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NCAA committee to highlight quality road wins
The men's basketball selection committee will put a greater emphasis on quality road wins beginning next season, the NCAA announced on Friday.
Next year, teams aiming for the NCAA tournament will be evaluated according to quality home wins (top 30 in the RPI), neutral site wins (top 50) and road wins (top 75). The tiers expand from there with the same criteria.
A team that beats an opponent rated 50th on the road will get more credit for that victory than it would for a home win over a squad ranked 40th in the eyes of the committee. The change will also ensure teams will not suffer the same penalties for road losses as they do for home wins in the selection process.
"We consulted with experts within the coaching and analytics fields who looked at historical data, based on winning percentages by game location, to come up with these dividing lines within each of the columns," Michigan State athletic director Mark Hollis, the current chair of the committee, said in the release. "The emphasis of performing well on the road is important, as was the need for teams not to be penalized as much for road losses. Beating elite competition, regardless of the game location, will still be rewarded, but the committee wanted the team sheets to reflect that a road game against a team ranked 60th is mathematically more difficult and of higher quality than a home game versus a team ranked 35th. We feel this change accomplishes that."
Translation: It's harder to win on the road and it's time to accurately acknowledge that within the evaluation process.
The move also signals an ongoing move away from the RPI, largely a raw strength-of-schedule metric that values quality wins and minimizes the impact of location, as a significant factor in the committee's decisions. Per the NCAA release, the committee expects to employ a new composite metric by the 2018-19 season after meeting with various experts in recent months.
The men's basketball selection committee will put a greater emphasis on quality road wins beginning next season, the NCAA announced on Friday.
Next year, teams aiming for the NCAA tournament will be evaluated according to quality home wins (top 30 in the RPI), neutral site wins (top 50) and road wins (top 75). The tiers expand from there with the same criteria.
A team that beats an opponent rated 50th on the road will get more credit for that victory than it would for a home win over a squad ranked 40th in the eyes of the committee. The change will also ensure teams will not suffer the same penalties for road losses as they do for home wins in the selection process.
"We consulted with experts within the coaching and analytics fields who looked at historical data, based on winning percentages by game location, to come up with these dividing lines within each of the columns," Michigan State athletic director Mark Hollis, the current chair of the committee, said in the release. "The emphasis of performing well on the road is important, as was the need for teams not to be penalized as much for road losses. Beating elite competition, regardless of the game location, will still be rewarded, but the committee wanted the team sheets to reflect that a road game against a team ranked 60th is mathematically more difficult and of higher quality than a home game versus a team ranked 35th. We feel this change accomplishes that."
Translation: It's harder to win on the road and it's time to accurately acknowledge that within the evaluation process.
The move also signals an ongoing move away from the RPI, largely a raw strength-of-schedule metric that values quality wins and minimizes the impact of location, as a significant factor in the committee's decisions. Per the NCAA release, the committee expects to employ a new composite metric by the 2018-19 season after meeting with various experts in recent months.