Speaking of RPI, after the @Purdue win, our current RPI is apparently 103 and our SoS is 144, per RealtimeRPI. [Albeit, note again that its future projections are confused.]
The huge anchors around our necks, inflicting mortal wounds to both our SoS and therefore also to our RPI, are the four teams whose own RPIs lie in the 300s, plus a couple in the high 200s:
AR Pine Bluff, RPI = 347
Coppin State, RPI = 325
New Hampshire, RPI = 321
Incarnate Word, RPI = 315
Cornell, RPI = 275
Air Force, RPI = 265
Since there are 350ish D1 teams, all of the above are in the bottom 100 women’s basketball teams. It is these six teams that are sabotaging our SoS. Those few teams damage our SoS so badly that we would have to play 50 really good teams in order for the good-teams’ better record to offset the damage - but there are only 23 teams (other than the above) in our schedule so it’s impossible to play another 50 teams.
This brings up the question raised in another thread, namely what in the world was Stollings thinking when she glibly offered up the Gophers to play over half of their non-league games against bottom-100 teams? Which also comprises over 20% of all regular-season games! [And then promptly left for Texas.]
Of course we’re going to win these six games handily (unless we mess up even more than the Illinois game). But just playing these six teams does irreparable damage to our SoS. And thus tanks our RPI. In fact, the negative aspect of just playing these bottom-dwellers does far more RPI damage than can possibly be recouped by beating all of them (which we did). Beating them only partially recoups the loss of playing them.
In other words, playing any of these bottom-100 teams is always a lose/lose proposition. Rule of thumb to future WBB schedule planners: Absolutely DO NOT schedule any D1 teams whose last-year’s rank (and unfortunately, last year’s RPI is the only thing we have to go on for that) is worse than #250! Unless for some crazy reason you have to. [I don’t think NCAA forces you to play bad teams - correct me if I’m wrong.] You can schedule St. Thomas if you want since D3 teams are discarded for ranking purposes.
The Lady Gophers are at least a top-50 club this year. [Some thought we were top-12, but they didn’t notice all the cupcakes we ate.]
Go look at the top-50 ranked WBB teams, and see how many of them play half-a-dozen bottom-100 teams.
So here’s what would be a rotten shame. If (say) we win out our remaining games and are technically then third ranked (as we are now) among Big-Ten teams when ranked by NCAA win-loss record, yet due solely to our horrible SoS, we don’t get an invitation to the NCAA playoffs. That could potentially happen. If so, the fault would be solely on the ridiculously bad schedule - in particular the bad decision to play the above six bottom-100 teams. We could have (in some alternate reality) played six teams ranked between 150 and 250 instead, and still beaten those replacement teams, and thus had the identical season win-loss record, but without the extreme impact on SoS, and thus a good RPI, and been in the tournament.
Moral: We need to take care in scheduling next year.
