has anyone been paying attention to the RPI? which, ultimately, is the ranking that is going to matter. top ten through today: Stanford USC Let's go Tar Heels Penn St Tennessee UCLA UVA A&M Santa Clara UGA from what i understand, the RPI places a higher premium on road record. full list here: http://web1.ncaa.org/app_data/weeklyrpi/2007WSOrpi1.html
Contrary to popular belief I think the Tar Heels are and have always been the best team in the country. A few times they have lost a game or two or three in a season. The naysayers want you to believe that the Heels will fall into obscurity. That is ridiculous. Nevertheless I can criticize UNC all I want. I've earned that right because I've seen over 150 games. Perfection is what I want and to strive for it is not a bad thing. Maybe I don't praise as much as I should. If you look at my posts you'll see that mostly I dwell on the positives. The point is I can't stand to see sloppy trapping. It drives me crazy.
The RPI is supposedly through this past weekend but it has Stanford on top with a 10 wins and 1 loss, when it's really 10-2 with the loss to UCLA. It seems to be a week behind.
As long as the Gators continue to move up, I'm happy. UCLA will be where they belong at the end, and once again get a top seed and home games during the tournament. That's good for me, I get to watch some high quality games, Round of 16 and up. We'll travel to College Station for the last two rounds.
Not exactly. There's a bonus for winning or tieing against a team in the top 80 of the RPI which is higher for a neutral site and higher still for a road game. There's also a penalty for losing or tieing against a team ranked between 135 and 301 which is higher for a neutral site and higher still for a home game. Other than the bonus/penalty system, it's the straight 25-50-25 that they used to do for basketball and still do for other sports.
Don't look, but ND has won 8 straight and are currently #18 in the RPI. Do they have a tough enough schedule remaining to climb much higher? If not, this is not a team I would like to see in the first weekend if I was a top 8 team hosting.
ND should see at least one and possibly two teams with good records in the Big East tournament, and several of the teams ahead are bound to lose games in their conference tournaments. So if the Irish win the conference tournament, I'd think they'll move up a bit, although I wouldn't care to guess how far they'd go.
ND always has a huge winning streak. They play a bunch of crappy big east team's. Beat Uconn. ND wins the big east.
UConn and Louisville are decent this year, and the Irish won at Louisville. I agree that the Big East is not particularly strong, top-to-bottom, but there are teams that are capable of challenging Notre Dame, particularly in a down year for the Irish.
Latest RPI is out Top 20 1. Penn State 2. UNC 3. UCLA 4. USC 5. Stanford 6. Tennessee 7. Texas A&M 8. Portland 9. Georgia 10. Wake Forest 11. San Diego 12. Virginia 13. Purdue 14. WVU 15. James Madison 16. Notre Dame 17. Florida 18. Indiana 19. FSU 20. Louisville http://web1.ncaa.org/app_data/weeklyrpi/2007WSOrpi1.html?
Maybe this thread will be put to bed tomorrow with the field of 64 announcement, but for the time being, given the results this weekend and last week's RPI, it would appear that there are only two clear choices for the top four seeds: UCLA and UNC. Penn State's RPI may give them a top seed despite the tie on Friday with Ohio State. I understand how the RPI is calculated but given Penn State's schedule and results, I do not understand how they were the top RPI team last week. But with Texas A&M losing today to Texas, Stanford tying Oregon on Friday, and USC losing to WSU today, perhaps PSU will be in the top four. Portland would appear to be the other top seed prospect.
they haven't lost a game since they got Lopez back from the WWC and UCLA (consensus #1) had to go overtime at home to beat them before she was back
i'm pretty sure they don't take the tournament results into account (with not all teams having one it either gives teams a big advantage/disadvantage), so i'm thinking it'll be ucla, a&m, penn st and the mighty mighty tar heels as 1 seeds. portland would my other choice, or usc. should be interesting, to say the least. not sure there are gonna be any 2 seeds that i want to have to face as a 1 seed.