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Posters often complain about RPI being a flawed statistic and clearly it is but like or not it is a demon we have to live with. There have been many posts about what if this happened and what if that happened. So, just for kicks I was messing around with RPI wizard today which some of you have referenced and it is amazing what relatively small tweaks do to your RPI.
Our current RPI is 57 according to RPI wizard.
Our worst and I believe most avoidable losses this year were Temple and Cincinnati at home. If you change those two games to wins we are 23-8 with an RPI of 29 and solidly in the field.
If you change either of those games, either Temple or Cincinnati to win and make them a split, we are 22-9 with a 37 RPI and in much better shape than we are now. So just one more win against one of those teams makes a huge difference.
Now I got creative (for me anyway). I said what about those five cupcakes we played early? I removed Sacred Heart and Umass Lowell from our schedule. They were RPI 261 and 260 respectively. Instead I looked for and found a couple of local "mid-majors" we are all familiar with. I substituted them with Siena at RPI 104 and URI at RPI 106. Now (assuming those were wins) our RPI calculated at 40 and a 44 SOS. Again, an improvement.
So what does the team do going forward? Should we drop two cupcakes and look for some teams like Siena and URI that aren't great teams but usually don't carry 250+ RPIs I don't think? In our area there are several of those teams that tend to be 150+ right like Yale, Albany, Manhattan, St Joes, etc.
Anyway, I realize many of you are probably saying "um, duh!" but I didn't realize how pretty small changes make pretty big differences.
Our current RPI is 57 according to RPI wizard.
Our worst and I believe most avoidable losses this year were Temple and Cincinnati at home. If you change those two games to wins we are 23-8 with an RPI of 29 and solidly in the field.
If you change either of those games, either Temple or Cincinnati to win and make them a split, we are 22-9 with a 37 RPI and in much better shape than we are now. So just one more win against one of those teams makes a huge difference.
Now I got creative (for me anyway). I said what about those five cupcakes we played early? I removed Sacred Heart and Umass Lowell from our schedule. They were RPI 261 and 260 respectively. Instead I looked for and found a couple of local "mid-majors" we are all familiar with. I substituted them with Siena at RPI 104 and URI at RPI 106. Now (assuming those were wins) our RPI calculated at 40 and a 44 SOS. Again, an improvement.
So what does the team do going forward? Should we drop two cupcakes and look for some teams like Siena and URI that aren't great teams but usually don't carry 250+ RPIs I don't think? In our area there are several of those teams that tend to be 150+ right like Yale, Albany, Manhattan, St Joes, etc.
Anyway, I realize many of you are probably saying "um, duh!" but I didn't realize how pretty small changes make pretty big differences.