4-7 at the time). Apparently, the only advantage in being in the lower quartile of the conference is receiving a $-win for beating a team in the middle of the pack.

By the way, we were granted two $$-wins for beating Rutgers and Syracuse.

That currently (before the Northwestern home game) puts us at an RPI rank of #117. We'll see where we go from there on Monday.

Our overall record is currently 16-7, as compared to, say, Indiana with an only slightly better record of 17-7. But Indiana has an RPI rank of #39 versus our RPI rank of #117. The difference-maker, of course, is Indiana's SoS rank of #57 versus Gopher SoS rank of #150. The stronger Indiana SoS is also evidenced by Indiana having 5 $-wins plus 1 $$-win; whereas Minnesota has 1 $-win plus 2 $$-wins. [That's $7 for Hoosiers and $5 for Gophers.]

Starting from nearly identical win-loss records, the Indiana #57 SoS rank bumps it up to an RPI rank of #39, while the Minnesota #150 SoS rank drags it down to an RPI rank of #117.

This is a simple consequence of the fact that RPI is 3/4 a measure of SoS and only 1/4 a measure of win-loss record. RPI is evil. But NET is, surprisingly, slightly more evil. Both are very close to useless in comparing quality of basketball teams.

Another intriguing mathematical oddity in the case of Indiana is that although being a middle-of-the-road team like the Gophers are at the moment, Indiana's SoS rank of #57 pushes it all the way up to an RPI rank of #39. How can Indiana be considered to be the 39th best basketball team just because (on average) it played the 57th best opponents? That (as Spock would say) is highly illogical.
Click to expand...

Its honestly amazing how bad our nonconference schedule was. Other than the required big ten/acc challenge we didnt face another team in the top 100 and only BC and Xavier are in the top 200.
 

whalenfan said:
Its honestly amazing how bad our nonconference schedule was. Other than the required big ten/acc challenge we didnt face another team in the top 100 and only BC and Xavier are in the top 200.
Click to expand...

What would be the rationale for Stollings making such a preseason schedule? To pad her W-L record for the next job (not knowing she was leaving prior to the season beginning)? No better teams wanted to make the trip to MPLS? It was clear from the outset that it was a cupcake schedule. And if Whalen hadn't been hired, I suspect that attendance would have further declined given the quality of the competition (the season ticket base would have dwindled further, driving the numbers down automatically).
 

EaganGopher22 said:
What would be the rationale for Stollings making such a preseason schedule? To pad her W-L record for the next job (not knowing she was leaving prior to the season beginning)? No better teams wanted to make the trip to MPLS? It was clear from the outset that it was a cupcake schedule. And if Whalen hadn't been hired, I suspect that attendance would have further declined given the quality of the competition (the season ticket base would have dwindled further, driving the numbers down automatically).
Click to expand...

It might be that she was just wanting to pad her resume with wins in prep for the next job. In hindsight it does kinda look like she may have been using MN as a stepping stone to something better (and/or warmer).

Or maybe she just preferred weak out-of-conference schedules in general since that racks up easy wins. Perhaps she had such confidence in her four-guards-shoot-the-lights-out-but-no-defense strategy that she counted on a strong Big-Ten season to offset the horrible SoS so as to end up in the NCAAs anyway. If so, that strategy only worked for her last year when Carlie led a motivated and dedicated team to make it so, Bubble Party and all. It backfired other years. I still can't figure out how we only made it to the WNIT with Rachel Banham on the team. Oh, never mind, I forgot - no defense.

I don't think anybody has done the analysis, whether the 2017/18 season's non-league opponents were equally cupcake-ish as the schedule she left this year's team with, or slightly stronger, or what. Just out of vague recollection, last year seemed like the same cupcakes with different frosting. San Diego beat us last year, but that was considered a bad loss, so I don't think SD was better then.

It could be as simple as, last year we had Carlie and Gadiva and that was enough to get us lots of B1G wins and a seat at the Bubble Table in spite of really bad SoS dragging down our RPI; and this year we don't.
 

CutDownTheNet said:
It might be that she was just wanting to pad her resume with wins in prep for the next job. In hindsight it does kinda look like she may have been using MN as a stepping stone to something better (and/or warmer).

Or maybe she just preferred weak out-of-conference schedules in general since that racks up easy wins. Perhaps she had such confidence in her four-guards-shoot-the-lights-out-but-no-defense strategy that she counted on a strong Big-Ten season to offset the horrible SoS so as to end up in the NCAAs anyway. If so, that strategy only worked for her last year when Carlie led a motivated and dedicated team to make it so, Bubble Party and all. It backfired other years. I still can't figure out how we only made it to the WNIT with Rachel Banham on the team. Oh, never mind, I forgot - no defense.

I don't think anybody has done the analysis, whether the 2017/18 season's non-league opponents were equally cupcake-ish as the schedule she left this year's team with, or slightly stronger, or what. Just out of vague recollection, last year seemed like the same cupcakes with different frosting. San Diego beat us last year, but that was considered a bad loss, so I don't think SD was better then.

It could be as simple as, last year we had Carlie and Gadiva and that was enough to get us lots of B1G wins and a seat at the Bubble Table in spite of really bad SoS dragging down our RPI; and this year we don't.
Click to expand...
That last part is a good observation. But, honestly, it's not just "in hindsight." Looking at Stollings' pre-Gopher resume, it's clear she was always a couple-years-and-then-move-on-to-something-bigger coach (although I'm not clear that Lubbock meets that criteria -- as you say, it is warmer, though).
 

Let's not forget the mega tonnage anchor that is the home loss to Illinois.
 

thatjanelpick said:
That last part is a good observation. But, honestly, it's not just "in hindsight." Looking at Stollings' pre-Gopher resume, it's clear she was always a couple-years-and-then-move-on-to-something-bigger coach (although I'm not clear that Lubbock meets that criteria -- as you say, it is warmer, though).
Click to expand...

Slightly warmer but it’s such an outpost and could be harder to recruit. Salary bump was nice and they actually paid us to take her.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 

https://extra.ncaa.org/solutions/rpi/Stats Library/DI WBB Nitty Gritty 2-10-19.pdf

NCAA RPI through games of 2/10/29 with SOS and conference record.

11 Iowa 11 (10-3)
17 Maryland 99 (11-2)
19 Rutgers 19 (9-3)
23 Michigan State 36 (6-5)
40 Indiana 58 (6-6)
51 Purdue 32 (7-6)
56 Michigan 71 (7-6)
88 Northwestern 73 (7-6)
96 Nebraska 28 (6-7)
107 Ohio State 29 (6-7)
111 Minnesota 192 (6-7)
130 Penn State 27 (3-9)
185 Wisconsin 152 (2-10)
186 Illinois 105 (2-11)


9 Syracuse
105 Boston College
173 Xavier
 

Ignatius L Hoops said:
https://extra.ncaa.org/solutions/rpi/Stats Library/DI WBB Nitty Gritty 2-10-19.pdf

NCAA RPI through games of 2/10/29 with SOS and conference record.

11 Iowa 11 (10-3)
17 Maryland 99 (11-2)
19 Rutgers 19 (9-3)
23 Michigan State 36 (6-5)
40 Indiana 58 (6-6)
51 Purdue 32 (7-6)
56 Michigan 71 (7-6)
88 Northwestern 73 (7-6)
96 Nebraska 28 (6-7)
107 Ohio State 29 (6-7)
111 Minnesota 192 (6-7)
130 Penn State 27 (3-9)
185 Wisconsin 152 (2-10)
186 Illinois 105 (2-11)


9 Syracuse
105 Boston College
173 Xavier
Click to expand...

Oh, I didn't realize they were in such a hole. Well, just keep winning!
 

I know there has been a lot of explanation about Sos, but when you look at the rankings, we are 15 spots behind Nebraska with Sos of 28, and 4 spots behind Ohio St with Sos of 29. It seems the Sos of 28 and 29 hasn’t helped Nebraska or Ohio that much. Maybe it’s all in the numbers.
 

I’m curious why the Gophers don’t play the good regional teams more often. You know like Green Bay, SDSU, and now even South Dakota. These are teams that would be a good test for the Gophers and also may be beatable. Plus they’d be WAY better for the SOS than teams like Incarnate Word, Coppin St, and Arkansas Pine Bluff.
 

bbwannabe said:
I know there has been a lot of explanation about Sos, but when you look at the rankings, we are 15 spots behind Nebraska with Sos of 28, and 4 spots behind Ohio St with Sos of 29. It seems the Sos of 28 and 29 hasn’t helped Nebraska or Ohio that much. Maybe it’s all in the numbers.
Click to expand...

The updated RPI table in this thread only shows Big-Ten record (of which we are tied with both Nebraska and Ohio State now at 6-7).

what it doesn't show is overall record for the whole season, incorporating their records against their own non-league schedules. Minnesota was perfect against its (admittedly cupcake) pre-season schedule. Nebraska and Ohio State, not so much. They are 11-13 and 10-12, respectively overall for the season, whereas the Gophers are 17-7. So we have an overall winning record, they have an overall losing record. That, of course, is the risk of scheduling better teams in your early season. You take the risk of losing, which doesn't help you much.

So with all those extra losses (practically double the losses the Gophers have had), you'd think that the Gophers would be way ahead of them in RPI. But we're, within some small delta, pretty much at the same place in the RPI ranking, in fact the Gophers a little worse off then them, RPI-wise. That's because Nebraska and Ohio State get a huge boost in RPI from just having played so many better teams than we have played.

Our SoS anchor around our neck, drags us down even more than their actual losses to (not-so-good, but on paper better than the teams we played) pre-season opponents.
 

Just keep winning. It will speak volumes.
 


For reference: Last season at a comparable point (2-12-18) Minnesota's numbers were:

RPI: 46
SOS: 134
Conference Record (8-4)

The Gophers went 3-1 (it was a 16 rather than 18 game schedule) to end the conference season and finished 1-1 in the B1G tournament (defeating Iowa and losing to Ohio State in down to the wire battles).
 

Answering my own question from another thread: It appears the worst RPI ever to make the tournament was 67 (USC). The Gophers will have a really tough time getting there and, obviously, even that wouldn't guarantee them a tournament selection. Focus on the B1G auto-bid!
 

Not sure it a matters, but they're #32 in the AP poll this week. If they would close 4-1 or something, they will probably be ranked in the top 25. Not many top 25 teams get left out, even if their RPI is still poor.
 

thatjanelpick said:
Answering my own question from another thread: It appears the worst RPI ever to make the tournament was 67 (USC). The Gophers will have a really tough time getting there and, obviously, even that wouldn't guarantee them a tournament selection. Focus on the B1G auto-bid!
Click to expand...

Thanks for looking that up. I seem to recall Beknighted, a poster on the Rutgers board who used to write up RPI analysis, found a few power five conference teams that made the tournament with RPI's in the 60's. I'm assuming that those teams were from the highest ranked conference. Right now the B1G is the 4th ranked conference.

Beknighted also said (I remember quoting this last season during the bubble debate), "For what it's worth, the usual cut-off for P5 teams having a really good chance to get into the tourney is around RPI 45."
 

You must log in or register to reply here.



Top Bottom