RPI for 2008

FANatic what an insightful post. I was at the game and it seems you were there too. Because I had the same thoughts about the game. We were battling back after Sophie tied it up and most likely would have managed a win without the Amiga infusion. Their players were really amped up for the game. Good crowd (2,900), Senior night (man they had a lot of seniors) and I sensed hope in the air that USD could earn its first WCC Championship. Fact is I thought USD had the better run of play in the first half. They looked more energized. We started wearing them down around the 65th minute and Garrett noticed this also and wanting to make sure, first we were not sharing any part of the title, second, that our playoff starters left the field healthy and not too tired, and three, that our u-20s got some playing time. The final verdict was this Pilot team has many ways to beat you.

I read the Sunday San Diego Tribune before I left and the head line was something like "USD 17 minutes from WCC title." The San Diego Coach, Ada Greenwood was quoted as saying the "timing could not have been worse (for the Toreros)" when Keelin, Ellie and Michelle came roaring out to play. I agree, Garrett "never lifted his foot off their throat" in the second half. Last night was a good example of how we wear teams out trying to chase down all of our passing.

Their fans were geting a little surely after the forth goal. One threw his program and hit me in the back of the head and stormed out before the final whistle blew. Man that felt good.

AP, thanks for "taking one" for the Nation!

They should take it as a compliment that we kept pushing to score, not being satisfied with the 2 goal lead... Plus everyone knows a 2 goal lead is the most dangerous in soccer.

Good news for the Pilots, after finally tracking down the WSU score for today they got the 1-0 victory in OT vs ASU... should solidify their travel plans down to Merlo next Friday!!!!

Here are the RPIs for the top 80 teams according to my calculations through the end of the regular season games, including the conference tournaments. These are what the NCAA should be using, subject to minor variations either because I don't have the exactly correct bonus/penalty amounts or because of data inconsistencies (which should be minimal, if any).

As you will see, the Pilots remain at #4. The big question for the NCAA Division 1 Women's Soccer Committee is going to be what to do about Notre Dame, in position #5. The Committee could leave them where they are on the basis of their weaker strength of schedule, in which case the Pilots stay at #4 and get a #1 seed. They could bump Notre Dame up to #1 on the basis of their win over North Carolina, in which case the Pilots might drop to into a #2 seed position. They could do something more complicated, which I think would be appropriate, with the ranking of the teams being UCLA #1, Portland at #2, Notre Dame at #3, North Carolina at #4 and Stanford at #5.

It looks like Washington will get a seed, so will not come to Portland. It looks like Washington State is in. Washington State and Washington can't be at the same round 1/2 site, so it looks like Washington State will be here. In my opinion, they are very tough. In round 1, we should play the team with the weakest RPI, so my guess is we'll get WSU in round 2 if they win their first round game.

It looks like the Ducks are out. My hunches on that one proved wrong.

1 North Carolina U 0.736426
2 Stanford 0.715058
3 UCLA 0.713352
4 Portland U 0.703365
5 Notre Dame 0.701860
6 Florida State 0.684069
7 Boston College 0.669482
8 Florida U 0.664714
9 Penn State 0.658350
10 Virginia U 0.644738
11 Oklahoma State 0.639815
12 Duke 0.639083
13 USC 0.636899
14 Texas A&M 0.636786
15 Washington U 0.632906
16 Colorado U 0.631827
17 BYU 0.630873
18 Wake Forest 0.624359
19 Missouri U 0.623711
20 Wisconsin Milwaukee 0.622516
21 Texas U 0.620931
22 Minnesota U 0.618985
23 Long Beach State 0.618703
24 Charlotte 0.613662
25 Virginia Tech 0.611227
26 Princeton 0.609837
27 San Diego U 0.608861
28 Denver 0.606334
29 Harvard 0.605162
30 Illinois U 0.605012
31 Miami FL 0.604379
32 UCF 0.603843
33 Kansas U 0.601578
34 West Virginia U 0.601250
35 Rutgers 0.599687
36 Georgia U 0.599439
37 Washington State 0.594877
38 LSU 0.592627
39 South Carolina U 0.591793
40 East Carolina 0.591003
41 Marquette 0.590903
42 William and Mary 0.589596
43 Michigan State 0.589384
44 Memphis 0.588015
45 California U 0.587980
46 Boston U 0.587643
47 UNC Greensboro 0.584181
48 James Madison 0.583751
49 Auburn 0.583683
50 Dayton 0.583233
51 Hofstra 0.582720
52 Loyola Marymount 0.581799
53 Purdue 0.579997
54 Connecticut U 0.579372
55 Western Kentucky 0.578482
56 Oregon U 0.577335
57 Old Dominion 0.576403
58 Utah U 0.574773
59 TCU 0.573004
60 Columbia 0.571070
61 Northwestern U 0.571008
62 Arizona State 0.570913
63 UC Santa Barbara 0.570745
64 Colorado College 0.568652
65 UNC Wilmington 0.566948
66 Ohio State 0.566366
67 Toledo 0.565264
68 New Mexico U 0.565060
69 Louisville 0.562832
70 Tennessee U 0.562743
71 Fairfield 0.562689
72 Brown 0.560600
73 Georgetown 0.560158
74 Arizona U 0.557493
75 Northeastern 0.555225
76 Kennesaw State 0.551177
77 Saint Louis 0.550909
78 St Johns 0.548352
79 Cincinnati 0.548280
80 Rice 0.547282

Whooo hooo!

We are top 4 and WSU is # 37!!! I am reminded of the wizard of OZ.

(there's no place like home...there's no place like home.....)


UPSF, you are DA Man

We are all humbled by your work on the RPI again this year. Thanks again

The only question now is....

Does the seeding committe resemble this:


Or something more along these lines:

Oh btw and the RPI work really is quite impressive!!! Haha you are truly the Nate Silver of womens soccer

double post

DaTruRochin wrote:The only question now is....

Does the seeding committe resemble this:
.......
Or something more along these lines:
.......

something more like this, I think.




UPSF's work will see to that.

Haha I was thinking Glinda was more benevolent.... Not some blowhard scoundrel hiding behind a curtain.

Thanks for you work UPSF.

Here is my guess on the host sites. Feel free to make your own bracket and compare to the NCAA blender.

#1 seeds:

UNC hosts (W carolina, SC, Charlotte)

Stanford gets shipped to (Tenn where they play Belmont 1st, while Tenn plays Memphis). I could be wrong an USC gets shipped but Stan goes to a weak 3 in TN is my guess.

UCLA hosts (NAU, SD, UCSB)

Portland hosts (WSU, who else comes is a real guess since can't be pac 10 and mt teams have a foursome. My wild guess is WF and Morehead St)

#2 seeds:

ND hosts (Evansville, MSU & Marquette)

FSU hosts (MVSU, Cal, Georgia)

BC hosts ( Northeastern, BU, Harvard,)

FL hosts ( Miami, UCF, Ill)

#3 seeds

PSU hosts (Toledo, VT & WV)

Vir hosts (Radford, Missouri, Army)

OK St gets shipped to CCSU along with Fairfield, Hofstra)

Duke hosts (E Caro, Tex, W&M)
#4 seeds

USC hosts (Fresno, Kan, LB st)

A&M hosts ( Tex st, LSU, Minn)

Col hosts ( S Dak St, BYU, Denver)

UW gets shipped to NJ (Princeton, Rutgers, UW-Mil)

Now we wait until NCAA at 5 pm.

Hmm,

normal seeding would mean that UP's first opponent would be one of the four lowest seeds, then the other two teams would be in the 32-40 range.

Morehead state has a sufficiently low RPI to fit for the first game.

WSU is in the second category, so there needs to be a second school in that range .

Wake, at 18, seems way too high to fly across country to the Northwest. they should be playing someone in the 44-48 highest seed range.

UPSF showed that's how it was generally done last year, and NCAA politics would indicate it would be hard to deviate from that model. Both Wake and UP wuld have grounds to cry "foul".

Maybe if we switch out Kansas at USC and WF it might work better. Some of those 8 ACC teams are going to have to travel since they don't play the first weekend.

My guess is we'll get one of the schools you have with UNC.

My guess, Charlotte.

UNC may get Kansas, since they should get one 32-35 and 1 36-39

And if USC hosts, wake is a better fit there.

Notre Dame and Marquette are both big east schools.

Thank you Geez and Rochin.

There is indeed peace and harmony in my PN World once again!

(Note: You guys don't have to continue with those signatures if you don't want to. I really do appreciate the gesture!)

There's a shocker. San Diego to go to UCLA for 1st round action......LOL.

This came up on the cowbells thread, but it really belongs here. The question there was how the NCAA could give Notre Dame the #1 seed when they had a #5 rank in the RPI. I've been analyzing another set of RPI questions, namely why Wake Forest, at #18 in the RPI, got one of the four #3 seeds, meaning the Women's Soccer Committee put them at #9-12; and why Penn State, at #9 in the RPI, got no seed at all. That question got me into something the NCAA calls the "non-conference" RPI.

The "non-conference RPI" is computed this way. It uses the same approach as the RPI except that for Conference A, in computing its teams' RPIs, you delete from the database all games among that conference's teams. You include all other conferences' intra-conference games, and just exclude that conference's intra-conference games. After going through that process for each conference, you have a "non-conference" RPI for every team and can rank them in a single system. The NCAA mentions, in the Women's Soccer Championship Handbook, that one of the tools they look at is the non-conference RPI, but it took a long time for me to figure out what they meant. I finally found it out from reviewing a highly credible NCAA basketball RPI website.

The non-conference RPI actually explains why the Committee did what it did with Wake Forest and Penn State. But in the process, I realized that the non-conference RPI had some applicability to Portland. Specifically, Portland has the best non-conference RPI in the country.

Anyway, I have written up a piece, for those wanting to understand in a lot of detail, the criteria the Committee uses, and the various sub-elements of those criteria including the non-conference RPI. In the piece, I describe each of the sub-elements and then apply them to Wake Forest, Penn State, and Portland. My specific purpose actually was to explain why the NCAA might have made the decision it did on Wake Forest and Penn State, and then to show how the same process would have applied to Portland's situation with the other four highly ranked teams and to raise questions about whether the NCAA applied the criteria consistently to all three teams. I don't argue that the Pilots should have gotten a #1 seed, as I think there's no way to be absolute about that given the NCAA criteria and their various sub-elements. But, what the NCAA did with Wake Forest and Penn State and did not do with the Pilots raises some interesting questions.

Now, the point of all this is that for those wanting to really dig into what the NCAA's thinking might have been about the Pilots seeding, I go through a detailed analysis in the piece I wrote. If you care to look at it, I've posted it on BigSoccer on its RPI thread. You can access the thread with the following link, and the analysis is in the cpthomas thread posted at 7:26 pm today. It's not an attachment, it's actually in the thread, so if you just use the link and go to the post, you can read it. The link is: http://www.bigsoccer.com/forum/showthread.php?t=650592

UPSF -

Wow! Really impressive work.

After reading most and understanding a little of this, I THINK I am reinforced in my original prediction that Portland was going to be the number 5 overall seed (top 2 seed). I think you are saying that, especially as now constituted, RPI should not be, and is not, the sole criterion. I pictured it as a sort of tie breaker, at least for the top level teams.

Therefore - Notre Dame was RPI number 5, but they were going to be the number 1 seed, as they should be - undefeated, untied, beat UNC at UNC, played in a tough conference. UCLA beat us plus had a higher RPI. So, no doubt with these two teams. UNC and Stanford had no direct relation to us, so use RPI to break the tie. Also.
whether we or Stanford are 4 or 5, we end up playing each other in the 4th round, the only difference being WHERE the game takes place.

Before anyone can upbraid me, I retract the comment about Notre Dame playing in a tough conference. I was thinking about UNC when I wrote that.

fan from afar wrote: only difference being WHERE the game takes place.

And as you have experienced.... Big difference.

fan from afar wrote:Before anyone can upbraid me, I retract the comment about Notre Dame playing in a tough conference. I was thinking about UNC when I wrote that.

Ha ha... don't worry. No upbraiding for me.

But you know what bothers me about the Big East? It always calls itself the BIG EAST in all caps. It annoys the living heck out of me. If it were an acronym like the SEC or ACC... fine. But BIG EAST? It's sooooooo stupid.

The only acceptable way to call the BCS conference: ACC, SEC, Pac-10, Big 12, Big 10, Big East. That's it. Get this BIG EAST crap out of here.

That's not as confounding as the conference that can't even add up how many members it has.

It makes you wonder about their academics.....

From BIG EAST country -

Go Syracuse (in basketball)