One Fish, Two Fish, Stat Fish, Jew Fish

Round 1 Mismatches, or why the RPI Blows

The brackets are announced, and there are the predictable surprises and controversies. I’d like to tour the round one mismatches, but first, I’d like to address a controversy that many pundits have been wringing their ties over.

That would be Arizona v. Creighton. Many pundits (Gary Parrish most notably) have been complaining that Creighton deserved a berth more than Arizona. Their argument is pretty heavily tied to the RPI.

Arizona: RPI 62, vs. top 50 RPI: 6-10, vs. top 100 RPI: 8-12
Creighton: RPI 40, vs. top 50 RPI: 2-2, vs. top 100 RPI: 9-5

It seems like a no-brainer from that. I mean, sure Creighton didn’t play many top 50 teams, but their comparative records against top 100 teams suggests that Creighton is far superior.

Here’s the problem. The RPI has some severe issues, and among them are that teams like Creighton are dramatically favored. The RPI’s biggest issue is that it tends to favor good records over tough schedules. Ostensibly, half the formula is the opponents’ records, but let’s face it, Alabama St. went 22-9. Beating them in the RPI is worth a decent boost, since they have such a good record. In reality, Alabama St. is a 200ish team, who just played a stupidly easy schedule. On the flipside, you have teams like West Virginia, who went 23-11, which is worse than Alabama St. did. Of course, West Virginia played one of the toughest schedules in basketball. I guess, in short, the RPI presumes that record indicates quality, but this isn’t accurate much of the time. In particular, the RPI will praise teams with weak schedules that win a lot over teams with tough schedules that lose sometimes.

Let’s compare using the Pomeroy numbers, which are better (in my mind) for two reasons: 1) they use margin of victory and 2) their quality of opponent metric is much more sophisticated.

Arizona: Pom 39, vs. top 50 7-10, vs. top 100 9-13 
Creighton: Pom 67, vs. top 50 1-0. vs. top 100 5-4

Arizona played 17 games against the top 50 (20 games against the top 52), and Creighton played 1. To be sure, Arizona’s record in such games is worse, but given the epic difference in schedule quality, Arizona’s 19-14 starts looking a lot better than Creighton’s 26-7. Furthermore, while 5-4 > 9-14, it is worth noting that Creighton’s record is almost totally against teams in the 51-100 ranking. Arizona’s 9-14 is mostly made up of playing the top 50. So even Creighton’s better record has some suspicion on it. (It’s further worth noting that against teams not in the top 100, Arizona went 12-0, Creighton went 21-3.)

Why the huge discrepancy? Mostly, the teams evaluated the most erroneously in the RPI are the mid-low range power conference teams, and the higher end weak conference teams. A good team (50 ranked or so) will go 20-12 or so in the ACC. A 50 rank team in the WAC will go closer to 26-8. It’s the same team, but with different schedules. The RPI will think the WAC team is better (better record), and reward you more for playing them. If you play nothing but middling teams (.500) from a power conference, you’re playing a pretty damned tough schedule. If you play bad teams in a weak conference (.500), you’re playing a pretty weak schedule. According to the RPI, they’re the same quality team.

But I’ve been going on long enough. Arizona is a team that obliterated weak teams, played mostly strong teams, and lost more than it won. They went 19-13 against what was obviously a tremendously difficult schedule. Creighton played a middling schedule (not a lot of strong teams) and went 26-7. They did well against weak teams, and held their own against strong teams. I can see the argument for Creighton being better, but personally, I’d advocate Arizona being better. Their difficulty of schedule should put them over the top. (On top of the Pac 10 (which has very few weak teams) they played UAB, Texas A&M, Gonzaga, San Diego St., UNLV and Kansas.)

Anyhow.

Round 1 Mismatches (Team, Record, Schedule, Offense, Defense, top 50, 51-100, sub 100)

Boston College (7) v. USC (10)

USC: 21-12, 4th, 62nd, 19th, 8-9, 4-2, 9-1
BC: 22-11, 53rd, 27th, 131st, 4-7, 8-2, 10-2

I’m not entirely sure why this happened. Normally the overseeded team will have a better record. But the two teams have comparable records, but USC has played a much harder schedule. They’ve gone 8-9 vs. the top 50, where BC has gone 4-7. Were I to guess? BC beat both Duke and UNC, where USC has no victories like that (besides a victory over UCLA in the P10 tournament.) But beyond that… If someone can figure out what makes BC a better team than USC, I’d love to hear it :)

Florida St. (5) v. Wisconsin (12)

Florida St.: 25-9, 15th, 95th, 12th, 6-7, 10-2, 9-0
Wisconsin: 19-12, 27th, 24th, 60th, 4-10, 6-2, 9-0

This one is a much more even thing. Where USC is clearly better than BC, these teams appear to be matched appropriately. Florida St. has a better record than Wisconsin, and has played a tougher schedule. So why is this listed as a mismatch? Margin of Victory. Wisconsin is +32 in 25 games against Top 100 teams, even though they’re 8-12 in those games.

Wisconsin Wins against Top 100: 29, 20, 17, 13, 12, 10, 5, 5, 4, 2
Wisconsin Losses against Top 100: 19, 13, 11, 7, 5, 5, 4, 4, 4, 3, 3, 1

Please note. Wisconsin’s wins are mostly in double digits, with only 4 of 10 wins in the singles. On the flipside, 9 of their 12 losses are in the single digits, with 8 within 5 points. This may sound like an evasion of their comparably poor record, but it’s not. Which would you favor in a neutral game, a team that is 10-0 with their wins by 1 point each, or a team that is 5-5, with wins by 20 each, and losses by 1 each. In general, the 5-5 team will win that match, 70-75% of the time. While there is a limited clutch skill involved in basketball, winning close games is more about luck than skill. In short, Wisconsin has been performing a lot better than their record indicates. Pomeroy has a stat called, rather intuitively, luck. Luck is basically a reflection of how good your record is given your Margin of Victory. High luck means the team won more than the performance would suggest. Wisconsin’s Luck rank is 312th out of 340. Almost no teams had a record that far behind their performance.

Florida St.’s luck rank is 20th. Let me show you what I mean.

Florida St. Wins against top 100: 13, 13, 11, 11, 11, 10, 7, 4, 4, 3, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2
Florida St. Losses against top 100: 23, 14, 10, 8, 8, 6, 5, 3, 3

Florida St. is +19, but they’ve gone 16-9 in these games. So, to recap, Wisconsin is +32 in 20 games, Florida St. is +19 in 25 games. Wisconsin has outperformed Florida St. on paper, but has been dramatically outperformed in actual record.

Do I believe that the Wisconsin is better than Florida St? Maybe. But the point of the article is that this particular 5-12 matchup is nowhere near as dramatic a mismatch as it looks like. Watch out for Wisconsin.