And here's Boston College, for which I only need to do one chart. After the chart, I'll use their case to explain a couple of things about how I look at the charts. In the chart, the red, blue, and grey markers and lines are for the NCAA's ARPI, Massey, and my 5 Iteration ARPI respectively. In this particular chart you can hardly see the grey. They are pretty consistent with each other for Boston College, although as you can see, there is a tendency for the ARPI to underrate it in some cases. That's a result of the RPI's difficulty rating teams from the different conferences well in relation to each other. This is exactly what I expect, given the ACC's having an ARPI performance percentage of 113.4%. In general, I consider Massey's blue markers and lines to be the best representation of true rank. They're not close to perfect, but they're a little better than my 5 Iteration ARPI and more better than the NCAA's ARPI. What's most interesting to me about this chart is the orange markers and lines. These show Boston College's rank in terms of what it contributes to its opponents' Strengths of Schedule under the NCAA's ARPI formula. As you can see, in most cases it's strength of schedule contribution is far less than it should be since ideally its actual rank and its rank as a contributor to opponents' strength of schedule would be the same. In 2017, for example, its ARPI rank was 54, its Massey rank was 52, and its 5 Iteration rank was 51. Yet under the ARPI, its rank as a contributor to opponents' strength of schedule was 123. That's a difference of 69 rank positions.
Here's a chart that suggests the coach maybe should get a look for a move to a higher level, Houston Baptist's Misty Jones. The ARPI trend has the team improving about 9 positions a year under her. Massey is less at about 7 per year, but that's still pretty good. I'm wondering if this is a surprise. Also: notice how much better Houston Baptist's contribution to its opponents' strengths of schedule is than its ranking merits.
Lipscomb's Kevin O'Brien looks like a prime candidate to move up, if he wants to. Here's their chart from 2011 (the year before he arrived) to present. The trend improvement in their ARPI is 35 positions per year, which is very good over a period that long. They basically were flat-lined in the 300 area from 2007 through 2011. They stayed flat-lined O'Brien's first year (2012) and then have been improving like gangbusters. Pretty soon, they've got to even out, but this is awfully good.
Kevin Sherry at Louisiana Tech looks like another candidate to move up a level. Their trend has their rank improving about 12 positions per year.
Here's Loyola Chicago's chart, which may relate to the question of how much time a new coach should have to show what he/she can do. If you look at the ARPI and where the team was in 2010, the year before Barry Bimbi began, and go out 6 years to 2016, there's a pretty good chance you'd think that it's time to look for someone new. But then, if you give him two more years, all of a sudden there's a possibility the team is verging on something really good and you might think you want to see what the team does next year. Or, alternatively, Loyola Chicago could return to where it was from 2009 through 2016, in which case the last two years won't mean that much. So, how long does it take a coach to show what he/she really can do? How long should an AD wait before making a move?
Milwaukee's Troy Fabiano may be a candidate to move up a level, although it's probably a little early to tell since he arrived only in 2015. The two charts show Milwaukee's trend since 2007 (through 2018), which is in the wrong direction, and since 2014, which is in the right direction to the tune of a 27 position per year ARPI trend improvement over where it was in 2014.
Here's Ole Miss, from 2009, the year before Matt Mott took over. The rate of the improvement trend is about 4 positions per year, which is just about the same as if I had started the chart with 2007.
Monmouth's Krissy Turner as possible candidate to move up a level. Although the chart doesn't show it, Monmouth's trend improvement per year based on Massey is about 5 rank positions per year. Also interesting on this chart: Look at Monmouth's rank as a contributor to opponents' strengths of schedule as compared to its ARPI rank and its Massey (likely most accurate) rank.
I'm a little reluctant to make a judgment after a coach has been in place for only three years, but NJIT's Ally Nick appears to have done really well over the three year's she's been there -- with a trend improvement rate of 59 positions per year over where they were the year before she arrived:
Not yet, but in a couple of weeks, I'll make a full Excel workbook available that will cover all the teams. I'm going through them alphabetically, modifying and updating charts I have for all of them. Each chart takes some time, and I have other things I have to do, so it's a long slog. I'm done through the M teams and part way through the Ns, which is more than half way, so I'm getting there.
I don't know if this is a surprise or not, but Old Dominion since the year before Angie Hind arrived:
I've been using the term "up a level." Looking at Massey's conference average ratings (in my opinion the best available) and mostly confirmed by the NCAA ARPI average ratings (except that Tiers 5-7 probably could be merged in no specific order), here are some tiers of conferences. The rating numbers are Massey's. These are average ratings over the years 2007 through 2017. "Up a level," as I'm using it, might mean up more than 1 tier. I guess it's probably best to say that the more tiers a coach moves up, the more risky for the hiring school. Tier 1 ACC 1.7893 Pac 12 1.7732 Tier 2 Big 10 1.6423 SEC Big 12 West Coast 1.5381 Tier 3 Big East 1.4122 American Big West 1.3734 Tier 4 Mountain West 1.2397 Ivy Colonial Conference USA 1.1620 Tier 5 Atlantic 10 1.0758 Mid American Big Sky Missouri Valley Horizon Patriot WAC 0.9214 Tier 6 Southern 0.8344 Sun Belt America East Summit Atlantic Sun Ohio Valley Metro Atlantic Northeast 0.6964 Tier 7 Southland 0.6378 Big South 0.6369 Tier 8 Southwestern -0.3394
Another potential candidate to move up: Sam Lopes at Providence. I'm a little inclined to want to see another year or two of how they do as it's possible they've leveled off but maybe not.
Here's Rider's chart, which illustrates a potential difficulty in evaluating a team's direction. If you look at the ARPI red trend line and its equation on the right, it indicates Rider's ARPI trend has been improving at the rate of about 8.5 positions per year over the time its current coach has been there. That's quite good and could make current coach a candidate for moving up. But if you look at the Massey blue trend line, the trend improvement rate is significantly less -- it's about 2 positions per year (the chart does not show that trend line's equation, but I've looked at the equation). That's not as good and probably wouldn't make the current coach a likely move-up candidate. So which is right? If you look at the text below the chart, you'll see "Metro Atlantic - PP%: ARPI 92.4; Massey 100.5; 5 It 100.6." Rider's been in the Metro Atlantic conference over the time covered by the chart. This line shows Metro Atlantic's performance percentage, which is a measure of how well its teams perform in relation to their ratings, on average. A performance percentage of 100% means the teams perform just about as the rating system says they should. A performance percentage above 100% means the teams perform better than the ratings say they should, in other words are underrated. A percentage under 100% means the teams perform more poorly than the ratings say they should, in other words are overrated. For Rider, the percentages for Massey and Iteration 5 are very close to 100%, which means they rate Metro Atlantic's teams just about right, on average. But the ARPI's percentage of 92.4% means the ARPI overrates Metro Atlantic's teams, on average. Thus the performance percentages together suggest that the ARPI trend line probably isn't as reliable as the Massey and Iteration 5 trend lines. And, by extension, Rider's coach might not be as much a candidate for moving up as the ARPI trend suggests.
San Jose State's Lauren Hanson is a candidate to move up, with an ARPI trend improvement of about 39 positions per year since her arrival in 2014. Their Massey trend improvement is smaller but still is about 26 positions per year.
Another move up candidate, not surprising, is South Florida's Denise Schilte-Brown with an ARPI trend improvement of about 11 positions per year (Massey about 8 per year): I realized that the Rank Standard Deviations weren't very helpful without the Rank Averages, so I've added a Rank Average line to the information near the bottom of the chart. In the above chart, you can see that South Florida's average ARPI rank over the last 8 years is 51. The standard deviation for the ARPI rank over this period is 55. What this means is that roughly 2/3 of the time, you can expect that South Florida's ARPI rank will be within 55 positions of 51 -- in other words will be between 1 and 106. You can make a similar determination for what its rank will be as a contributor to its opponents' strength of schedule.