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Message: [QUOTE="bennyskid, post: 3068217, member: 9471"] What really disadvantages the mid-major powers is not that they can't get enough top-50 or top-100 games (although that is a legitimate frustration). It is that the RPI punishes teams way too hard when they play sub-200 or sub-300 teams. When evaluating tournament teams, the difference between beating #120, #220, or #320 is trivial - a tournament team should win all three games easily. But playing the #320 team absolutely destroys your RPI. Is this right? Team A and Team B play identical schedules with identical results, and are on the bubble going into their conference tourneys. Then Team A plays three games, beating a 1-30 team, a 3-28 team, and the defending nation champion 30-1 team in the finals. Team B beats three 12-19 teams. Which will have the higher RPI? Team B. Mid-major conferences invariably have more sub-200 teams than the power conferences. Drake can't get enough good wins to compensate for playing Valpo and Evansville. Even if they played nothing but top-100, Power 5 teams in November and December, they would still struggle to get their RPI into the top 16. And UConn has zero margin for error if a Top 4 RPI is a goal. Fortunately, the committee looks very hard at the top seeds and the fact that UConn is only #6 right now won't cost them a 1-seed. But when it comes to deciding who gets the last 4-seed (and hosting), I don't think teams like Gonzaga and Drake get a fair shake. And when you get to the last bubble teams, it's obvious that the mid-majors are at a huge disadvantage. There are simple fixes. The most obvious is to simply calculate an "adjusted RPI" that ignores victories against teams below a reasonable threshold - say, #176 (the median school). (Losses would stay in the calculation, of course.) That would make the RPI a little less obviously bad. [/QUOTE]

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