RPI Update

General NCS Basketball11

This idea of graphing State’s RPI ranking through the season doesn’t seem like such a hot idea today. As of Saturday morning, State’s RPI rank had climbed to #29 thanks to several higher ranked teams losing. After another pitiful performance, State’s RPI fell to #39…its lowest ranking since Jan 4.

SEASON
SUMMARY

21-8 (10-6)

 

WINS

LOSSES

 

Top

 

 

1

Duke

 

25

 

 

7

UNC (twice)

 

 

24

G. 
Washington

14

Iowa

 

26-

32

Boston College

32

Boston College

 

50

45

Alabama

47

Seton Hall

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

51-

7-0

(Maryland
# 54)

 

 

 

100

 

(FSU # 58)

 

 

 101-

3-2

 

108

Wake Forest

200

 

 

148

Georgia Tech

201+

8-0

 

 

 

– Three straight losses.
– Four losses out of the last six games.
– Two of those four losses to teams ranked 100+
– Just in case you hadn’t noticed….State is in real trouble.

Before the bubble questions start, here is a summary table of where the bubble has started breaking up in the past and then there is also an earlier entry correlating bubble teams and tournament selections. Click the team name if you want to review the type of season that has sent teams to the NIT in the past.

And the Bubble Bursts…

 

 

Final

Year

TEAM

RPI

1999

Oregon
 

40

2000

SW
Missouri St.

34

2001

Mississippi
St.    

40

2002

Villanova
 

43

2003

UNLV

40

2004

Louisiana
St.  

38

2005

Miami
OH

43

The Dance Card is being updated more frequently now that we are getting to crunch time. Before the WF game, they still had State comfortably in the tournament. We’ll have to see how far State drops in their calculations later.

One of the areas where I think that the Dance Card comes up a little short is in including the effect of losing streaks at the end of the year. In 2004, LSU ended up in the NIT, even though the Dance Card predicted that they would get an at-large bid.

At the very least, State is absolutely killing their seeding with this stretch of miserable basketball. Two examples of how stumbling down the stretch affects a team’s seed:

– In 2005, Kansas ended the season with RPI ranking of #1, but received a three seed.

– In 2001, Tenn ended with RPI rank at #14, but received an eight seed.

EDIT
The Dance Card has been updated for games played through Saturday. State is ranked #23 by their formula…with the projected bubble bursting below #47.

About VaWolf82

Engineer living in Central Va. and senior curmudgeon amongst SFN authors One wife, two kids, one dog, four vehicles on insurance, and four phones on cell plan...looking forward to empty nest status. Graduated 1982

General NCS Basketball

11 Responses to RPI Update

  1. lumberpack 03/05/2006 at 11:55 AM #

    I think we are looking at an 8-10 seed.

  2. packer74 03/05/2006 at 12:25 PM #

    A tremendous job of keeping up with all the RPI stats this year. Unfortunately, the Pack is headed in the wrong direction. Expect an early exit from the ACC and NCAA (10/11 seed) tournaments.

  3. Wolfpack Willie 03/05/2006 at 2:58 PM #

    OK. You’re down by 16 points with 6 minutes left in the game. You need to create turnovers, right? So what do you do? Maybe challenge Wake’s inbound passes? Crank up the fullcourt press? Set traps? Well, The Mellon Mystic did none of those things, and the Pack is self-euthanizing…

  4. topOtheorder 03/05/2006 at 3:01 PM #

    Sadly, I would take a 10 seed over an 8-9 seed…Of course, I was hoping for a 3 or 6 seed, but…argh…Of course, the seed won’t matter at all if we don’t show the intensity on both ends of the floor that we had early in the season…

  5. TVP 03/05/2006 at 3:46 PM #

    If you want to keep track of seeds, this is a pretty good site:

    http://bracketproject.atspace.com/comparison.htm

    averages a ton of different projections. Most of them had us in the 6 range prior to Saturday – the few after Saturday are putting us more in the 7 range now.

  6. Jeff 03/05/2006 at 4:45 PM #

    Wolfpack Willie,

    As Coach always says (and as we discussed last week)….”we only do what we do” 🙂

    We don’t press.

    Which is why I always laughed when people fell for his comments years ago about our uptempo style of play.

    I’ve never understood why we choose to limit ourselves so severely (since we honestly have had decent depth in recent years) by not pressing and not taking advantage of our depth.

  7. Wolfpack Willie 03/05/2006 at 5:19 PM #

    Jeff:
    Plus, I despise his Princeton offense. I mean, you’re lucky if you hit 50% of your threes, and you just don’t get offensive rebounds when you’re spread all over the court. That means you’re giving away, virtually uncontested, any missed 3 pt. attempt. If you play a team that can defend the guards, or if you have a cold shooting night, you’re dead meat.

  8. Fish 03/05/2006 at 10:13 PM #

    I wish I could I find my post where I said we were maybe a Top 50 team. At that time, we were wining but barely and I got a ridiculed because I disagreed with the various rankings at that time. I rest my case now! We plain stink and 100% lies with Herb!

    I predicted a conference record of 7-9 to 9-7 but with a real coach this team could have been 13-3. While we finished 10-6, it feels more like 6-10. Vomit!

    Folks that believe this team is going to make a run in either tourney are being foolish or are just plain blind. Don’t set yourselves up for disappointment.

    Oh well another March Madness and I can start my yard work early. I will not even bother watching the fiascos.

    Have fun Duke! Have fun UNC! Have fun BC! Have fun 5th placed ACC team who is better than us and will be playing much longer than we will the next three weekends!

    We will be a 10 seed playing a team like Michigan State

  9. RickJ 03/06/2006 at 10:38 AM #

    The Dance Card has been updated to include Sunday games. It is interesting that they use the old RPI which is very beneficial to State (home sweet home). According to their projections, Maryland & FSU are still not quite in. Every commentator I heard yesterday said FSU was in and probably Maryland too. Time will tell.

  10. VaWolf82 03/06/2006 at 10:55 AM #

    Md won two games in Feb……two games. I think that they have some work to do….and they draw Duke in the second round. If Md loses to Clemson on Thurs….they’re toast.

    FSU is in better shape…and possibly even better shape than State. They’ve won 7 of the last 10…and a big win over Duke. Did you see the interview with Craig Littlepage (AD at UVA) who is the chairman of the Selection Committee? He said that the questionable officiating in the first FSU/Duke game could also be a factor…but he wouldn’t say how big of a factor.

  11. RickJ 03/06/2006 at 11:21 AM #

    I did not see the interview with Littlepage but that is the type of comment that makes you want to stay as far as possible off the bubble. Can you imagine how many games this year involving bubble teams had questionable officiating? Are they going to evaluate all of these games? I did not know MD had won only 2 in Feb. They could also be penalized for Nicholas being gone.

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