Even More RPI and Seeding Talk

[pelagius]

Originally Posted by MikeWaters

however your chances of winning a road game are much less. the power conferences don't play any road games against mid-majors.

I don't disagree with that. You are absolutely right about that. I think there should be an adjustment; I just think that the 1.4/0.6 split is too big. The split was created based on how often historically the home team beats the road team but it didn't take into account that on average the home team is better than the road team in NCAA basketball because really good teams don't have to play as many road games.

[Indy Coug]

Home teams win roughly 70% of the time in college basketball which correlates nicely with the 1.4/0.6 road-home weighting in the new RPI formula.

The top 8 seeds in this year's NCAA tournament went a combined 495-55 (0.900) at home this year.

The revision in the formula was ostensibly to reward teams that won on the road and also to incentivize bigger schools to play a higher ratio of road games, but there is no sign that the bigger schools have altered their scheduling strategy.

[MikeWaters]

there is no incentive to do so when RPI is completely ignored.

[pelagius]

Originally Posted by Indy Coug

Home teams win roughly 70% of the time in college basketball which correlates nicely with the 1.4/0.6 road-home weighting in the new RPI formula.

The top 8 seeds in this year's NCAA tournament went a combined 495-55 (0.900) at home this year.

The revision in the formula was ostensibly to reward teams that won on the road and also to incentivize bigger schools to play a higher ratio of road games, but there is no sign that the bigger schools have altered their scheduling strategy.

If it is really part of a policy directive to get power teams to play more road games, then I am fine with it. However, it is over-compensating.

[Indy Coug]

Originally Posted by pelagius

If it is really part of a policy directive to get power teams to play more road games, then I am fine with it. However, it is over-compensating.

I think the weighting is simply trying to make a home/road game a break-even proposition as far as the RPI goes. If the expectation is that overall teams will win 30% of the time on the road:

20 road games, 10 home games

(20 * 1.4 * 0.3) + (10 * 0.6 * 0.7) = 12.6

10 road games, 20 home games

(10 * 1.4 * 0.3) + (20 * 0.6 * 0.7) = 12.6


The question is how does it hurt/help better teams to play more games on the road. Let's assume top teams (RPI Top 50 or so) have a 90% chance of winning at home and 60% on the road:

20 road games, 10 home games

(20 * 1.4 * 0.6) + (10 * 0.6 * 0.9) = 22.2

10 road games, 20 home games

(10 * 1.4 * 0.6) + (20 * 0.6 * 0.9) = 19.2

Obviously, no one is going to schedule 20 road games and 10 home games, but I'm just trying to illustrate the principle. Apparently, the combination of lost home ticket revenue and the volatility of expected road success offsets the expected gains in RPI by playing more games on the road.

[SeattleUte]

Maybe BYU should start a lawsuit, allege racketeering, seek an injuction. That would show them.

[creekster]

Originally Posted by SeattleUte

Maybe BYU should start a lawsuit, allege racketeering, seek an injuction. That would show them.

sounds like a good pro bono project for you.

[Indy Coug]

I don't think his Cougarguard resume is impressive enough for someone to take him even on a pro bono basis.

[pelagius]

Originally Posted by Indy Coug

I think the weighting is simply trying to make a home/road game a break-even proposition as far as the RPI goes. If the expectation is that overall teams will win 30% of the time on the road:

Yes, that is true. I understand where the 1.4/0.6 comes from. I just think it is the wrong weighting because on average the home team is better than the road team. I mean that the home team has a greater than 50% of beating the road team if they played on a neutral court. This fact isn't going to be true for conference schedules, but it is going to be true for non-conference schedule (and thus true at least to some degree overall) where power teams schedule patsies which inflates the home team winning percentage to 70% and the 1.4/0.6 ratio. I think the ratio should be smaller and based on how often the home team beats the road team when both teams have similar ranks. I think that would push the ratio down to 1.3/0.7 or maybe 1.2/0.8.

[minn_stat]

Originally Posted by pelagius

Yes, that is true. I understand where the 1.4/0.6 comes from. I just think it is the wrong weighting because on average the home team is better than the road team. I mean that the home team has a greater than 50% of beating the road team if they played on a neutral court. This fact isn't going to be true for conference schedules, but it is going to be true for non-conference schedule (and thus true at least to some degree overall) where power teams schedule patsies which inflates the home team winning percentage to 70% and the 1.4/0.6 ratio. I think the ratio should be smaller and based on how often the home team beats the road team when both teams have similar ranks. I think that would push the ratio down to 1.3/0.7 or maybe 1.2/0.8.

So just look at conference home/road records, that should pretty much do the trick, since every team plays every other team both home and away (at least in most conferences). So because I know where to get it, and I'm too lazy at the moment to get any other info, let's take the 2007 MWC as a sample. Let's see, 72 regular season games, 51 won by the home team...Hey, that computes to 70.8%. Hmmm, 1.4/0.6 is pretty much right on the money...