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In case you’re wondering, my Minion pic has nothing to do with anyone here at SFN. The fact that a 15 min drive home after lunch took almost an hour…[See the full post at: ACC Bubble Update]
Very nice research. Keep up the good work and be careful in the snow and ice!!!
Die hard state fan from the crystal coast!
Who do we pull for tonight? Does it benefit us if Pitt wins, since we beat them, or do we want them to lose since we are both competing for the last spots. Same with GT/Clemson. We want GT to win since we beat them? There is a lot to learn about RPI. Thanks for the help!
Since it doesn’t matter who we pull for, I try not to get too wrapped up in the fine details.
But in general, you want any team that you play twice to win against a team that you only play once. The two games against UNC, Clemson, WF, and UVA go into the calculations twice. So the better that these four do, the better State’s SOS.
However, you want any bubble team that you beat to win and move into the RPI Top-50 so that they become another important victory. So I have no problem pulling for Pitt over UVA.
A further complication….right now, State is in the 8-9 game and the winner would likely face UVA on Thurs. Which means that we would want the other Wed teams to lose.
Bottom line…too complicated for me to weigh all of the various conflicts to use the RPI argument to sway my emotional choices.
About a month back, just after the Duke win, I said we needed to not lose any bad games (GT, WF, VT), and go >.500 against the teams we were competing with in the ACC for bids (Syracuse, Pitt, Miami and Clemson) and we’d be in without issue. The bad losses and the Louisville win probably offset, but the losses to Clemson and Miami hurt. We really can’t afford another loss to Clemson unless we somehow beat UNC.
I don’t think we get in if we lose to Clemson and UNC, unless we pull a second round upset in the ACC. Of course, with UVA’s best player hurt, they’re highly vulnerable. They’re setting up for some losses as they can’t keep squeaking by.
Just learned today that no team with more than 14 losses has ever received an at-large bid. 6 teams with 14 losses have received at-large bids since 1985, but the last time was 2008 and the time before that was 2001.
Assuming we don’t win the ACC tournament, 3-2 over the remaining regular season games means 14 losses. I would like to think it is rare for teams with 14 losses to have resumes as compelling as ours would be (Duke and Louisville wins, top SOS, no bad losses)… But I don’t know that to be true.
It seems that 3-2 with one of the wins over VT (to avoid a bad loss) should be enough. But I’m not confident about that.
As always vawolf – great stuff.
Is my memory correct? Didn’t you say the bubble was weak last year? Then again, when it seems like the top tier has 3-4 losses and the bubble has 8-10, I imagine that’s a quick drop to the deep end.
Very interesting and encouraging that a fellow bubbler moved up so high with a bubble win…because we can use that same movement.
We’re a wacky team – only cincy has dominated us start to finish – against everyone else, sometime under 10 minutes left it was a ball game.
Also really interesting to see the difference the home/away factor makes. Our “old” RPI is 33 or something, “new” RPI is 49.
Is my memory correct? Didn’t you say the bubble was weak last year?
Don’t really remember. But it has been a while since I’ve seen a team left out of the NCAAT with a truly compelling resume. Unless you want to argue for the teams punitively left out because of an embarrassingly easy OOC schedule.
Maybe it’s always going to be weak.
Thanks. That frees me up a little, and makes me feel much better knowing that it is impossible to understand all the ramifications of each game. I’ll be rooting for Pitt & GT tonight, WF over ND, VT over Miami, Louisville and Duke on Wed.
I’m pretty sure I am one of the few, including in the Conte Forum whatever that is, who watched the BC/Miami game this afternoon. BC miraculously found a way to lose that game. You think they are awful until you watch them. That will not be an easy win for us. There truly are no easy ones, although I am hoping for a relaxing evening on Saturday.
Great Bubble breakdown. Awesome work.
I’m pulling for UVa and Georgia Tech tonight. Not necessarily rpi related, just want our competition eliminated as quickly as possible now that the ‘bubble teams’ are more or less defined at this point 🙂
Just learned today that no team with more than 14 losses has ever received an at-large bid. 6 teams with 14 losses have received at-large bids since 1985, but the last time was 2008 and the time before that was 2001.
Assuming we don’t win the ACC tournament, 3-2 over the remaining regular season games means 14 losses. I would like to think it is rare for teams with 14 losses to have resumes as compelling as ours would be (Duke and Louisville wins, top SOS, no bad losses)… But I don’t know that to be true.
It seems that 3-2 with one of the wins over VT (to avoid a bad loss) should be enough. But I’m not confident about that.
^I’d wager that most of those teams had a top SOS and a couple of huge victories to boost them. Gottfried had two Alabama squads with 17-13 records selected. IIRC, each of those teams had good SOS and wins over teams ranked #1 (don’t hold me to that!).
Gottfried at Alabama (source)
2003-04 20-13 8-8 NCAA Elite Eight
2004-05 24-8 12-4 NCAA 1st Round
2005-06 18-13 10-6 NCAA 2nd RoundWith the amount of games played in regular season + conference tournaments now getting close to 35 games, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the 15-loss barrier broken sometime in the near future. Also, the each iteration of the selection committee now has more qualitative data to cull from than ever.
Maybe it’s always going to be weak.
^The way teams are selected and how the data works out I’d argue that it will always be weak by definition. I always thought of ‘weak bubble’ by the supposed caliber of teams that comprise the bubble, but your breakdown in the title post is great.
RE: Bubbles…
What goes up, comes back down…
Not our problem – We are IN!—————-
RE: Driving in the snow/ice…
Ok… so they’re calling for a little frozen stuff…
So I head up the street 1/2 mile to the Food Lion to pick up three things the wife says we GOTT to have …
There’s about 15 carts rolling around inside the store..I turn down the first aisle and there’s some young girl in the middle of the aisle with a baby in one cart and talking on her cell phone… totally oblivious to the rest of the world around her… so I turn around…
On the next aisle, there’s two fat women with carts and about five kids under the age of eight stopped in the middle of the aisle talking loud about something somebody did wrong… totally oblivious to the rest of the world around them… so I turn around…
I pick up two items and turn up the last aisle to head to the registers… there’s a elderly couple stopped, blocking the aisle, one can’t make up her mind and the other one can’t see well enough to read the labels in order to pick up what she can’t tell him she wants… totally oblivious to the rest of the world around then…so I turn around…
There’s the young girl still talking on the cell phone…
I finally get back to the front of the store with my three items some twenty minutes after I entered, check out and head home.
My question is this…
If you don’t know how to push a grocery cart around a busy grocery store….
How the hell do you get a DMV driver’s license?Then I wonder what would happen if they painted stripes down the middle of the aisles and put a GPS thing on each cart so people could ask the Cart where stuff they couldn’t find was located…
SMH…. I did feel sorry for the elderly couple… I know they have a son or daughter somewhere….
#NCSU-North Carolina's #1 FOOTBALL school!the wife says we GOTT to have …
Too funny…got me giggling
Bill, at least you didn’t encounter an elderly fat woman talking on a cell phone about something somebody did wrong with a baby.
^ which raises two interesting questions…
Shouldn’t their be something that ensures that the people whose a$$es are wider than the cart can only use baskets and not carts ?
Has anybody ever met a fat person whose house was clean and orderly ?
#NCSU-North Carolina's #1 FOOTBALL school!I wasn’t able to watch, but Miami survived @ BC … This highlight vid should be watched just for the great reactions from Brad Daugherty alone:
Not a knock against this post, as I understand that RPI is a thing that the selection committee supposedly uses to make their decisions, but posts like these always remind me how absolutely bonkers it is that we’re still using RPI to talk about which teams deserve tourney berths. It’s such a terrible, meaningless statistic, and it boggles my mind that it wasn’t phased out years ago.
Well – it’s one of the NCAA’s tools to measure success. One could argue it’s the backbone on which all criteria are based…. RPI determines your quality wins, SOS and your ranking… And there’s definitely a correlation to seeding.
I have always thought it’s a simplistic tool (since it doesn’t take into account margin of victory or defeat). I think the bigger flaw is that it over-values road wins…I haven’t seen the actual hard numbers but I suspect a “road” win over a team ranked between 150-250 may be worth more than a home win over 40-85…I would like to see those numbers.
However, the bottom line is that everyone knows this “tool” is used, so if you don’t factor it in when creating your ooc schedule.. You’re a fool or Seth Greenberg.
^My wife keeps her own version of “RPI” ranking …
For the trip to the grocery store in snow,
mine went up 10 places for what was definitely …
a “Quality Loss – on the Road”.#NCSU-North Carolina's #1 FOOTBALL school!absolutely bonkers it is that we’re still using RPI to talk about which teams deserve tourney berths. It’s such a terrible, meaningless statistic, and it boggles my mind that it wasn’t phased out years ago.
If RPI was blindly used to fill the NCAAT, I would agree. But the Selection Committee has an entire process that it goes through to fill and seed the tournament. RPI is clearly a part of that process, but still only one part.
If the process were terrible, then it would be easy to point out teams that were unfairly left out of the NCAAT. It’s always possible to argue Team A vs B, but I can’t really think of any recent teams that clearly deserved to be in, but were left out.
^My wife keeps her own version of “RPI” ranking …
For the trip to the grocery store in snow,
mine went up 10 places for what was definitely …
a “Quality Loss – on the Road”.We took our cable down last Friday because we are moving. I listened to the last 3 minutes of the Louisville game in my new driveway. I had no idea of the impending “ice” storm until TWX was done around 3pm yesterday. I mumbled a hundred expletives on the way over to Harris Teeter knowing full well the idiocy I would encounter. There were multiple moms with double carts blocking aisles. I had to keep telling myself we have no food but I still felt like a tool with my half cart filled with bread and milk. I know damn well my kids will be home all week. Can’t stand at a bus stop if it is 11 degrees or less per CMS.
Gott quality win for food trip.
That’s the key difference between 64 and 68 teams. Essentially, the 4 teams that would have any sort of argument all have a chance to play their way in now. Anybody whose bubble bursts has nobody to blame but themselves (and this would have applied to NC State had we not received a miracle bid last year).
As is our custom it seems were are in the driver’s seat as to what happens to us from this point on…..bottom line…..Just Win! and we are in the NCAAT.
Thanks VAWolf. I appreciate the investigative work. I might go back and read your Mess in the Middle, Parity and the Bubble Bursts topics from last year. No mid-week game has me Jonesing.
Well – it’s one of the NCAA’s tools to measure success. One could argue it’s the backbone on which all criteria are based…. RPI determines your quality wins, SOS and your ranking… And there’s definitely a correlation to seeding.
And to me, that’s a serious problem. Because RPI isn’t just a simplistic tool, it’s a bad tool. The way RPI is calculated, the games you win and lose are exactly as important as the games your opponents’ opponents win and lose. That’s absolutely crazy. There’s no justification for any of the weights applied to the RPI formula (and there never has been). It’s a relic from an era when nobody was thinking about sports statistics in the way we are now, and there’s genuinely no reason anyone should be using it.
I haven’t seen the actual hard numbers but I suspect a “road” win over a team ranked between 150-250 may be worth more than a home win over 40-85…I would like to see those numbers.
Home wins and road losses get multiplied by .6 in the calculation. Road wins and home losses get multiplied by 1.4 (so a road win is more than twice as valuable as a home win over the same team). This is also a terrible way to calculate how good a team is, but at least they’re trying.
If RPI was blindly used to fill the NCAAT, I would agree. But the Selection Committee has an entire process that it goes through to fill and seed the tournament. RPI is clearly a part of that process, but still only one part.
Sure, and since we’re not in the room we really have no way of knowing how influential RPI is. But the fact that we’re using it at all is still crazy. If we’re trying to figure out the best 64 teams, using RPI is counterproductive to that.
If the process were terrible, then it would be easy to point out teams that were unfairly left out of the NCAAT. It’s always possible to argue Team A vs B, but I can’t really think of any recent teams that clearly deserved to be in, but were left out.
I mean, I can go digging back through tourney snubs, but just last year SMU clearly should’ve been in. They were ranked in the top 25, the NCAA committee even said they “passed the eye test”, but RPI doesn’t care about close losses and blowout wins, and the way RPI calculates strength of schedule is dumb, so their resume didn’t look as good to the committee as it should have. Better ranking systems (BPI, Kenpom, Sagarin) all had them ranked right around 30th in the country, and had their schedule ranked much higher (still not great, but inside the top 100 instead of 135th, as RPI had it). I’d just about guarantee that if you replaced all the RPI-based numbers in that selection committee room with Kenpom numbers or Sagarin numbers, SMU makes it, and we have a slightly better tournament because of it.
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