Softball Rises to #3 in Polls, slips to #5 in RPI
After a 4-0 week that involved a little scare at the hands of MSU, two thrashings of Maryland, and a close game sealed by a no-hitter from Betsa, Michigan has risen to #3 in both of the human polls. This comes largely on the strength of LSU's tumble in the rankings. The Tigers slid to 5th and 6th in the polls after taking it on the chin from Missouri this week. The RPI, being purely a formula, didn't care as much about the rough weekend, and kept the Tigers at #2.
These are all fairly small jitters, but we're getting late enough in the season that poll-watching (esp. RPI watching) has become an important activity. Tournament seeding will be coming up in just a couple weeks. The two things to keep an eye on are who's in the top 16 (regional hosts) and who's in the top-8 (super-regional hosts if they win their regionals). Last year some late slip-ups dropped Michigan out of hosting anything. This year, only a total collapse would have any chance of doing that, and a super-regional seed is a very realistic possibility. Handle business against PSU & make a good B10 tourney showing, and it'll look good for post-season softball at Alumni Field.
and win B1G regular season and conference tournament, they should be able to host the super regional. At the very worst, they'll host only just the regional.
Minnesota does seem like a team that deserves a higher rank and possibly a regional hosting seed. The rest of the B10 has been a huge disappointment this year. Wisconsin simply vanished, and Nebraska has been mediocre after claiming a share of the regular season title last year thanks to our stumbles. They did nip Minnesota once, though, which was a big help to us! I hope NW sneaks into the tournament, and if we don't win the B10 tourney, I hope it goes to Nebraska or NW so that they can put the auto-bid to good use.
Pretty sure RPI is just a combination of your winning %, your opponents' winning %, and your opponents' opponents' winning %. They don't start posting it on the NCAA site until halfway through the season or so, because it's ridiculously jittery until later on. It works decently well in softball, though, because of the large volume of games, so you can actually get somewhat statistically significant results.
There is no starting point for RPI--just this season's records: winning percentage, opponents' winning percentage, and opponents' opponents' winning percentage.
Yes, that's right, and that's where the validity of the RPI breaks down.
The RPI is based on the idea that a team's winning percentage is a reasonably accurate picture of how good they are. Unfortunately, that's not always the case. A win over the best team in a bad conference (say, 35-11 Kent State) is much more helpful to a team's RPI than a win over the worst team in a good conference (say 16-32 Stanford), even though Stanford is probably a better team than Kent State.
There are ways to "game" the RPI--play strong teams from weak conferences, mostly. If you have access to weak conferences for non-conference games (like the SEC does), you do much better than a team from a conference that doesn't have that same easy access to weak conferences (like the Pac 12). This effect is even more obvious in baseball, where western teams are much more likely to outperform their seed than the southern teams.
No, the RPI does not account for home/road games. The only sports that do that are men's basketball, women's basketball and baseball. I understand that softball has considered adding the home/road weighting factors, but so far they haven't done that.
So Michigan's RPI is just that much more impressive given their disadvantage in getting teams to play at their home.
Thanks Alton, I appreciate the clarification. It all makes a lot more sense to me now.
Michigan is at 18-2 and Minnesota is at 15-3. Even if Michigan drops a game to PSU this weekend, would they still clinch the regular season title since they took 2 of the 3 in the Minnesota series?
That is my understanding, but I'm not 100% certain - I seem to recall that in basketball at least, a situation like that would still go down as a split title. I definitely don't want there to be any question about our supremacy this year!
If they end up tied, Michigan and Minnesota would both be able to call themselves "conference champions," but Michigan would get the #1 seed in the tournament by virtue of the head-to-head tiebreaker.
That's so stupid to me. If the head-to-head is tied, ok, co-champions, but when a team has a head-to-head lead, everyone knows who really deserves the crown. I'd feel kinda cheap claiming a title when I knew my team had been bested by our "co" champions.
April 29th, 2015 at 12:42 AM ^
Although I will say I am not 100 percent sure but.....If M drops 1 to PSU and wins 2 they finish at 20-3..If Minnesota sweeps they finish 18-3...2 rainouts I think..Michigan would have the best winning percentage and thus be regular season champs
April 29th, 2015 at 12:52 AM ^
Minnesota actually has two mid-week games this week in addition to their final three-game set. They'll face Wisconsin for a pair today (Wednesday) and then Purdue for three over the weekend. As long as no games this week rain out, the numbers will end up even.
Nothing that I've heard. The medical redshirt possibility is making more & more sense to me as time goes on, but that's still pure speculation.
I'll bet we could still not win the conference tourney and host the Super.