NCAA Monday RPI 2018-19 Season

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howeda7 said:
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.
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Only one person voted for the Gophers, and it’s hard to say how much they pay attention. Saying they rank #32 to the AP (in this case, one person), isn’t very meaningful.
 

hungan1 said:
Just keep winning. It will speak volumes.
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Bingo. We can do all the math we want. Just win.

Avenge Purdue. Demolish Penn State
Shock Maryland. Sweep Rutgers.
Avenge Michigan State.
This team has tools to beat ANY big ten team.
The key is using the press to make teams uncomfortable, and keeping the extra shooter on the court to open the paint against big ten defense
 

Ignatius L Hoops said:
... 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. ...
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I didn’t know they ranked conferences. That’s intriguing. Do you have a URL where they give conference rankings?

I googled, but Google is so thick-headed that as soon as I use the terms basketball and tank, it just blithely assumes I want team rankings, and there’s no way to convince it otherwise.
 

I tried a different search engine but only found rankings for Men's conference
 
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CutDownTheNet said:
I didn’t know they ranked conferences. That’s intriguing. Do you have a URL where they give conference rankings?

I googled, but Google is so thick-headed that as soon as I use the terms basketball and tank, it just blithely assumes I want team rankings, and there’s no way to convince it otherwise.
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Here's the NCAA main RPI page. Just fill in Division, Sport and Gender a list will appear below.

https://extra.ncaa.org/solutions/rpi/SitePages/Home.aspx

The conference RPI is listed on the various sheets. Here's the nitty-gritty sheet from yesterday for instance:

https://extra.ncaa.org/solutions/rpi/Stats Library/DI WBB Nitty Gritty 2-12-19.pdf
 



For those scoring at home, Gopher opponent Arkansas-Pine Bluff has the fifth-worst RPI in the nation. (And, since it's wins and losses that actually affect the Gopher RPI, not opponent RPIs, it's worth noting that Pine Bluff has a grand total of one win. Schedule-wise, they're the gift that keeps on taking.)
 

https://extra.ncaa.org/solutions/rpi/Stats Library/DI WBB Nitty Gritty 2-17-19.pdf

B1G RPI through games of 2-17-19 with SOS and conference record (we remain above the really terrible B1G teams and below the remainder):

9 Iowa 11 (12-3)
17 Maryland 100 (12-3)
27 Rutgers 30 (9-4)
29 Michigan State 46 (7-7)
48 Indiana 51 (6-8)
49 Michigan 78 (9-6)
60 Purdue 31 (8-7)
85 Nebraska 20 (7-8)
93 Ohio State 39 (8-7)
96 Northwestern 92 (8-7)
102 Minnesota 203 (8-7)
136 Penn State 25 (3-11)
184 Wisconsin 152 (3-11)
191 Illinois 91 (2-13)

Non-conference Gopher opponents:

12 Syracuse
117 Boston College
192 Xavier
227 Cornell
236 Rhode Island
259 San Diego
275 Air Force
308 Incarnate Word
317 New Hampshire
329 Coppin State
346 Arkansas Pine Bluff
 

Gophers are #39 in Massey. Not sure what criteria is different between the two but that is a large differential when comparing to RPI.
 



Waffle said:
Gophers are #39 in Massey. Not sure what criteria is different between the two but that is a large differential when comparing to RPI.
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Must be strength of schedule
 

Donovan said:
Must be strength of schedule
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Massey Ratings

https://www.masseyratings.com/cbw/ncaa-d1/ratings

through Feb 17, 2019 games
(Includes leader Baylor as a point of reference)

Team Rec Rating Off Def SoS
Baylor 23-1 2.74 (1) 105.21 (7) 36.51 (1) 55.37 (5)

Maryland 23-3 2.32 (10) 100.99 (15) 29.64 (31) 49.77 (42)
Iowa 21-5 2.26 (12) 105.04 (8) 24.00 (86) 53.17 (14)
Rutgers 18-7 2.04 (28) 85.71 (139) 35.23 (3) 50.52 (30)
Michigan 18-9 1.98 (34) 93.94 (47) 26.60 (54) 49.72 (43)
Michigan State 17-8 1.97 (36) 99.36 (21) 21.89 (121) 50.24 (35)
Minnesota 19-7 1.95 (39) 92.12 (64) 28.35 (39) 46.41 (72)
Purdue 17-11 1.89 (50) 88.11 (106) 29.87 (29) 50.98 (26)
Indiana 17-10 1.84 (57) 93.28 (52) 24.77 (74) 49.99 (38)
Northwestern 15-11 1.84 (59) 89.56 (84) 29.67 (30) 49.67 (44)
Ohio State 12-12 1.82 (61) 87.77 (109) 27.63 (47) 52.52 (18)
Nebraska 12-14 1.81 (62) 96.36 (34) 22.70 (109) 52.70 (15)
Wisconsin 12-14 1.54 (117) 86.34 (127) 23.33 (103) 45.66 (79)
Penn State 10-15 1.52 (122) 92.51 (57) 17.03 (209) 48.53 (53)
Illinois 10-16 1.43 (138) 89.37 (88) 17.66 (195) 45.98 (75)

Non-conference Gopher opponents

Team Rec Rating Off Def SoS
Syracuse 19-6 2.16 (18) 100.44 (17) 25.66 (65) 52.52 (17)
Boston College 14-12 1.64 (93) 97.88 (29) 14.65 (249) 46.12 (74)
Xavier 10-14 1.44 (134) 83.16 (177) 23.55 (97) 44.94 (84)
Cornell 9-10 1.19 (200) 75.61 (285) 23.62 (95) 34.85 (211)
San Diego 8-18 1.03 (243) 78.68 (242) 14.21 (252) 39.57 (123)
Air Force 8-16 1.01 (248) 78.38 (246) 16.26 (219) 37.04 (180)
Rhode Island 7-17 1.01 (250) 80.31 (221) 12.93 (274) 38.56 (150)
New Hampshire 6-20 0.65 (319) 69.53 (338) 13.96 (256) 29.77 (287)
Incarnate Word 3-20 0.57 (324) 73.47 (310) 8.73 (319) 33.48 (231)
Arkansas Pine Bluff 5-14 0.34 (346) 63.90 (350) 11.19 (299) 21.30 (349)
Coppin State 2-22 0.28 (349) 72.33 (316) 4.57 (343) 29.06 (298)

The numbers in parens are rankings for the raw ratings to their left. The Rating (Ranking) and SoS stats loosely correspond to RPI and Strength of Schedule (and their rankings) only on a different scale.

I’m not sure, but the Off(ense) and Def(ense) raw ratings seem to loosely correspond to (respectively) number of average points a team would score against a zero-rated defense, and decrement one should subtract from other team’s offense.

The key point about Massey ratings is that it is most likely the most mathematically and statistically sophisticated set of metrics, and due to that it is probably the least (improperly) biased metrics. It can be read as being closest to the best estimate of team basketball quality.

Compared to Massey as a good source of truth, the bad to worse metrics stack up as follows:

RPI is not a direct measure of team basketball quality. Rather, it is mostly a measure of how good a job a team’s administrative staff did in lining up non-conference teams to play that have pretty high rating yet are still beatable. Oh, and just for grins they throw in 1/4 times a measure of the won-loss record, adjusted for home advantage. Last year’s Gopher staff did a horrible job at playing this game, so we get assigned an RPI of #102 at the moment. Minnesota loses the administrative RPI game. Other teams win the RPI game by lining up top-ten teams to play, and they gain RPI creds by just playing and losing to them. In other words, RPI is extremely tilted toward putting an over-emphasis on strength of schedule. Also, RPI only counts who won and where, discounting completely margin of victory.

On the other extreme, the ugly new men’s NET rating is equally bad (or possibly worse). It is mostly based on margin of victory (not just who won), and places too little emphasis on strength of schedule. So you may see weak teams making it to the playoffs just because they killed other weak teams in margin of victory. And teams will try to game NET by leaving starters in just to increase margin of victory. Also, one part of NET violates a fundamental principle of statistics that is too deep to get into here.

At least with RPI, if you're reasonable in setting up your NC schedule, you can keep RPI from killing you and putting you on the NCAA-tournament scrap heap. Stollings left us a horrible NC schedule in her will before leaving, and so we pay the price for not setting up a reasonable schedule. With NET on the other hand, a team is essentially encouraged to game the NET system. So rather than the default of (just do a good job scheduling your NC schedule) that exists with RPI, instead with NET the schools have an insidious motivation to schedule weak schools in their NC schedule - just so that they can get lots of games in which they run-up the margin of victory. So once schools realize this "feature" of NET for the men's game, we may see schools rushing to schedule Coppin State and Arkansas Pine Bluff into their NC schedule. In fact, quite ironically, actually, if the NCAA should happen to make the huge mistake of switching the womens' game from RPI to NET starting next year, we'd actually have to send an emergency telegram to the Gopher Womens' Basketball coaching staff to "hold the horses on dismissing Coppin State and Arkansas Pine Bluff from our NC schedule, since now that NCAA has flipped the scheduling game that we must play, we (like the men) now actually want to load up with cupcake teams! NCAA is so stupid.

Other metrics are available. KenPom is well known. But I’ve read that it is 98% correlated to NET, and thus inherits the NET evils.

So Minnesota Lady Gophers get a Massey Rating that ranks #39 on the Massey scale. That’s a pretty fair ranking. No doubt it’s hurt just a little bit by weak NC schedule - but not hurt much, since Massey has built in math features that recognize much of our weak NC schedule as throw-away games, and thus minimize the negative impact thereof, as opposed to RPI that is dominated by our weak schedule, and in fact is mostly a measure of Schedule weakness or strength. In fact, to that point, Massey's SoS ranking for Minnesota is #72. That's weak, but a far cry from the #203 SoS ranking given to us by RPI. That's because Massey minimizes the impact of that weak schedule on its Massey rating system, whereas RPI maximizes the impact of that weak schedule in its RPI.

The amount of SoS impact that remains (even in Massey, which downplays it at #72) from our cupcake NC schedule - well, that's pretty much what puts us in 6th Massey place among the Big Ten, right behind Rutgers, Michigan and Michigan State. If we had had control over our NC schedule this year, and if the new coaching staff had utilized that control to do a better NC scheduling job, we could have easily scheduled some #150 to #200 teams in place of the #250 to #350 teams, and we still could have beat those substitute teams, so we'd have the same record against a vastly improved (in RPI's mind) SoS (and a moderately improved Sos in Massey's mind). That would have almost certainly put us in 3rd place among Big Ten teams on the Massey scale.

From the reasoning in the last paragraph, and given that Massey is a more accurate metric of "how good a basketball team that a given team is," we can at least interpret that with a bit of pride in that it states that the Lady Gophers are approximately the 3rd-best team in the Big Ten. And on any given game day, we're also capable of beating Maryland and Iowa. So we only need to keep up the trend of excellence, in an effort to overcome the clerical error that is our current RPI ranking.

So in a word, yes, the difference is that Massey (properly) minimizes the impact of poor SoS, whereas RPI gloats on poor SoS.
 
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In slightly good RPI news, Arkansas Pine Bluff halted a seven-game losing streak last night.
 

thatjanelpick said:
In slightly good RPI news, Arkansas Pine Bluff halted a seven-game losing streak last night.
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Sweet! Nice job, APB.

Holy RPI !!! That bumps the Gophers RPI from #102 up to #101, according to RealtimeRPI. And our SoS jumps from #202 all the way up to #149. I’m guessing some of our other opponents besides APB might also have won a game.

And Gamer’s prediction for our end-of-season RPI is now #89 with a final estimated SoS of #111. This is based on Gamer thinking we’ll lose our two road games at Maryland and Rutgers, and win our home game with MSU.

Of course, that means we can do better than a final #89 RPI if we can steal one of those road games (or preferably both) while at the same time holding serve against Michigan State.

Go Gophers!
 



[Warning: This got to be a longer rant than any normal rant, even by my standards. So caveat reader. But my line of thought led me to what I actually think is a good solution to the problem of bad RPI and bad NET rating systems, and bad selection algorithms used by the Selection Committee.]

An interesting couple of side notes regarding Massey basketball ratings, especially as compared to RPI and NET ratings.

On the one hand, Massey ratings are fair and mathematically/statistically sophisticated and thus about as close as any model can get to a source of truth re the question, “How good are each of this set of teams at playing basketball, relatively speaking?”

Compared to a baseline Massey “quite accurate source of truth,” the RPI metric is highly skewed in the direction of putting way too much emphasis on a team needing to play against a set of comparable teams, and severely punishing a “Minnesota Nice” team that generously offers to play a set of teams way below its caliber. Is Minnesota Nice such a crime that it deserves the punishment of effectively banning the Lady Gophers from the NCAA tournament? I think not. Massey treats that Minnesota Nice generosity with fairness, whereas RPI treats it as a capitol offense.

The NET metric tries to remedy the symptom of RPI hyper-emphasizing having a quality Strength of Schedule (and not playing too many cupcake teams). It does achieve that goal, but at what a cost! If you consider the analogy of RPI being a sinking boat capsizing by taking on water on the port side, then NET is a sinking boat capsizing by taking on water on the starboard side. By switching the Men to NET we have swapped out one sinking ship for another.

Furthermore, the way NET works is now giving bonus credits for playing cupcake teams. Because when you play cupcake teams you increase your average margin of victory, and that’s a key factor in improving your NET rating. If we thought that playing cupcake teams was such a bad idea in Womens hoops that we were OK with giving the Minnesota Nice Lady Gophers the NCAA death penalty for doing so, then why did we switch over the Mens rating system to a NET rating that absolutely encourages teams to schedule cupcake teams into their NC schedule so as to game the NET rating system to their advantage. All of a sudden we’re going to have 50 states worth of Mens teams all rushing to be Minnesota Nice (and probably offering cash cupcake bribes to any cupcake team that is willing to play them. I can see it now, there will probably be a cupcake black market on the Dark Web.)

By the way, the NET rating system came from assembling a committee of Mens basketball coaches and letting them make their political arguments, and then come to a consensus recommendation. All of these committee members were statistical idiots. Not to mention mathematical illiterates. They had to have been, given that what they came up with was just as bad as RPI, only failing in the other direction. To add insult to injury, to get the advertising benefits, the otherwise technically sound Google signed on to help the committee to commit an egregious Data-Science error. NET is a comedy of errors that would be difficult for a fiction writer to concoct.

But consider the following proposal for a completely revamped rating system and Committee selection criteria, which would completely solve the problem.

Instead of a boat swamping on the left (for the Women) and a boat swamping on the right (for the Men), there is a simple solution to the current Fiasco of the NCAA using two statistically and mathematically bankrupt metrics designed by committees of statistically illiterate coaches, to try to sort out who makes the playoffs at the end of each season.

The better idea goes like this (but of course it’s too sensible for the NCAA’s likings):

You start by using a mathematically and statistically sound and fair metric as your primary judge of basketball quality - with Massey ratings being one good exemplar of such. You also bump the field to 96 teams from 64, each of the 96 teams being ranked, mostly (see below) on the basis of the new (Massey-like) basketball-quality rating metric, but some discretion allowed for the Committee. The 65-96 ranked teams will compete in an extra preliminary round against the 33-64 ranked teams, thus determining the 33-64 placed competitors who will compete in the round-of-64 as usual.

Admission to the initial 96 candidates is as follows: First, each conference’s winner is added to the list of 96 (however that winner is determined, such as conference tourney for Big Ten). Let’s say that K slots remain to be filled. You choose each of those K teams by going right down the (Massey-like) ranking list starting with first place. If a team is already on the list (by virtue of winning the conference) then skip it cuz it’s already on the list, otherwise add it to the list. Repeat until you select a total of 96 teams. When you get to selecting the last 16 teams, the Committee gets some discretion, and may deviate from list order due to other resume factors.

This way, not only are there some extra slots available for second-place teams in also-ran conferences (in case that conference had a great year), but there are also additional slots available for Power-5 teams that otherwise would have been cut in order to make room to give each conference at least one slot on the NCAA tournament. Let these marginal teams play their way into the tournament.

This better system could be used for both Men and Women NCAAs. After all, both RPI and NET are messed up (in different ways), so both RPI and NET need to be replaced. It’s absolutely not a matter of determining which of RPI or NET is “best” in some sense, and choosing to use that one for both. Both of them are worst in their own sense.

If we had used the above sensible system this year to let supposedly marginal teams play their way into the tournament, then here’s how it would look for the Big Ten (using the current almost-end of-season Massey ratings shown in parentheses) ...

Maryland (#10)
Iowa (#12)
Rutgers (#28)

Michigan (#34)
Michigan State (#36)
Minnesota (#39)
Purdue (#50)
Indiana (#57)
Northwestern (#59)
Ohio State (#61)
Nebraska (#62)

The first group of three (Maryland, Iowa, Rutgers) would get a bye for the play-in round.

The second group of eight (Michigan, MSU, Minnesota, Purdue, Indiana, NW, OSU, Nebraska) would all get an opportunity to play their way into the round-of-64 via the new play-your-way-in round - with each receiving matchups based on their relative rankings.

You may have noticed that under this better system fully 11 out of the 14 Big-Ten teams get a chance to compete in the NCAA playoffs. This is indicative of how strong the Big Ten is, as well as how tightly grouped it is in the middle of the pack this year, thanks to parity in the middle. The three Big Ten teams not getting a chance under the proposed new system are ...

Wisconsin (#117)
Penn State (#122)
Illinois (#138)

I think we can agree that those three are not bubble teams this year.

But after the first-three definitely-in teams, every one of the 8 middle-of-the-pack teams is bubble-ish in at least some sense. In the current horrible RPI-based selection system, the Committee is left to chose from among these 8 teams in what amounts to a very arbitrary manner. They might say something like “Let’s cross the Minnesota Nice Lady Gophers off the list as punishment for playing too many cupcake teams” - even though everybody knows that they are just as good as the Michigans and better than Purdue/Indiana/NW.

Continuing their conversation, the Committee might say something like “Whew, that was easy, now what arbitrary criterion are we going to use to cut the remaining 7 Big-Ten pack teams down to, say 3, or maybe 4 if we’re generous?”

[And meanwhile, across the hall in the Mens Committee meeting, they’re using the equally ridiculous NET rating to decide which teams to let In the playoffs, based on the fact that they played a sufficiently high number of cupcake teams to artificially jack up their NET scores. I’m not making this up people, this is exactly what will be happening in a few weeks. One can’t help but note the irony in this.]

Playing your way into the round-of-64 is just a better idea in so many ways.

The following non-conference Gopher opponents would also find themselves with an NCAA opportunity under the proposed new system ...

Syracuse (#18) with a bye for the play-in round
Boston College (#93)

So even Boston College gets a hard-fought opportunity to make it into the NCAA tourney.

This idea is partly inspired by how well it has worked for the WNBA to instate one-and-done games as WNBA tournament qualifiers.
 
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It's not just the non-conference schedule. The conference losses (and schedule) are also a major drag on Minnesota's RPI. Minnesota's only top 50 RPI conference win is Rutgers. We've played and lost to Iowa, Michigan and Michigan State (Indiana's RPI rose above 50 with the loss to Rutgers.

Yes, the next three games could improve the conference ranking. But, currently, four of our 15 games were against Penn State (3-11), Illinois (a 2-13 loss) and Wisconsin (twice at 3-11). Other than Rutgers the only conference teams with winning record that we've defeated are 8-7 (Northwestern and Purdue). In a ranking system that only cares about wins and losses that doesn't move the needle.
 

Plus the Gophers had some luck in this recent win streak. I don’t think they’re nearly as good a team as people want to believe, but I’m very open to being proven wrong.
 

http://www.ncaa.org/about/resources/media-center/womens-basketball-selections-101-selections

Just a reminder of the NCAA selection criteria (historically, no matter where they put the emphasis, RPI tends to track the committees selections):


In no specific priority order, the committee considers the following criteria in the selections process:

Availability of talent.
Bad losses.
Common opponents.
Competitive in losses.
Conference record.
Early competition versus late competition.
Head to head.
Nonconference record.
Overall record.
Regional rankings.
Strength of schedule.
RPI.
Significant wins.
Strength of conference

The committee members are:

Rhonda Lundin Bennett Division I Women’s Basketball Committee chair and senior associate athletics director/senior woman administrator, University of Nevada, Reno
Ceal Barry, deputy athletics director, University of Colorado, Boulder
Ken Bothof, director of athletics, Northern Kentucky University
DeJuena Chizer, senior associate athletics director/SWA, University of Houston
Leslie Claybrook, assistant commissioner, Southeastern Conference
Nina King, senior deputy director of athletics, Duke University
Tamica Smith Jones, director of athletics, University of California, Riverside
Teresa Phillips, director of athletics, Tennessee State University
Deborah Richardson, senior associate commissioner, Atlantic 10 Conference
Diane C. Turnham, senior associate athletics director, Middle Tennessee State University
 

Ignatius L Hoops said:
... Just a reminder of the NCAA selection criteria (historically, no matter where they put the emphasis, RPI tends to track the committees selections): ...
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Thanks for the link, Iggy. It's nice to know that there is some sort of standard that they're supposed to judge to.

And I know the committee members probably put in a lot of work putting together formal portfolios for the different teams.

My two fears about this process are as follows:

(1) If it's true that "historically, no matter where they put the emphasis, RPI tends to track the Committees selections" then that makes me worry that in spite of a laundry list of 14 criteria that they're supposed to consider (only one of which is RPI), in practice they might get a little lazy and mostly just consider RPI. Otherwise, the correlation between RPI and actual selections would be hard to explain. Because there's a wide variation among RPI of the candidates, partly due to wide variations in SoS, so that one would not expect a good correlation fit among selections - unless, that is, they mostly just use RPI rank to determine selections, plus a tiny bit of tweaking via the other factors. [It doesn't tell them that they have to use any specific mixture of those criteria.]

(2) I worry that the Committee might utilize RPI alone as some sort of pre-screening criterion - in other words, you first have to make it through the solely RPI-based pre-screening cutoff threshold before they will even go ahead and start to consider the other 13 factors, and indeed build a profile for that team.

When you think about it, one could not fault them much for setting an absolute max threshold of 100 or so, as an absolute RPI cutoff. Look at the following RPIs of the bottom 3 Big-Ten teams:

RPI Team (Record)
136 Penn State (3-11)
184 Wisconsin (3-11)
191 Illinois (2-13)

None of these teams has won more than 3 Big-Ten games. They're not going to win a championship - so just cut them out with an RPI low-pass filter - nobody objects to that.

Seeing the non-performance of those three, though, one might be tempted to say that it would be a no-brainer to simply set an RPI low-pass filter at 100. Surely no decent B1G team would have an RPI rank of #100, would they.

You would be wrong. The Gophers are a credible team with (now) a 6-game win streak (in spite of some bad losses earlier). But I would argue that the Committee ought to at least look at the Gophers (in spite of a bad Illinois loss, for instance).

But here's where the Gophers stand right now (which is only 3 games from the end of the main season) ...

RPI Team (Record)
101 Minnesota (8-7)

An RPI low-pass filter would simply lop them off from any NCAA consideration.

And rightfully so if we don't get any more wins.

But this is a very weird and almost once-in-a-century tsunami of events surrounding the Gophers current situation.

First of all, we have several serious problems that make our RPI doubly bad. The first problem is legit, that string of B1G losses, and we need to get several wins to offset those, for sure. The second problem is that we have a new coach, but she had no control over the schedule, which was largely set by the departing coach. Sure, maybe we could have stiffed some of those teams on their game at the last minute, but that would have been gauche at a minimum, and potentially lawsuits at a max. The third related problem is then that the former coach had an almost macabre desire to play ridiculously weak NC teams - the cupcakes, as we call them. As pointed out, we not only got stuck with a schedule that we wouldn't have wanted (if we had anything to say about it), but the schedule we got stuck with is probably the worst/most-cupcake NC schedule that any B1G team has competed against, over the entire course of history of the Big Ten.

Then you add to that the obscure mathematical/statistical features of the RPI (which is not suited to being a measure of good basketball quality, but more suited to measuring strength of a team's schedule, since 3/4 of the stat is just SoS-related).

So we already made ourselves a bubble-caliber team on our own doing. But then the RPI stat takes that, and compounds it by making the RPI statistic to be worsened so much, that it's over 100 (101), when any reasonable metric would have us at 40-ish.

So if the committee just discards us onto the trash heap without even considering us, only due to the conjectured 100 RPI cutoff, then we got a bad deal. Since we're really a 40-ish bubble team, we should have at least been considered. 40 is less than 100, last time I checked. The distorted mathematics of the RPI transforms what should have been a 40-ish ranking into a 101 ranking.

Granted, we need a few wins to make that 40-ish bubble rating more like a 30-ish rating, even if they were literally consider us a 40.

But again compounding matters is that even after we get a conjectured 3 more good wins, so that our true-valued rating ought to be 30-ish, the RPI is still going to call us 80-ish. The extra padding of +50 ranking slots comes from the bad luck of getting stuck with a horrible cupcake SoS that we didn't ask for, plus the unfortunate mal-design of the RPI metric to begin with.

So even if they use a seemingly quite reasonable 80-RPI low-pass filter, we might not even make that cut, in spite of potentially getting 3 more wins. 3 more wins might make us into a should-be-rated 30th place team, but instead, when RPI gets done turning data into garbage, you end up with an 80th ranked RPI. If the Committee sets a low-pass RPI filter at 80, then we might be done. Unless we perform even more miraculously (and say, win out the regular season).

Plus there were some earlier comment on the order of, it's never or hardly ever happened that a team got into the playoffs with an RPI over 60.

So the bad deal is that the Lady Gophers got hit by a tsunami of compound problems, some of their own making, but most just circumstances beyond their control (for instance, if there are any Statistics majors among the Gopher team, they probably weren't even born yet when the RPI got mal-designed, so they did not have the option to go to that meeting of statistical idiots who designed RPI, and tell them what a bunch of retards they were being).
 
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Ignatius L Hoops said:
It's not just the non-conference schedule. The conference losses (and schedule) are also a major drag on Minnesota's RPI. Minnesota's only top 50 RPI conference win is Rutgers. We've played and lost to Iowa, Michigan and Michigan State (Indiana's RPI rose above 50 with the loss to Rutgers.

Yes, the next three games could improve the conference ranking. But, currently, four of our 15 games were against Penn State (3-11), Illinois (a 2-13 loss) and Wisconsin (twice at 3-11). Other than Rutgers the only conference teams with winning record that we've defeated are 8-7 (Northwestern and Purdue). In a ranking system that only cares about wins and losses that doesn't move the needle.
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The problem is surely half of our own making due to the string of B1G losses - the hole we're now trying to dig our way out of.

Very good point too, that we kinda had some bad luck in who we drew to play in-conference. We get to play Wisconsin twice? Nice short bus ride, but seriously, that don't help our SoS any. And Illinois? - Then we add insult to injury by losing that one too. That was the biggest ouch. We get to play MSU a second time, so maybe that helps - but we better win against MSU - it's almost a must-win game, and MSU is not a pushover.

So our work is cut out for us.
 

There's no question RPI plays a key role on who's in and who's out. Many of the other criteria help set seedings for the ins and decide the bubble burst for the outs. Flawed as RPI is, it's the only criteria examining the whole field in relation to each other. It's the only non-anecdotal criteria.

Two years ago Michigan was famously left out of the NCAA's. I think the RPI "Team Sheet" was the major factor. Michigan had a 46 RPI and a 101 SOS-generally solid credentials for a power 5 conference team. The Wolverines were 11-5 in conference and 28-9 overall. They lost to Michigan State in the first round of the B1G tournament.

But, the RPI details were not good. Six of their B1G wins were against the truly terrible PSU, Rutgers, Wisconsin and Illinois. All four of those teams had RPI's 196 and over. At the opposite end of the spectrum, Michigan had no RPI top 50 wins. They played 3 teams ranked in the top 25 and 3 teams ranked 26-50. They lost all six. It seemed logical to me actually; but certainly not to the Wolverines.

This season, Minnesota's poor B1G start eliminated the buffer or popped the bubble. Take your pick. As Lindsay said, the team underachieved. Wins are the only antidote.
 

Purely by RPI, after yesterday's games, here's how the B1G shakes out:

In the NCAA
9 Iowa
14 Maryland
25 Rutgers
43 Michigan

On the Bubble
47 Michigan State
48 Indiana

Out
73 Purdue
78 Ohio State
82 Nebraska
101 Minnesota
117 Northwestern
131 Penn State
184 Wisconsin
196 Illinois
 

Indiana only went up 6 spots after beating Iowa whos got a higher rpi than maryland. Gophers only chance of a tourney birth is most likely to win the big ten tourney.
 

whalenfan said:
Indiana only went up 6 spots after beating Iowa whos got a higher rpi than maryland. Gophers only chance of a tourney birth is most likely to win the big ten tourney.
Click to expand...

Yes, winning the B1G Tourney is pretty much the only path to the NCAAs at this point - although that doesn’t minimize the importance of winning the Rutgers and Michigan State games as prep for the B1G.

We have so many games on the books at this point that one game doesn’t move the needle much.

Our RPI didn’t budge from #101 after the Maryland game, although our SoS Rank advanced to #143 from a recent #149.

Since RPI is mostly a measure of SoS, we gained enough of a bump in RPI just from playing Maryland, such that that bump perfectly offset the small decrement we got from losing. Of course, we had them all but beat, so if we’d just been able to play 50 more seconds of basketball, then instead of the small decrement from losing, we would have gotten a small increment from winning.

By some estimation calculations that would make my brain hurt to try to explain, I can make a very approximate guess that a win at Maryland would have moved the RPI needle to about #90 instead of the current #101.

Of course, Rutgers and Michigan State do not have the RPI rating that Maryland has, so although just playing them will give us an RPI bump - not as big a one as playing Maryland did.

RealtimeRPI Gamer, who still predicts that we lose to Rutgers but win at home against MSU, now predicts a final (pre-B1G-tourney) RPI of #92 and SoS of #116.

The SoS won’t budge much from #116. [Unless Arkansas Pine Bluff and Coppin State win out the rest of their seasons.]

If we want to realize the RPI #92, then we are allowed to lose to Rutgers but need to beat MSU. If we beat Rutgers as well as MSU then we could garner an 85ish RPI.

That could have been 75ish by playing 50 more seconds of basketball in Maryland. A #85 RPI is not going to impress the Committee.
 

https://extra.ncaa.org/solutions/rpi/Stats Library/DI WBB Nitty Gritty 2-24-19.pdf

RPI with SOS and conference record through games of 2-24-19. Yes, it will change after a rather full slate of important games tonight.

7 Iowa 9 (12-4)
13 Maryland 83 (13-3)
26 Rutgers 26 (10-5)
39 Michigan State 52 (8-8)
44 Michigan 67 (10-7)

49 Indiana 42 (7-9)

71 Purdue 43 (8-8)
75 Ohio State 32 (9-7)
79 Nebraska 23 (8-8)
106 Minnesota 189 (8-8)
117 Northwestern 102 (8-8)
126 Penn State 27 (5-11)
181 Wisconsin 156 (4-11)
210 Illinois 109 (2-15)
 

NCAA RPI through games of 3 March including SOS and B1G record.

Ins:
9 Iowa 14 (15-4)
14 Maryland 91 (15-3)
25 Rutgers 28 (13-5)

Nervous:
41 Michigan State 52 (9-9)
44 Michigan 82 (11-7)

Bubble:
49 Indiana 47 (8-10)

Outs:
82 Nebraska 22 (9-9)
85 Ohio State 32 (10-8)
87 Purdue 37 (8-10)
97 Minnesota 161 (9-9)
109 Northwestern 89 (9-9)
145 Penn State 27 (5-13)
191 Wisconsin 143 (4-14)
211 Illinois 99 (2-16)
 

Here’s to hoping Minnesota knocks Indiana out of the tournament (in Charlie Creme’s mind. They’re already out in my mind) and they hurt the seedings of the other teams locked into the tournament.
 

Does anybody with the more insider information know anything about not having a holiday tournament this year? Was it because they blew the budget on the Italy trip? I’m sure Italy was a great experience for the players, but not having a holiday tournament probably contributed to the Gopher poor SOS. Holiday tournaments usually have your better teams. Any insight?

In any case, even though the team likely takes a step back next year with the loss of four seniors, I’m looking forward to a more challenging off season schedule.
 

Shades said:
Does anybody with the more insider information know anything about not having a holiday tournament this year? Was it because they blew the budget on the Italy trip? I’m sure Italy was a great experience for the players, but not having a holiday tournament probably contributed to the Gopher poor SOS. Holiday tournaments usually have your better teams. Any insight?

In any case, even though the team likely takes a step back next year with the loss of four seniors, I’m looking forward to a more challenging off season schedule.
Click to expand...
I dont believe it had anything to do with the budget. The visiting and playing overseas is planned every 4 years.
I believe Stollings had already set the schedule during the holidays and they still have to honor playing away unless they buy back those games.
So it could be another year before they can go to holiday tournaments.
I hope they can get out of playing Arkansas pine bluff and Cornell

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk
 

Shades said:
Here’s to hoping Minnesota knocks Indiana out of the tournament (in Charlie Creme’s mind. They’re already out in my mind) and they hurt the seedings of the other teams locked into the tournament.
Click to expand...

Charlie still has Indiana In, in the Last Four In group. They should be Out already to my way of thinking, since they’re 8-10 in the Big Ten, and you shouldn’t be in the NCAAs if you can’t beat half of your peers in your conference. Gophers went 9-9 and just barely beat half their peers.

With about equal offense stats and 5 points better defense, hopefully we parley that onto a victory on Thursday, moving them to 8-11. At 1.5 games below even, I don’t think Charlie can cling on to the Indiana myth.

With them out, that makes room for the Gophers if we win the B1G Tourney. Or looking at it another way, if we do win the B1G, and the Committee most likely doesn’t want to go to 7 Big Ten teams, then in that case Indiana is Out for sure.
 
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NCAA RPI with SOS through Sunday's B1G tournament. The B1G is close to having eight teams with above 100 RPI.

INS:
7 Iowa 7
14 Maryland 70
28 Rutgers 28
42 Michigan State 46 (6-5 versus RPI top 50; Best RPI wins: Oregon, Iowa, Maryland, Rutgers, Michigan and Indiana)

NERVOUS
45 Michigan 46 (4-10 versus RPI top 50; Best RPI wins: Iowa, Rutgers, Missouri, Indiana)

BUBBLE:
46 Indiana (5-6 versus RPI top 50: Best RPI wins: Iowa, UCLA, South Dakota, Michigan State and Michigan)

OUTS:
91 Purdue 49
94 Nebraska 24
102 Ohio State 38
108 Minnesota 171 (4-6 versus RPI top 50; Best RPI wins: Syracuse, Rutgers, Michigan State, Indiana)
116 Northwestern 85
141 Texas Tech 52 (0-9 versus RPI top 50)
146 Penn State 35
184 Wisconsin 163
225 Illinois 109
 

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