This is probably at the heart of the problem with Colorado many years
back. They won the conference in the regular season but took an early
exit in the conference tournament to a much weaker team, which also
prevented them from playing and beating the stronger teams. Combine
that with playing Air Force, I believe, four times during the year resulted in
a sufficiently low RPI that they did not get a bid.
Of course, my memory cannot be counted precisely on at this point in the
day and this point in life. I may not have all the facts straight.
Doug Peterson
On 28 Feb 2003 at 23:25, John T Whelan wrote:
> Beating a weak team can make your RPI lower than if you didn't play
> them at all.
>
> This is something which we've known about since the mid-1990s, back
> when the NCAA was first using the current formula for RPI (25% win%,
> 50% oppwin%, 25% oppoppwin%), was documented at the time, and also has
> been seen this season, but tonight's results are a clear illustration
> of the problem:
>
> Maine loses to BU and their RPI drops from .5949 to .5911
> Cornell beats Princeton and their RPI drops from .5947 to .5895
>
> Not only does Cornell get penalized for playing Princeton, even though
> they beat them, they take a bigger hit despite winning than Maine does
> for losing.
>
> (The other results also affected strength of schedule, of course.
> I'll post a follow-up soon on how to isolate the effects of these two
> games.)
>
> On the other hand, Cornell's KRACH RRWP goes from .8310 to .8313 as a
> result of tonight's games (beating Princeton was overwhelmingly likely
> already, so it doesn't help them much in the rankings) while Maine
> drops from .8335 to .8221. I maintain this is what should happen in
> this scenario: the win over a much weaker team leaves Cornell's rating
> basically unchanged, while the loss to a good team drops Maine
> somewhat.
> John Whelan, Cornell '91
> [log in to unmask]
> http://www.amurgsval.org/joe/
>
> Enjoy the latest Hockey Geek tools at slack.net/hockey
>
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