Meanwhile, in East Lansing...

[ay2013]

Nov 27, 2014 2:11:24 GMT -5 mikegarrison said:

Nov 27, 2014 1:55:27 GMT -5 trianglevolleyball said:

I'm not a Big Ten fan but okay. I don't think anyone has even ignoring the RPI bias, and for years people hae been complaining about the inability of the RPI to accurately decide who the 32 at large bids are. But it also strikes me as odd that the west coasters will only acknowledge that the RPI is flawed because it has western bias, then this year when RPI is actually benefitting teams like CSUN and Santa Clara, talk of RPI failure decreases. The 32 best at larges should get in every ear, and punishing the Big Ten because te PAC 12 has been punished in te past is not good logic. You know as well as I do that Purdue and MSU are tournament quality teams, and St.marys getting screwed over so often in the past doesn't change that at all.

I think the NCAA should use pablo, but they don't.

It's not the fault of the B1G volleyball programs that they added Rutgers and Maryland and then unbalanced their schedules, but they did.

The PAC12 raised their RPIs this year the hard way, by having KICK ASS OoC winning records for the whole conference. Unfortunately for the B1G, a lot of that was done by beating up on the B1G teams in pre-conference matchups.

Even if the B1G joins the "get rid of RPI" faction, though, the problem still remains that part of the reason RPI exists is to encourage conferences like the PAC and the B1G to not schedule each other, but rather to schedule teams like UALR, Western Kentucky, Hofstra, or Towson. Any of the elite teams who scheduled those two this year got basically a free win and also a great RPI boost.

(Although, I admit, Purdue losing to Western Kentucky shows that there are risks and the "free win" isn't free if you aren't really at the elite level.)

Adding Rutgers and Maryland is only part of the equation. the Big 10 had a very solid non-conference SOS but the problem is that they lost many of those matches which correlated to a weaker conference SOS, which impacts the entire conference. the Big 10 non-conference winning percentage was in like the low 70%, that really isn't that good, and surely nowhere near the standards of the last couple years.

[bluepenquin]

I think many are applying the visual record this year (including Maryland and Rutgers) and applying to prior seasons. Maryland and Rutgers 'gave' 19 additional conference wins to the core 12 teams. Below is the projected final standings for the Big 10 (1 match to go):

Wisconsin (19-1)
Penn State (18-2)
Illinois (16-4)
Nebraska (14-6)
Ohio State (12-8)
Purdue (12-8)
Michigan State (11-9)
Minnesota (9-11)
Michigan (8-12)
Northwestern (7-13)
Iowa (6-14)
Indiana (6-14)
Maryland (2-18)
Rutgers (0-20)


And now, here is what the final conference records would look like if we stripped out the Maryland and Rutgers games and pro-rated the remaining games to get to 20 conference matches:

Wisconsin (19-1)
Penn State (18-2)
Illinois (15-5)
Nebraska (13-7)
Ohio State (11-9)
Purdue (10-10)
Michigan State (9-11)
Minnesota (7-13)
Michigan (7-13)
Northwestern (5-15)
Iowa (3-17)
Indiana (3-17)


When viewed in this light - one would typically say that the B1G has 5 locks and 2 more teams (Purdue/Michigan State) likely/possible to make the tournament. But then we need to account for the unbalanced schedule. Now I didn't do the calculation for this, but I believe that Purdue and Michigan State had among the easiest conference schedules, while Minnesota and Michigan had the hardest. If we account for this - then the final conference records may look like this:

Purdue (9-11)
Michigan State (8-12)
Michigan (8-12)
Minnesota (8-12)

These are just not the typical conference records of B1G teams that become locks for the tournament. (Nothing to do with RPI).

[abcd098]

Nov 27, 2014 8:27:27 GMT -5 bluepenquin said:

I think many are applying the visual record this year (including Maryland and Rutgers) and applying to prior seasons. Maryland and Rutgers 'gave' 19 additional conference wins to the core 12 teams. Below is the projected final standings for the Big 10 (1 match to go)

Yes, but the same could be said for all conferences. Take the cupcakes out of any other conference and any team that is on the bubble will have a worse record and may not look like a bubble team anymore.

[abcd098]

Also, let's not forget that MSU still has to get through Iowa for them to even be in the NCAA conversation. :-)

Stranger things have happened.

[pogoball]

I'll ask my question again: has there ever been a team with a pablo ranking of 20 (or better) excluded from the tournament?

[c4ndlelight]

Nov 27, 2014 20:09:46 GMT -5 pogoball said:

I'll ask my question again: has there ever been a team with a pablo ranking of 20 (or better) excluded from the tournament?

You don't have to look far. St. Mary's last year. 17 final season, were Top 16 before the tournament.