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Listen up, folks (for those complaining about sched.)


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First of all, last year's RPI rank is not a particularly good indicator of what SLU opponents' winning percentage will be this year.

Second, I insist that we should not worry about what SLU opponents' RPI rankings are. Of greater concern is what their winning percentages are.

Listen up and learn, please. RPI rankings lists consist of several different numbers. The ranking, which is between 1 and 325 or so, has NO impact on anything. The crucial number is the actually RPI, which might look like this: 0.5173. This number, the RPI, is 25 percent team's winning percentage, 50 percent opponents' winning percentage, and 25 percent opponents' oppontents' winning percentage. In figuring SLU's RPI, the biggest number is the opponents' winning percentage -- half of SLU's RPI. SLU's opponents RPI ranking is irrelevant; half of SLU's RPI is going to come from the opponents' WINNING PERCENTAGE. Savannah St. will probably have a bad RPI ranking, because it plays in a weak conference that features teams that will lose a lot of non-conference games (to top-tier teams in guarantee road games), but if Savannah St. has a pretty good record (like 17-10), then its winning percentage of 0.630 will do twice as much good to SLU's RPI than its poor strength of schedule does harm to SLU's RPI.

Another thing to understand about RPI dynamics is that the difference between the 150th ranked RPI team and the 250th ranked RPI team looks worse than it really is. Last year Ball State was ranked 137 in the RPI rankings with a RPI of 0.5103 at 13-17 (0.433); Texas Southern was ranked 217 in the RPI rankings with an RPI of 0.4657 at 18-12 (0.600). Though there were 80 slots between them, the difference between their RPIs was just 0.0446. The kicker is that even though Texas Southern was ranked 80 slots lower than Ball State, it would have been better to play Texas Southern than Ball State, as Texas Southern's winning percentage was better by 0.167.

The moral of the story is STOP LOOKING AT THAT DECEPTIVE RANKING. It is not the team's RPI and it has NO effect on SLU's RPI. The question is, What will the opponent's winning percentage be?

Third, if every top-tiered team did as you guys suggest and shunned the low-major teams, then the low-major teams would have no one to play except each other, mid-majors would generally only play mid-majors, and high-majors would generally play only high-majors. Therefore, the RPIs of the high-majors would go down, because their winning percentages would slip towards 0.500, as they would be knocking each other off. Meanwhile, the RPIs of the low-majors would improve because they wouldn't lose as many games. The RPI thing would become even more deceptive than it already is.

Am I making any sense?

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actually you are making my head hurt. :-)

seriously thicks, if what you are saying was true, then why would any teams schedule good out of conference games. they would play nothing but gramblings and savannah states. i aint buying it. i believe those games hurt the rpi overall. and the rpi drives the tourney selection.

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Thicks, you are knowledgeable about RPI, no doubt. Understand something about human nature though. Expressing an opinion about not liking that we play 4 cupcakes means simply that. Everybody plays tuneups, granted, but some of us think 4 is excessive. Second, as stated in your analysis, RPI rank is a derivative measure of raw RPI, it (RPI rank) is not irrevelant as you imply. Further, we realize from your wonderful analysis (which you also posted on the board last year and we all appreciated it then as well) that even raw RPI of opponents is not factored into a team's own RPI ... but raw RPI of an opponent is composed of two of the three factors that are included in our RPI !!! (i.e., 50 percent opponents' winning percentage, and 25 percent opponents' oppontents' winning percentage). An opponent with a low RPI is highly likely to have a low winning percentage and / or its opponets have a low winning percentage. Playing bad teams only helps with 25 percent of the RPI factor (i.e., your own winning percentage) but most likely hurts 75 percent of the RPI factor (i.e., opponents winning percentage and opponents opponents winning percentage).

Everybody has an opinion and we are hear to express it. You are definitely more of a mathemetician that I ... but the logic of the previous post was off IMHO.

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My biggest problem with the scheduele is that we go three straight cupcake games. If we lose one, that hurts us huge. I think someone said that no team (or it is an extreme rarity) has made the tournament with an at large with more than one 200+ loss (or even one, I honestly don't remember, but it was thrown around a lot last Febuary and March).

But what happened last year? We came out, our first 2 games: Lost ot UT-Martin and SMS. Now maybe that was because it was the first year under Brad's system. But those were two teams we should of beat, and the losses hurt our RPI, and our Resume to the selection committee.

We were dreading the losses to UT-Martin and Houston, if we had those wins, we could have been dancing. I would have much rather lost to Duke at Duke, than UT-Martin at home.

I would rather lose to Butler the first game out, than Eastern Kentucky. Just the order bothers me.

Who knows! Maybe we will win our first 3 vs. Cupcakes, and then have confidence going into Arizona. But I just don't like this many cupcakes. One should definitely be replaced by SIUC. That is a respectable, but beatable team. Plus it will put more butts in the seats. And that never hurts.

Also, you argue that the RPI shouldn't matter. But win loss does, and their SOS does.

Here are the SOS's and Win Losses of the 4 Cupcakes

Grambling: 10-18 & 292

Eastern Ky: 7-17 & 235

Savanah St: 3-24 & 317

North Carolina A&T: 1-25 269

The ONLY team that we played that was worse than ANY of these teams in terms of RPI (Not counting Grambling since we are playing them again) was UT-Pan American. UT-Martin was better than all of these teams, so was Houston.

Those four teams are horrible. And if I were to calculate a rough RPI of our First 3 games. Assuming we win them all would be:

.25 * 1 + .5*((1+3+7)/(24+27+26))+ .25*((.4458+.4709+.4262)/3)=.4281

Which by last years end of the year rankings gives us an RPI Rank of about 272. Admitedly, this argument is skewed because it just factors in those 3 teams. And our RPI will be better with others. But these three teams will not help our RPI. Their SOS and Win-Loss records are horribly below average. And I am sure we can replace them with an SIUC or a Temple or someone. And the losses wouldn't be that bad, and would not hurt the RPI much. But a rule should be, a win against a team should not hurt your RPI. By playing these teams, our wins against them will hurt.

Steve

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You are technically correct and your examples are instructive. However, RPI is just a simpler way of saying what you and I think is important--our opponent's winning percentage and their opponents' winning percentage. After all, teams with higher RPI's are "much more likely" to have a lower win % and so are there opponents (because that is 75% of what goes into THEIR RPI). So let's call that RPI and Roy's head can stop hurting.

I think you and other's are missing the critical point: Choosing four 250+ (who are more likely than teams beneath them to have lower win % and so are their opponents) is simply an anchor statistically. It will hurt our post season chances. There is no spin that will change that simple fact (OK, any one of those teams could have a better season than last and you are right to point that out--but these are some consistently bottom feeding teams, not teams with one bad season). I would not mind one or two 250+ teams thrown in with one or two 150+ teams, but choosing 4 real bad teams is poor scheduling (particularly with the very real expectation that the conference schedule will be less strong).

I do think the road non-conference schedule is excellent.

I will address this situation during the season and if Savannah St. makes a run for the National Championship I will apologize to the mighty Tigers then.

If I was a St. Louis resident and attending home games I would be upset as well (but this is a different matter).

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we have scheduled 4 out of the 52 worse teams from last year. north carolina a&t and savannah st are 2 of the bottom 5! my gosh, imo it is embarrassing that we even consider playing these teams. i just fail to see why if easier opponents are required to "tune up" for the season, why they have to be ranked this low. from my sports playing days, i never enjoyed playing the teams that were the bottom of the barrel. the games turned into ugly messes.

some of you seem to think these games are necessary to help refine rotations and work on things, my memory of previous type games does not register these games being any kind of "training" or "work out" sessions. instead they usually turned into something that could be seen at noon at most of your local ymca's.

i just got done paying $2000 for my seats for this season. it is disheartening to know that 4 of the games are going to be ones that i cant even give tickets away to if i wanted to. that i will be sitting with about 1000 of my friends in the cavern known as the savvis center. and that the walk up ticket booth seller will be able to finish reading harry potter's new book those nights as no one is going to make that person work.

the rest of the schedule is great. but again, i find it hard to believe that we cant find 4 better games than those four to fill out the schedule. they play the two exhibition games. no one has given me a better reason to schedule these type of games other than, "most everyone else does it too". well if everyone else jumped off the bridge should we jump as well? let's be frontrunners, not followers.

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>Thicks, you are knowledgeable about RPI, no doubt.

>Understand something about human nature though. Expressing

>an opinion about not liking that we play 4 cupcakes means

>simply that. Everybody plays tuneups, granted, but some of

>us think 4 is excessive. Second, as stated in your

>analysis, RPI rank is a derivative measure of raw RPI, it

>(RPI rank) is not irrevelant as you imply. Further, we

>realize from your wonderful analysis (which you also posted

>on the board last year and we all appreciated it then as

>well) that even raw RPI of opponents is not factored into a

>team's own RPI ... but raw RPI of an opponent is composed of

>two of the three factors that are included in our RPI !!!

>(i.e., 50 percent opponents' winning percentage, and 25

>percent opponents' oppontents' winning percentage). An

>opponent with a low RPI is highly likely to have a low

>winning percentage and / or its opponets have a low winning

>percentage. Playing bad teams only helps with 25 percent of

>the RPI factor (i.e., your own winning percentage) but most

>likely hurts 75 percent of the RPI factor (i.e., opponents

>winning percentage and opponents opponents winning

>percentage).

>

>Everybody has an opinion and we are hear to express it. You

>are definitely more of a mathemetician that I ... but the

>logic of the previous post was off IMHO.

My first point is that how are we to know before the season that all four of SLU's alleged cupcakes won't have a very good winning percentage? Last year's ranking means nothing for this year. The number don't carry over. What I'm saying is that instead of having a hard and fast rule that SLU should not schedule any team from a low-level conference, the rule should be that SLU schedule only teams projected (an imperfect science) to win its conference, if it's not in a high-major conference. If SLU schedules such teams, it will wind up with an attractive RPI ranking because those opponents will wind up with decent RPI rankings.

Second, you inferred incorrectly that the RPI ranking is a measure. The ranking doesn't MEASURE anything. All the ranking does is tell where a team stands in the RPI relative to the other teams. If the ranking were a measure, then one could be sure that the difference between the number 10 RPI ranked team and the number 20 RPI ranked team is exactly the same as the difference between the number 210 RPI ranked team and the number 220 RPI ranked team. But that's not the case. Nos. 210 and 220 could be virtually tied, while nos. 10 and 20 could be separated by 0.01, a significant difference. The ranking is not a measure because the differences are not equidistant.

Here's a different perspective. Let's compare 10 home-run hitters. The guy in first place has hit 30 home runs, while the guy in 10th place has his 24 home runs. The difference between No. 1 and No. 10 is not nine. It's six. Rather than judge the guy on his ranking, you judge him by the number of home runs he's hit.

Lastly, don't fool yourself. I'm no mathemetician.

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>My first point is that how are we to know before the season that all >four of SLU's alleged cupcakes won't have a very good winning >percentage?

See their records from last year as the best indication. Their records last year suck! Granted, pigs do sometimes grow wings and fly so who can say.

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grambling 2003 rpi 275 record 10-18

e kentucky 2003 rpi 276 record 7-17

north Carolina A&T 2003 rpi 323 record 1-25

Savannah State 2003 rpi 326 record 3-24

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