Most improved teams (by RPI) from last year to now

[Plebe]

While we are still on this interregnum between Selection Monday and Friday's opening-round games, I was curious about which postseason teams have shown the most improvement since last year. I was particularly interested to see how UCF's improvement stacked up against the other most-improved teams.

For convenience, and despite all its flaws, I simply used the RPI.

In the NCAA tournament:

And in the WNIT:

 

[warbler1055]

Quinnipiac and Temple caught my eyes!!!

 

[eebmg]

Very Interesting. Makes me wonder about the reverse. Largest drop off's ?

 

[Jim R]

If I were a school looking for a new Head Coach, its a good list of schools to review, to see if a coaching change was the main impetus for the turn around!

 

[eebmg]

If I were a school looking for a new Head Coach, its a good list of schools to review, to see if a coaching change was the main impetus for the turn around!

If I was responsible for hiring, I would need more than 1 year as evidence. If the new higher level is sustainable, go get im.

 

[Jim R]

If I was responsible for hiring, I would need more than 1 year as evidence. If the new higher level is sustainable, go get im.

re : "more than one year" - agreed....but, it's one indicator that might lead to others.

 

[Dillon77]

If I were a school looking for a new Head Coach, its a good list of schools to review, to see if a coaching change was the main impetus for the turn around!

If I were a school looking for a new Head Coach, its a good list of schools to review, to see if a coaching change was the main impetus for the turn around!

As a matter of fact, JD Gravina, Head Coach of the Western Illinois Fighting Leathernecks is listed a candidate for the newly vacant Illinois position. He seems to recruit equally from that tri-state region of Illinois, Wisconsin and Iowa, with a Floridan and Okie dropped in, to boot.

 

[UConn79]

Very Interesting. Makes me wonder about the reverse. Largest drop off's ?

Plebe, can you get on this for us. Thx

 

[Vowelguy]

RPI is not a great measure of quality, so I'm not sure how to interpret improvement in RPI.

 

[UcMiami]

Really interesting list, but some of it is 'luck of the draw' kind of stuff in terms of using RPI - you can have the exact same record year over year, and even play the exact same teams, and have your RPI number skyrocket with opponents and their opponents winning one or two more games over the course of 25-30 games. That is especially true because you aren't looking at the raw number but the relative number compared to other teams so moving from 320 to 150 is not a significant change in raw number, just moving over a bunch of other low numbers.
And when you look at a team like Miss State - they are clearly a better team, but a big driver of their improved RPI is at the back end of their schedule: 2016 101-200 RPI 11 games vs 7, 201+ RPI 6 vs. 4, and on the plus side 51-100 RPI 3 vs. 7. I assuming you are using the full year RPI so they actually have a more RPI 1-50 games last year 16 vs 15 (Chattanooga #42, MichSt #18, and Uconn #1 were NCAA games) In fact in just the OOC it is a pretty identical year over year in terms of top 50 - TX both years (L in 2016, W in 2017) and wins USF #20 in 2016 vs Oregon #35 and ArkLR #44 It is harder for them to move up from RPI 20 - RPI 5 just because they are moving above teams that already have relatively strong RPI numbers, but like MD having such a bad RPI is driven by their scheduling and not by the quality of their team, the shift of games in OOC from 200+ RPI to 50-100 RPI is probably driving most of Miss States move.

 

[Plebe]

RPI is not a great measure of quality, so I'm not sure how to interpret improvement in RPI.

I would've liked to use Massey and/or Sagarin, but I don't know how to find last year's ratings.

 

[UcMiami]

I would've liked to use Massey and/or Sagarin, but I don't know how to find last year's ratings.

Massey is easy - click on the 'more' up at the top near the match up stuff and a list drops down - CBW2016 gives you the final ranking for the 2016 season (and from that page I believe you can go further back.) Sagarin I have never found.

 

[Plebe]

Massey is easy - click on the 'more' up at the top near the match up stuff and a list drops down - CBW2016 gives you the final ranking for the 2016 season (and from that page I believe you can go further back.) Sagarin I have never found.

Wow, that's really cool! I guess I should've asked sooner. Thanks for the tip!

 

[Plebe]

I added the Massey rankings, here for the NCAA teams:

The improvement in ranking was more modest for most of the teams, but improvement nonetheless.

 

[UcMiami]

I added the Massey rankings, here for the NCAA teams:

The improvement in ranking was more modest for most of the teams, but improvement nonetheless.

Thanks - it is interesting to see the comparison - differences jump out like Quinnipiac which is obviously SOS driven on the RPI.

And I am not surprised, I wasn't meaning that the teams with huge jumps in RPI were all bogus, just that I suspected it was being exaggerated by the nature of RPI calculations.

 

[Plebe]

I also added the Massey ranking comparison for the most improved teams in the WNIT.

Again, the discrepancies between RPI and Massey are minor in most cases, but more significant for a few (UALR, Harvard, Colorado, New Hampshire).

 

[UcMiami]

Thinking about this is interesting because we live in a world where the team we focus on really don't move much - occasionally someone disappears for a year or two and then reappears, or a Miss St comes out of nowhere, but mostly we know ND, SC, Baylor, Louisville, MD, etc. are going to be dancing around the top ten by whatever measure you want to look at and Uconn hasn't moved much in the last decade.

 

[rvwsleep]

What, no Tennessee ?
Oh, I've been assured that they will appear NEXT year on the list of most improved.

 

[Jim R]

What, no Tennessee ?
Oh, I've been assured that they will appear NEXT year on the list of most improved.

Hmmm, isn't that what we've heard, since, what, 2012?