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Misunderstood metric
Public puts more emphasis on basketball RPI than tournament selection committees do
Public puts more emphasis on basketball RPI than tournament selection committees do
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By Greg Johnson
The NCAA News
The NCAA News
In Division I men’s and women’s basketball, no three letters attract more attention — or misunderstanding — than “RPI.”
Indeed, interest in the Rating Percentage Index has grown exponentially over the years, fueled largely by a misperception that the metric is the primary ingredient in seeding and bracketing the basketball championships.
That belief has flourished despite the constant refrain from the Division I Men’s and Women’s Basketball Committees that the RPI is just one of many criteria used in the process. It is not the exclusive — or even the primary — decision-making component for the committee. But each year prognosticators and fans talk about the RPI as the basis for speculating beforehand and complaining afterward about brackets.
The over-emphasis on the RPI is understandable, since various unofficial versions of the ranking are published by mainstream media every week throughout the season. But the fact is that the selection committees rely on many other factors, such as a team’s performance in the last 10 games of the season, strength of schedule, quality road wins, and above all, evaluation of quality, to make their final decisions.
But pundits and fans aren’t privy to committee discussions, so they cling to the published RPI as the sole indicator of a team’s standing.
“The RPI is simply a general indicator of relative strength,” said Gary Walters, chair of the Division I Men’s Basketball Committee and the athletics director at Princeton University. “It is not a perfect indicator of strength. What the RPI does for the committee is provide members with a ‘skeleton’ of relative performance.”
To de-mystify the RPI, the men’s and women’s committees began releasing the official NCAA RPI publicly during the 2005-06 season. That will continue this season. The first publication will appear on NCAAsports.com January 15.
“There was no access to the NCAA RPI for years, and I believe it led to the belief that it was such a main focus,” said Judy Southard, chair of the Division I Women’s Basketball Committee and senior associate athletics director at Louisiana State University. “I think that perpetuated the perception. The fact that we’ve opened it up for consumption makes the issue more transparent.”
RPI factors
The RPI was created in 1981 to provide supplemental data for the men’s committee in its evaluation of teams for at-large selection and seeding of the championship bracket. A women’s basketball RPI was developed soon after.
NCAA statistics staff members calculate RPIs for men’s and women’s soccer, women’s volleyball, field hockey, baseball and softball. RPIs for those sports also will be publicly released this academic year.
Three factors weigh heavily in the men’s and women’s basketball RPI. A team’s record against Division I opponents constitutes 25 percent of the calculation; 50 percent is a team’s Division I opponents’ winning percentage, and 25 percent represents the Division I opponents’ opponents’ winning percentage.
“When we talk strength of schedule, we are analyzing the ranking of a team’s opponents’ winning percentage,” Southard said. “That’s not a qualitative index, and it means strength of schedule does not measure the quality of a team or a team’s opponents. It simply ranks their average winning percentage against other teams.”
The RPIs also can include bonuses and penalties that can be used at the relevant sports committee’s discretion. The men’s basketball RPI used to employ the bonus/penalty component for road wins, for example, but the committee eliminated the practice after 20 years of research showed home teams winning about two-thirds of the time. The committee went to a new RPI formula that weighs each road win at 1.4, each road loss at .6, each home win at .6 and each home loss at 1.4 in the win or loss column. Neutral-site games are valued at 1.0.
“The RPI as a tool has greater validity today in men’s basketball than it did two years ago, because it now takes into account where games are played,” Walters said.
Oliver Purnell, the men’s coach at Clemson University and president of the National Association of Basketball Coaches, said he doubted whether many coaches could explain the new tweaks to the RPI, but he said they generally understand and trust how it is used in the selection process.
“There is still some confusion about the way it is compiled,” Purnell said, “but I think the message of the RPI being only a piece of the process has gotten through over the last couple of years.
“Now the question is: ‘How much of a piece is it?’ ”
The human factor
There is no cut-and-dry answer to that question, because selections are subject to a review of so many criteria.
Bob Bowlsby, a former chair of the men’s basketball committee and the current director of athletics at Stanford University, said every year he was involved in the process (from 2001 through 2005), the final two at-large spots often came down to as many as seven teams.
“At that point they all look alike,” Bowlsby said. “You can’t slide a piece of paper between them. You have to develop your own process. One of the things I used to look for is how teams play in big games on the road. I believe teams that go into tough environments, play in big games and do well on the road are probably teams that will do well in the tournament.”
Bowlsby said in 2001 the men’s committee selected a 16-14 University of Georgia team to be in the field, while leaving out the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, which was 21-10. Georgia’s RPI was 23rd due to the competition it faced, and Alabama’s was 50th heading into the day the teams were selected.
“It was because Georgia had played in a tougher side of the Southeastern Conference, and because its nonconference schedule was third in the country and Alabama was 294th,” Bowlsby said.
Last March, the committee selected George Mason University for an at-large bid, but didn’t select Hofstra University, which had won both head-to-head matchups between the Colonial Athletic Association rivals.
The committee believed that over the course of the entire season George Mason’s resume was stronger. The Patriots made the most of the decision by advancing to the Final Four.
Florida State University, which finished 9-7 in the Atlantic Coast Conference last season and had an RPI of 63 going into the day of selection, didn’t receive a bid mainly because of its nonconference strength of schedule.
Florida State scheduled aggressively this year, with games at the University of Pittsburgh and at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Florida State also defeated the University of Florida, the defending national champions.
“Let’s say you play every one of your nonconference games against the top 100,” Purnell suggested. “How does losing to three of those compare to winning against three teams from the bottom 150?”
Bowlsby said committee members are more impressed by a team challenging itself, especially with road games.
Doug Bruno, the women’s coach at DePaul University and the president of the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association, questions whether the RPI can take into account all the factors that lead to an end result.
“I’m not sure there is a criterion in women’s basketball that consistently evaluates not only where you play but even when you play,” said Bruno, who is pleased that the NCAA RPI is now publicized. “Where you play often has a lot to do with when upsets take place. I don’t know if a computer can get into that.”
That’s why the RPI is just one part of the process. Committee members can answer those types of questions by monitoring hundreds games on television and in person throughout the season.
The NCAA staff also provides information such as schedules and whether a key injury to a student-athlete may have affected the outcome.
“The number of games the committee watches is pretty overwhelming,” said Lynn Parkes, former chair of the Division I Women’s Basketball Committee and associate athletics director at the University of Memphis. “We had people in that room who watched as many as 300 games. I would say most people watched an average of 100 to 150.”
Since the process includes a human factor, those outside the meeting room must understand that a cookie-cutter approach to selections wouldn’t work.
“We have coaches out there who would like very much for us to tie this up in a neat little package, put a bow on it and give them a listing in priority order in how we are looking at things,” Southard said. “That’s not the way we do this. We all look at it differently. What makes this work is the composition of the committee.”
Thus, committee members don’t mind the attention the selection process receives, but they would like for everyone to remember that the letters “RPI” don’t carry more weight than other selection criteria.
“You see on ESPN or one of those programs and they say, ‘Well this institution is 48th and this one 42nd, so obviously the 48th is left out and the 42 gets in,’” Bowlsby said. “The committee never uses the RPI that way. Unfortunately, it’s the information that the public has access to, so they use it in ways that it was never intended. The committee would never use RPI to make a decision on a final team. It just doesn’t work that way.”
Indeed, interest in the Rating Percentage Index has grown exponentially over the years, fueled largely by a misperception that the metric is the primary ingredient in seeding and bracketing the basketball championships.
That belief has flourished despite the constant refrain from the Division I Men’s and Women’s Basketball Committees that the RPI is just one of many criteria used in the process. It is not the exclusive — or even the primary — decision-making component for the committee. But each year prognosticators and fans talk about the RPI as the basis for speculating beforehand and complaining afterward about brackets.
The over-emphasis on the RPI is understandable, since various unofficial versions of the ranking are published by mainstream media every week throughout the season. But the fact is that the selection committees rely on many other factors, such as a team’s performance in the last 10 games of the season, strength of schedule, quality road wins, and above all, evaluation of quality, to make their final decisions.
But pundits and fans aren’t privy to committee discussions, so they cling to the published RPI as the sole indicator of a team’s standing.
“The RPI is simply a general indicator of relative strength,” said Gary Walters, chair of the Division I Men’s Basketball Committee and the athletics director at Princeton University. “It is not a perfect indicator of strength. What the RPI does for the committee is provide members with a ‘skeleton’ of relative performance.”
To de-mystify the RPI, the men’s and women’s committees began releasing the official NCAA RPI publicly during the 2005-06 season. That will continue this season. The first publication will appear on NCAAsports.com January 15.
“There was no access to the NCAA RPI for years, and I believe it led to the belief that it was such a main focus,” said Judy Southard, chair of the Division I Women’s Basketball Committee and senior associate athletics director at Louisiana State University. “I think that perpetuated the perception. The fact that we’ve opened it up for consumption makes the issue more transparent.”
RPI factors
The RPI was created in 1981 to provide supplemental data for the men’s committee in its evaluation of teams for at-large selection and seeding of the championship bracket. A women’s basketball RPI was developed soon after.
NCAA statistics staff members calculate RPIs for men’s and women’s soccer, women’s volleyball, field hockey, baseball and softball. RPIs for those sports also will be publicly released this academic year.
Three factors weigh heavily in the men’s and women’s basketball RPI. A team’s record against Division I opponents constitutes 25 percent of the calculation; 50 percent is a team’s Division I opponents’ winning percentage, and 25 percent represents the Division I opponents’ opponents’ winning percentage.
“When we talk strength of schedule, we are analyzing the ranking of a team’s opponents’ winning percentage,” Southard said. “That’s not a qualitative index, and it means strength of schedule does not measure the quality of a team or a team’s opponents. It simply ranks their average winning percentage against other teams.”
The RPIs also can include bonuses and penalties that can be used at the relevant sports committee’s discretion. The men’s basketball RPI used to employ the bonus/penalty component for road wins, for example, but the committee eliminated the practice after 20 years of research showed home teams winning about two-thirds of the time. The committee went to a new RPI formula that weighs each road win at 1.4, each road loss at .6, each home win at .6 and each home loss at 1.4 in the win or loss column. Neutral-site games are valued at 1.0.
“The RPI as a tool has greater validity today in men’s basketball than it did two years ago, because it now takes into account where games are played,” Walters said.
Oliver Purnell, the men’s coach at Clemson University and president of the National Association of Basketball Coaches, said he doubted whether many coaches could explain the new tweaks to the RPI, but he said they generally understand and trust how it is used in the selection process.
“There is still some confusion about the way it is compiled,” Purnell said, “but I think the message of the RPI being only a piece of the process has gotten through over the last couple of years.
“Now the question is: ‘How much of a piece is it?’ ”
The human factor
There is no cut-and-dry answer to that question, because selections are subject to a review of so many criteria.
Bob Bowlsby, a former chair of the men’s basketball committee and the current director of athletics at Stanford University, said every year he was involved in the process (from 2001 through 2005), the final two at-large spots often came down to as many as seven teams.
“At that point they all look alike,” Bowlsby said. “You can’t slide a piece of paper between them. You have to develop your own process. One of the things I used to look for is how teams play in big games on the road. I believe teams that go into tough environments, play in big games and do well on the road are probably teams that will do well in the tournament.”
Bowlsby said in 2001 the men’s committee selected a 16-14 University of Georgia team to be in the field, while leaving out the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, which was 21-10. Georgia’s RPI was 23rd due to the competition it faced, and Alabama’s was 50th heading into the day the teams were selected.
“It was because Georgia had played in a tougher side of the Southeastern Conference, and because its nonconference schedule was third in the country and Alabama was 294th,” Bowlsby said.
Last March, the committee selected George Mason University for an at-large bid, but didn’t select Hofstra University, which had won both head-to-head matchups between the Colonial Athletic Association rivals.
The committee believed that over the course of the entire season George Mason’s resume was stronger. The Patriots made the most of the decision by advancing to the Final Four.
Florida State University, which finished 9-7 in the Atlantic Coast Conference last season and had an RPI of 63 going into the day of selection, didn’t receive a bid mainly because of its nonconference strength of schedule.
Florida State scheduled aggressively this year, with games at the University of Pittsburgh and at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Florida State also defeated the University of Florida, the defending national champions.
“Let’s say you play every one of your nonconference games against the top 100,” Purnell suggested. “How does losing to three of those compare to winning against three teams from the bottom 150?”
Bowlsby said committee members are more impressed by a team challenging itself, especially with road games.
Doug Bruno, the women’s coach at DePaul University and the president of the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association, questions whether the RPI can take into account all the factors that lead to an end result.
“I’m not sure there is a criterion in women’s basketball that consistently evaluates not only where you play but even when you play,” said Bruno, who is pleased that the NCAA RPI is now publicized. “Where you play often has a lot to do with when upsets take place. I don’t know if a computer can get into that.”
That’s why the RPI is just one part of the process. Committee members can answer those types of questions by monitoring hundreds games on television and in person throughout the season.
The NCAA staff also provides information such as schedules and whether a key injury to a student-athlete may have affected the outcome.
“The number of games the committee watches is pretty overwhelming,” said Lynn Parkes, former chair of the Division I Women’s Basketball Committee and associate athletics director at the University of Memphis. “We had people in that room who watched as many as 300 games. I would say most people watched an average of 100 to 150.”
Since the process includes a human factor, those outside the meeting room must understand that a cookie-cutter approach to selections wouldn’t work.
“We have coaches out there who would like very much for us to tie this up in a neat little package, put a bow on it and give them a listing in priority order in how we are looking at things,” Southard said. “That’s not the way we do this. We all look at it differently. What makes this work is the composition of the committee.”
Thus, committee members don’t mind the attention the selection process receives, but they would like for everyone to remember that the letters “RPI” don’t carry more weight than other selection criteria.
“You see on ESPN or one of those programs and they say, ‘Well this institution is 48th and this one 42nd, so obviously the 48th is left out and the 42 gets in,’” Bowlsby said. “The committee never uses the RPI that way. Unfortunately, it’s the information that the public has access to, so they use it in ways that it was never intended. The committee would never use RPI to make a decision on a final team. It just doesn’t work that way.”
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