I see a lot of spin doctors over on ITS using the "facts" of RPI to show how much we have improved and how good our bad opponents have been. Here is the only fact you need to know, RPI is meaningless until all teams are well connected with common opponents, PERIOD. Jeff Sagarin explains this in his ratings and he attempts to make up for it with weighted statistical bias. RPI does no such thing so schools like Presby and Tx A&M-CC, who play all road games to start the season have an RPI skewed by this (the new formula only counts a road loss as .6 of a loss)
If you are trying to spin that a Presby team, minus their best guard, was actually a good opponent, you lose all credibility. If you are going to use RPI in the beginning of December, at least use a weighted version so it has SOME realism. Check out RPIforecast.com but even those numbers will change quite a bit but at least they TRY to be realistic.
Our RPI is about to get a kick in the pants the next couple games and the huge bummer is CUSA. We'll see how it pans out but I thought the conference would be better this year. ECU has some huge games coming up so we will find out how legit they are in the next couple weeks.
Some people are talking about how we are better than we were last year at this time. SO FREAKIN WHAT?! Last year we played ONE home game in the first 5. We lost to Hampton on a neutral UALR on the road and got blasted by OU. Then, we proceeded to go on a 6 game run with a decent win against Charlotte (#69). This year, we play 3 dogs out of the gate (ORU is headed for a 150+ ranking) at home and got blasted by OU and OSU. Charlotte will probably be equal or close to the A&M win, the Ohio loss will be similar to Hampton. S0, I guess we have one less bad loss. Is that better? Maybe, but shouldn't we be a LOT better after the run we went on to end the year? After extra practice and the Canada trip? I think the run we went on to end the year gives us hope for the same but let's not pretend how much "better" we are than we were last year.
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So ORU is a "dog"?
ReplyDeleteIs that any way for a "Golden Eagle fan" to talk?
And you wonder why so many are irritated by you...
I love dogs, I own 2. ORU is an RPI dog. They are 2-11 for RPI purposes and will likely end up no better than 125 - 150. For what it is worth, I think ORU is much better than early in the year. That nasty schedule is killing them. I have only made it to one home game, I didnt realize until just now that I have made it to EVERY home game. Yikes. ORU will be fine.
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