https://www.cbssports.com/college-basketball/news/the-ncaa-tournament-committee-will-select-and-seed-teams-using-a-new-ranking-system-after-killing-the-rpi/

Granted, the baseball committee...from year to year...has used the RPI and/or completely ignored it, based on the personality of that year's committee. It would be nice if baseball moved to an established, consistent metric for evaluating the best 30-ish at-large teams and then used that same established, consistent metric for seeding all 64 teams. But making coaches, players, and fans guess from year to year what the committee favors more is exhausting.

RPI favored the P5 conferences until some savvy smaller schools gamed it. The notion of sorting purely on stats isn't terrible, but it also isn't awesome though definitely more defensible with the bigger statistical collection in basketball and the diamond sports.

If it doesn't solve basketball it won't solve the diamond sports imho since in reality the series are way too important to ignore.

But I'm okay with something better. If there is such a thing.

Hopefully they scrap it

my initial thought is that scrapping the RPI would be bad for the SEC.

just from a statistics standpoint, the RPI is somewhat a better tool for baseball because teams play more games. Usually 60 or so games before the committee has to make their decisions. Whereas for basketball it's 35 or so games

that's part of the frustration with the committee.

they did ignore Kentucky's head-to-head series win vs. Texas Tech...where the Wildcats dominated the first 2 games and Tech just salvaged the finale.

and of course t.u....pounded in series losses to LSU and Stanford. Crushed in a 2-game midweek set at Arkansas. And suffered 2 bad series losses to non-regional teams Kansas State and West Virginia. But not a big deal to the committee

Scrapping the rpi is aimed directly at the SEC imho.

Luke The Drifter said:

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Ultimately, I just prefer the baseball selection committee to be consistent from year to year. I really don't care what criteria they use...so long as they use the same criteria next year as they used this year as they used last year. Putting an emphasis on regular season conference titles is fine...until the committee seemingly ignores it the next year. Putting an emphasis on RPI (or whatever formulaic metric they choose) is fine...until the committee seemingly ignores it the next year.

I think the selection and seeding criteria needs to be more transparent and structured from year to year...not based on the whims of that particular year's committee make up.

And the parameters usually change to deal with the SEC.

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dermdoc said:

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Scrapping the rpi is aimed directly at the SEC imho.

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We can hash out the reasons it if the time comes that they get rid of it in baseball, but they're certainly not scrapping it in basketball because the SEC has been dominant.

Scrapping the rpi isn't going to do much to the SEC in terms of baseball. Here are the number of SEC teams ranked in the top 10, top 30 in various formulas right before the NCAA tournament started last year.

RPI 4, 7
ISR 4, 8
Massey 3, 7
Kislanko 4, 9
Nolan ELO 3, 9
Sagarin 6, 11


RPI wasn't particularly favorable to the SEC.

Yeah, I mean, the SEC had 3 teams in the top 8 RPI last year on selection day. Yet, the SEC got 4 national seeds. #4 Stetson was replaced by #9 Georgia. 7 of the 8 top RPIs received national seeds, with Georgia being the lone non-top 8 RPI to get a national seed.

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I think the selection and seeding criteria needs to be more transparent and structured from year to year...not based on the whims of that particular year's committee make up.

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I think that's what most people would want, but I'm not sure how you get there.

If you start with conference champions and top finishers....there's too much diversity in conference sizes and strengths to where the top of some conferences certainly don't deserve to play for a championship as much as some strong teams in the middle of better conferences.

So you get a committee. But as mentioned, we need a system that helps guide away from biases of committees that are made up of people with agendas.

So we get RPI. And we still have a committee using their influence to circumvent RPI where they see fit.

And though some celebrate the removal of RPI in basketball....they're replacing it with NET, another ranking system that uses many of the same metrics that were used in RPI plus others that are already producing critics.

I'm also for more consistency, but with the way these sports are structured for the postseason, I'm not sure how we get too far way from the personal influences of each new year's committee.

TXAggie2011 said:

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dermdoc said:

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Scrapping the rpi is aimed directly at the SEC imho.

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We can hash out the reasons it if the time comes that they get rid of it in baseball, but they're certainly not scrapping it in basketball because the SEC has been dominant.

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I do not think it is an anti SEC bias. I think it is a bias against any conference dominating seedlings, host sites, etc. The NCAA, like most academic based institutions, want to make things "fair" rather than just rewarding actual performance.on the field.