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Post by jojonito on Nov 14, 2019 13:45:47 GMT -5
I've been reading some posts by bluepenguin on VolleyTalk (he's the RPI guru on VolleyTalk), and he is of the opinion that there is a distinct possibility that PSU doesn't get seeded for the NCAA tournament. He bases this on the lack of top 25/50 wins by PSU; 2 top 25 wins and 3 top 50 wins. (ILL has a #44 RPI ranking). What really hurts PSU this year is their lack of matches against top teams due to their B1G conference scheduling; Nebraska only once; Purdue only once; Minnesota only once; Wisconsin twice, but the first match was a beat-down. And the pre-season schedule was, as usual, had a pretty low strength of schedule. Oregon, which initially looked liked a good team, due to injuries etc, turned out to be not very good. I personally, think that PSU will get a seed. They're ranked #17 in RPI at this point and have the possibility to go up as they're playing Wisc and Minn at the end of the year; I think that they'll win one of those matches. The coming match tomorrow nite against ILL could be a difficult one as Huff Hall is a difficult place to play, and ILL always seems to be "up" when playing PSU. I'm sure a loss tomorrow nite wouldn't help the PSU seeding. That being said, I'm pretty sure that NOBODY wants to play PSU early on. PSU has the capability to beat almost anybody, and they have been getting better as the year goes on. Tori is playing some of her best volleyball. Jonni, as usual, has only gotten better. Ironically, I'm a little worried about Hord as she has not been doing well (by her standards) in the last 2-3 weeWomensks. Never mind that last statement. I went back and looked at her stats; over .500 got 3 weaker teams; .333 agains Purdue and .238 against Nebraska. Course, few players hit well against Nebraska. The beginning of the Purdue match, for Hord was a little worrisome, but she came on in the last 2-3 sets. So it will be interesting (as in "may you live in interesting times"  ) to see where the committee puts PSU. P.S. If the committee doesn't seed PSU, it would remind me of the womens Soccer World Cup. If the seeding had held true, USA would had to play the top 3 teams to win the World Cup; Germany, England and France. It appeared to me that the seeding was done to make it a USA win as unlikely as possible. I only mean this in that the good teams that would end up playing PSU would like it about as much as France liked playing the USA in the quarterfinals of the World Cup. And a consequence of France losing to USA in the quarterfinals was that they don't quality for the Olympics. |
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Post by NittanyLions on Nov 14, 2019 14:54:13 GMT -5
Actually, PSU is currently ranked # 12 in RPI. BluePenquin's Future has them ending up at # 17 (go figure).
On this one thing, I agree with you jojo and disagree with Bluepenquin.
If PSU ends up with a final RPI of 17, then I think the committee gives PSU a seed.
Not that I care for a seed, but I believe PSU and Russ' name carry a lot of weight in the committee's eyes. |
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Post by traveler on Nov 14, 2019 15:44:09 GMT -5
BTW, rare Thursday night game...WI v MN...might this decide the B1G Championship? on BTN or BTN+...not sure. 9 ET site says.
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Post by pennstate1973 on Nov 14, 2019 18:14:01 GMT -5
Oregon turned out to be a real downer for RPI. I think PSU has to win one of the games with Minnesota and Wisconsin to be assured of a top 16 seed. That won't be easy, particularly Wisconsin. I agree if PSU is not seeded top 16, they will be the most difficult opponent outside the top 16.
I actually think being seeded slightly outside the top 16 is not that big a deal compared to being #15 or #16. In the first two rounds PSU would not have to play any of the top four seeds and they should win. After that it is all about match-ups, more so than seeding.
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Post by jojonito on Nov 14, 2019 20:19:59 GMT -5
Oregon turned out to be a real downer for RPI. I think PSU has to win one of the games with Minnesota and Wisconsin to be assured of a top 16 seed. That won't be easy, particularly Wisconsin. I agree if PSU is not seeded top 16, they will be the most difficult opponent outside the top 16. I actually think being seeded slightly outside the top 16 is not that big a deal compared to being #15 or #16. In the first two rounds PSU would not have to play any of the top four seeds and they should win. After that it is all about match-ups, more so than seeding. Agreed. If PSU not seeded it would all depend on what regional PSU would end up in. Wouldn't mind Baylor or Pittsburgh (if they host) I have a feeling that one or two of the regionals could be relatively easy. Course it also depends on where the committee puts Stanford as Plummer is now back and seems like is as good as ever. |
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Post by Deleted on Nov 15, 2019 15:28:26 GMT -5
Sorry to go slightly off topic but can anyone give me a quick run-down on what happens after conference play finishes. I know there are regionals, NCAA R1,R2, Quarters, Semi and Final but how is it decided how many and who goes to which regionals and to NCAA R1. Also are there conference finals between the top 2 (or semis with the top 4)? All info would help me enjoy the matches that bit more than I already do. Thanks
Good luck to PSU at Illinois!
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Post by jojonito on Nov 15, 2019 16:05:41 GMT -5
Sorry to go slightly off topic but can anyone give me a quick run-down on what happens after conference play finishes. I know there are regionals, NCAA R1,R2, Quarters, Semi and Final but how is it decided how many and who goes to which regionals and to NCAA R1. Also are there conference finals between the top 2 (or semis with the top 4)? All info would help me enjoy the matches that bit more than I already do. Thanks Good luck to PSU at Illinois! Some conferences have a conference tournament. The Big 10 doesn't, along with others. Winners of the various conferences, (I believe there are somewhat over 30 conferences) have an automatic bid. A NCAA committee meets on Sat & Sun at the end of the season to decide who gets the other "at large" entries. There are 64 teams in the tournament out of which 16 are seeded. Those 16 teams host the sub-regionals. The rest of the field is distributed to the various sub-regionals as the committee sees fit. However, the committee attemps to keep the distance a team needs to travel to a sub-regional down to 400 miles, (thats to keep costs down), as the NCAA sends money to schools that need to travel farther then that to allow for air fare. The 400 mile rule has been quite a bone of contention for some people as PSU tends to get easy schools as there aren't a lot of strong volleyball schools on the east coast. Not that it matters very much, as just about any of the schools that PSU would get would be beaten by PSU pretty easily. As explained in another thread, PSU may not be seeded unless they beat Minnesota or Wisconsin at the end of the season. If they don't beat either of these teams, their RPI would probably be 17. Which usually would mean that they wouldn't be seeded and therefore not host a regional. HTH. |
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Post by Deleted on Nov 15, 2019 16:56:15 GMT -5
So the 'regionals' (or 'sub-regionals') and the NCAA Tournament Round 1 are all one and the same thing?
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Post by nyline on Nov 15, 2019 17:21:43 GMT -5
So the 'regionals' (or 'sub-regionals') and the NCAA Tournament Round 1 are all one and the same thing? The first two rounds constitute the "sub-regionals," The Round of 16 constitute the Regionals -- four of them. I believe Penn State has a reasonable shot at hosting a sub-regional, even if they don't host a regional (hopefully, someone will quickly correct me if I'm wrong on this). I believe the hosting of the Final Four is determined "separately" (i..e. in theory) from the hosting of the Final Four, but last year, Minnesota hosted a regional, and also the Final Four (which it failed to make, in an epic disappointment for Gopher fans, who were left to ice fish for the remaining 8 months until summer). |
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Post by offonvictory on Nov 25, 2019 11:41:07 GMT -5
Now that PSU has swept Rutgers, the team has exactly ZERO bad losses, even if they lose both games this weekend. Someone would need to explain to me how PSU is the 16th+ best team in the country holding the only win over Pitt and having only lost to Pitt, Stanford, Nebraska, and Wisconsin (and then maybe Wisc again and Minn), all top 10 teams.
The other teams above PSU in RPI Futures are ridiculous. Hawaii should not get a higher seed than PSU. They played one top 10 team, Baylor, and were swept. They then have 2 other non-top 10 losses. So they're better?
I actually thought Russ scheduled a tough non-conference. Had Oregon had a better season, that's suddenly another strong win. (Oregon beat UC-Irvine, who beat Hawaii.)
Maybe I'm getting angry prematurely, but two wins this weekend would make the committee's job a bit easier! Go get 'em, Lions!
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Post by stillkicking on Nov 25, 2019 12:57:03 GMT -5
Now that PSU has swept Rutgers, the team has exactly ZERO bad losses, even if they lose both games this weekend. Someone would need to explain to me how PSU is the 16th+ best team in the country holding the only win over Pitt and having only lost to Pitt, Stanford, Nebraska, and Wisconsin (and then maybe Wisc again and Minn), all top 10 teams. The other teams above PSU in RPI Futures are ridiculous. Hawaii should not get a higher seed than PSU. They played one top 10 team, Baylor, and were swept. They then have 2 other non-top 10 losses. So they're better? I actually thought Russ scheduled a tough non-conference. Had Oregon had a better season, that's suddenly another strong win. (Oregon beat UC-Irvine, who beat Hawaii.) Maybe I'm getting angry prematurely, but two wins this weekend would make the committee's job a bit easier! Go get 'em, Lions! No your not getting angry prematurely, If Hawaii has a higher RPI than PSU, then you have every right to be angry, It makes me angry. |
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Post by jojonito on Nov 25, 2019 13:52:39 GMT -5
Here's a 'rant' from Volleytalk: "I'll give you an even simpler example of why the RPI needs a replacement metric:
So called "good wins" and "bad losses" really have nothing to do with your RPI score/rank. Zero. Those things are factors in the human evaluation of teams by the committee, but don't really affect your score.
So if Team A knocks off a top-15 team (measured by RPI), then loses to a 300-ranked team, they would net the same exact RPI score as Team B, who beats the same 300 team and loses to the same top-15 team. The RPI doesn't care WHICH teams you beat, only the fact that Team A and Team B both are 1-1 and played the same schedule.
That aspect makes very little sense, IMHO.
Sure, the above example would be caught by the committee, but only if they were actually scrutinizing the teams closely, which likely only happens with bubble teams and in seeding top teams. For the rest, its way easier to just go with the RPI rank.
Also, in evaluating "top-whatever" wins, they are still using the straight, unmodified RPI rank of your opponents. So they use the RPI to check the validity of the RPI. That's called circular logic in my book. Why not use a weighted average of other ranking systems, or literally anything else?
Anyway, sorry for the rant. I'm sure most of you on this board have heard anti-RPI propaganda for decades. Nothing new to see here. Carry on. No need to respond."
RPI Rant
Another reply on the same Volleytalk page is: "A shorthand version of what's wrong with RPI is that it is trying to solve the problem that win/loss records don't always reflect team strength, so to solve that it uses ... win/loss records. Hello, is anybody home in there? And since that doesn't work so well and RPI produces some bad results, they tweak it by giving bonuses for beating teams with ... high RPI.
Yes, that's right. Win/loss records can be misleading, so they fix it by using more win/loss records. And RPI can be misleading, so they fix that by giving you bonuses based on the RPI of the teams you beat. Nobody at the NCAA ever heard that when you are stuck in a hole, maybe "keep digging" isn't the best response."The thing is, the RPI is flawed. Some people will be very unhappy to see PSU in their sub-regional or regional. My favorite example of the RPI flawedness  , is Missouri,in the year that they were 35-0. If I'm not mistaken, Purdue, who was the 6th best team in B1G that year beat them. A LOT of the high ranked RPI teams will get beat by B1G teams and PAC 12 teams. It is what it is. I'm with you in being annoyed with the RPI, cause PSU could beat at least half of the teams ahead of them. Oh well. Edit: I obviously have WAY too much time on my hands. I'm really hoping that PSU is seeded 16th so as to avoid Stanford. The 3 teams, IMHO, to avoid are Stanford, Wisconsin and Texas; (or should I say Plummer, Wisconsin and Texas ). Texas, because IF they have good server/receive, they can beat anyone. Wisconsin, because of their good hitters. Wisconsin reminds me of some of the past PSU teams in that they have 3-4 hitters who can go off on you and beat you. Add Rettke to the mix and you have a problem; who do you block? Stanford, obviously, because of Plummer, tho Rettke reminded me of Plummer in some of her back row attacks Sunday against Nebraska. As a last, or next to last, thing, (in a really long reply ), B1G has the best record in the NCCA tournament in the last 10 years or so, if you look at how far teams from various conferences have advanced, B1G is by far the best. One last rant; Texas's seeds in the last 9-10 years has really annoyed me. They have always has a high RPI, cuz they play in BIG 12 which is a pretty weak conference. So for years, they have made it to the NCAA FF and then lost, most often becuz of their lousy server/receive. (Never quite understood why Texas doesn't recruit 2-3 libero quality DS's on a regular basis. They seem to have the best hitters or top 2-3 just about every year.). It will most likely come out in the wash, as the saying goes. Anyway, I'm done. Just my opinion. ' |
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Post by jojonito on Nov 25, 2019 14:44:08 GMT -5
One other cynical viewpoint from the same thread as above: >>>>In my opinion, which I warn you is very cynical on this subject, the committee members mainly use all those "secondary" criteria >>>>to rationalize making decisions they already want to make but can't be justified by the primary criteria.
I agree. A means to validate its mapping out the brackets. They then have evidence to present when confronted.See below for secondary factors. By the way, we really want Purdue to beat Michigan and MSU this weekend. That would cement Purdue as a Top25 team which would boost PSU's RPI. The PSU B1G schedule this year hasn't done PSU any favors. PSU only plays Nebraska, Purdue, Minnesota once this year. PSU plays ILL twice, except that ILL's RPI is in the 40's and it isn't one of their better years. Nebraska being hit by the same problem. So not only does PSU not get the boost from playing high RPI teams, but PSU gets the unboost  from playing more really low RPI teams. The disadvantages of playing an unbalanced schedule. Also, the disadvantage of the B1G expansion. Adding two really 'weak sisters' in Maryland and Rutgers. Here is a list of the things the NCAA committee takes into account. "They are part of the "third-level" sort, or even a "fourth-level" sort, if choosing to break it down further.
The sequence is:
1. raw RPI ->
2. adjusted RPI ->
3. corrected RPI (using RPI-based factors, including SOS, significant wins, last ten matches, etc.) ->
4. Finalized field/seeding (using non-RPI factors, such as H2H, common opponent, etc).
I don't think they specifically look at significant losses, however, because they are already baked into raw or adjusted RPI"The link in the post above has a pretty good discussion about RPI and how it's figured for anyone that is interested. |
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) to see where the committee puts PSU. 
, is Missouri,in the year that they were 35-0. If I'm not mistaken, Purdue, who was the 6th best team in B1G that year beat them. A LOT of the high ranked RPI teams will get beat by B1G teams and PAC 12 teams. It is what it is. I'm with you in being annoyed with the RPI, cause PSU could beat at least half of the teams ahead of them. Oh well. 
from playing more really low RPI teams. The disadvantages of playing an unbalanced schedule. Also, the disadvantage of the B1G expansion. Adding two really 'weak sisters' in Maryland and Rutgers.