Fla. State 4 Texas 0

Florida State pummeled Texas 4-0 on goals by Talonen, Yamaguchi, Kazbour, and Lim.

FSU also dominated in Shots 29-5 and SOG 11-2.

FSU has been a good scoring team all season. Their problem was defense. It looks like they might have a handle on that at this stage.

This does, though, suggest the possibility of something I've suspected. I'm wondering if the Big 12 really is pretty weak this year. They play each other during the regular season (big conference) plus play their end-of-season tournament. With that many games among themselves, it makes it hard for them to play a significant number of outside-the-conference games. For Texas to lose 4-0 to Florida State is pretty bad, no matter how good FSU is. And, Oklahoma State lost 4-0 to UCLA. And, Colorado lost to the Pilots 1-0 at home, at altitude to which they're acclimated, in the second game of the weekend -- and only managed 2 shots with none on goal (the game was not as close as the score). Oklahoma State did beat San Diego 2-1, but based on what we saw here, San Diego was way overrated. Only Missouri represented the conference well, going down to USC 1-0 in OT. But, it's first-round 1-1 tie with SE Missouri State was not very impressive. And, it was playing both games at home.

An interesting sidelight of this: The Big 12 got one seed and had three home sites for rounds 1/2. The Pac 10 and WCC combined got four seeds and two home sites.

By the way, if I were Connecticut, which beat Stanford 2-0, I'd be yelling and screaming to have the quarter-final game against Florida State in Connecticut rather than in Florida. Under the NCAA's rules on siting of games after the first two rounds, Connecticut would have a very good argument.

Kenneth Massey had the big 12 as the 5th best conference in the nation as of the 18th , behind the Pac10, ACC, big 10 and West Coast conferences. there is a bit of a drop off after the WCC, so that may reflect what you are suspecting., but I think the drop off might be even worse.

I think there were some results that in retrospect seem pretty anomalous. Remember Texas' win over UCLA the first game? how many would think that could happen now? Some wins by middle of the road Big 12 teams over some powerhouses may have also colored the numbers. Colorado, Oklahoma State, and Missouri scored some wins but were inconsistent otherwise, suggesting they may have been more luck than power.

I think I saw a conference RPI list somewhere a couple weeks ago that had the Big 12 as 6th, but I can't find that now.

All of those teams play bang and boom ball, which is an all or nothing game. If the boom game isn't working, there really isn't much you can do to tweak the game for stronger opponents.
With a short passing game, you can at least focus on different areas.

Good points, guys. Keep up the good work. I know zip about these conferences so, especially at this time of year, it's all very interesting.

I ran an "average RPI" by conference for games through November 4 (the next-to-last weekend before the NCAA tournament), didn't have time to both get out individual team RPIs and also do the conference comparison after the next weekend, although I'll do it after the tournament is over. Here were the conferences and their average RPIs, in alphabetical order:

Average RPI by Conference

ACC 0.5976
America East 0.4483
Atlantic 10 0.4588
Atlantic Sun 0.5104
Big East 0.5433
Big Sky 0.4791
Big South 0.4573
Big 10 0.5701
Big 12 0.5641
Big West 0.5138
Colonial 0.5468
Conf USA 0.5238
Horizon 0.4383
Ivy 0.5278
Metro Atlantic 0.4547
Mid American 0.4762
Missouri Valley 0.4790
Mtn West 0.5334
Northeast 0.4370
Ohio Valley 0.4784
Pac 10 0.5863
Patriot 0.4747
SEC 0.5787
Southern 0.4868
Southland 0.4354
Southwestern 0.3712
Summit 0.4515
Sun Belt 0.4932
WAC 0.4736
WCC 0.5632

I've long suspected that for the larger conferences with end-of-the-year conference tournaments, there are not enough out-of-conference games for the RPI's "strength of schedule" elements to properly relate their teams to other regions' teams. This particularly is a potential problem if the regions in which those conferences are located (or primarily located) have a significant number of very weak other conferences, since those weak conferences provide some of the teams that fill in some of the schedule openings for the "stronger" conferences' teams.

Here are the average RPIs by region:

Average RPI By Region

Central 0.4813
Great Lakes 0.4998
Mid Atlantic 0.4879
Northeast 0.4848
Southeast 0.5065
West 0.5244

As you can see, the West region has by far the highest average RPI. And Central (i.e., Big 12's home base) has the lowest. Also, Southeast may be a little deceptive since the ACC is very strong under almost all measures and may be skewing that one upward by a deceptive amount.