mvcfan2 wrote:Championz wrote:Drakey wrote:We're luck that SIU is winning or we would be looking at the lowest conference RPI in history. The Valley is currently 15th, which is lower than any finish I can remember. Without SIU we would probably be at #20. I was counting on WSU to keep the Valley RPI up until some programs could improve. I think most programs are moving in the right direction, so it is unfortunate that WSU has dropped to #255.
Yah we weren't counting on losing 1/3 of our team to start the year.
Seeing how it's still November, it's a little early to be looking at RPI numbers.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it important to have a good Conference RPI in the non-conference part of the season? My thoughts being, if everybody has a higher RPI from playing/beating higher RPI teams then once conference season begins it will be RPI #50 vs RPI #61 (example) instead of RPI #200 vs RPI #255? Hard to move up RPI when you are only beating 200 level RPI teams....
Maybe I am way off here as I am definitely not an RPI expert, but just my thoughts.
You are both correct. We need as many teams with good non-conference winning percentages as possible AND it is still early for RPI to really be looked at closely.
SIU winning their games, even against relatively poor competition, will give them a better RPI than WSU losing games to good competition. If both were close to .500, then the better competition would push WSU's RPI higher than SIU's.
One of the reasons the "Power 5" conferences get high RPI's is because they schedule a bunch of cupcakes at home and get gaudy non-conference winning percentages even for their lower teams. Once in conference they are then beating other teams with positive winning percentages.
The worst thing for the conference is for a team to lose a bunch of non-conference games, getting a low RPI, and then start to win come conference time. This is where the term "Evansville'd" came from. Right now I think WSU and Illinois State have the potential to end up in this boat if they don't get things straightened out in December. We expected Bradley and Missouri State to struggle and we expect that will continue once conference play starts, so their records are not a surprise. SIU has been a pleasant surprise, the jury is out on Indiana State, Loyola, and Drake.
Still time to get wins, but the conference as a whole is under .500 right now which is dragging everything down. Drakey is right, there is almost no movement once conference play begins.
