Dance Card

[DudeAnon]

http://www.unf.edu/~jcoleman/dance.htm

Rankings:
Nova - 5 - 2 seed
Providence - 12 - 3 seed
Butler - 20 - 5 seed
Georgetown - 23 - 6 seed
Xavier - 24 - 6 seed
St. Johns - 30 - 8 seed


So what gives? Why is this so much more favorable than Lunardi etc? Is there bias against a non-P5 conference or am I missing something? It seems once you introduce human subjectivity rather than metrics that the Big East gets sold short every time.

[stever20]

my biggest problem with the Dance card is they use the old RPI.

St John's- old RPI is 35. new RPI is 44. That changes the equation considerably.

so take his last team in- Miami. Their RPI in the old formula is 57. In the current formula it's 67. That's a huge difference- and one that takes Miami out I think....

and look at Lunardi compared to the current RPI-
Nova- Lunardi 6, RPI 5
Butler- Lunardi 19, RPI 23
Providence- Lunardi 23, RPI 22
Georgetown- Lunardi 24, RPI 21
Xavier- Lunardi 33, RPI 29
St John's- Lunardi 46, RPI 44
keep in mind Lunardi's ratings were done before yesterday's games, where Butler lost at home to Xavier.

and look at the difference between old and new rpi
Nova RPI 5, RPI old 6
Butler RPI 23, RPI old 21
Providence- RPI 22, RPI old 18
Georgetown- RPI 21, RPI old 16
Xavier- RPI 29, RPI old 33
St John's RPI 44, RPI old 35

So you can see the new RPI absolutely hurts PC, Georgetown, and St John's, and somewhat hurts Butler. Only one it really helps is Xavier.

[DudeAnon]

What metric do you use stever? That doesn't include human bias.

[Bill Marsh]

There will always be variability when we go from one forecaster to another. Ryan Israelsen does something called The Bracket Project on which he posts a bracket matrix (http://www.bracketmatrix.com), putting up each of 96 different prognosticators and then averaging them. Here's what the average seed is for the Big East teams with number of predictions out of 96 picking them to make the tournament in parentheses:

1.75 - Villanova (96)
4.86 - Butler (96)
6.09 - Georgetown (96)
6.40 - Providence (96)
9.18 - Xavier (94)
10.0 - St. John's (95)
7.00 - Seton Hall (1)

[Bill Marsh]

my biggest problem with the Dance card is they use the old RPI.

St John's- old RPI is 35. new RPI is 44. That changes the equation considerably.

so take his last team in- Miami. Their RPI in the old formula is 57. In the current formula it's 67. That's a huge difference- and one that takes Miami out I think....

and look at Lunardi compared to the current RPI-
Nova- Lunardi 6, RPI 5
Butler- Lunardi 19, RPI 23
Providence- Lunardi 23, RPI 22
Georgetown- Lunardi 24, RPI 21
Xavier- Lunardi 33, RPI 29
St John's- Lunardi 46, RPI 44
keep in mind Lunardi's ratings were done before yesterday's games, where Butler lost at home to Xavier.

and look at the difference between old and new rpi
Nova RPI 5, RPI old 6
Butler RPI 23, RPI old 21
Providence- RPI 22, RPI old 18
Georgetown- RPI 21, RPI old 16
Xavier- RPI 29, RPI old 33
St John's RPI 44, RPI old 35

So you can see the new RPI absolutely hurts PC, Georgetown, and St John's, and somewhat hurts Butler. Only one it really helps is Xavier.

Absolutely?

Looks like it helps Villanova and Xavier.

[stever20]

What metric do you use stever? That doesn't include human bias.

I'd say mostly the RPI, but also taking into account records. A team like a UCLA right now I'd seriously look against with a 16-12 record....

[stever20]

my biggest problem with the Dance card is they use the old RPI.

St John's- old RPI is 35. new RPI is 44. That changes the equation considerably.

so take his last team in- Miami. Their RPI in the old formula is 57. In the current formula it's 67. That's a huge difference- and one that takes Miami out I think....

and look at Lunardi compared to the current RPI-
Nova- Lunardi 6, RPI 5
Butler- Lunardi 19, RPI 23
Providence- Lunardi 23, RPI 22
Georgetown- Lunardi 24, RPI 21
Xavier- Lunardi 33, RPI 29
St John's- Lunardi 46, RPI 44
keep in mind Lunardi's ratings were done before yesterday's games, where Butler lost at home to Xavier.

and look at the difference between old and new rpi
Nova RPI 5, RPI old 6
Butler RPI 23, RPI old 21
Providence- RPI 22, RPI old 18
Georgetown- RPI 21, RPI old 16
Xavier- RPI 29, RPI old 33
St John's RPI 44, RPI old 35

So you can see the new RPI absolutely hurts PC, Georgetown, and St John's, and somewhat hurts Butler. Only one it really helps is Xavier.

Absolutely?

Looks like it helps Villanova and Xavier.

PC, Georgetown, and St John's it hurts by at least 4 spots. Butler is 2 spots down. Xavier up by 4 spots, and Nova by 1 spot(1 more and it gets a lot bigger).

what's interesting is to see the home/away records in these lights
Nova- 15-0 at home, 7-2 away, 3-0 neutral- 5 new 6 old +1
Butler- 12-2 home, 5-4 away, 2-2 neutral- 23 new 21 old -2
PC- 12-2 home, 4-5 away, 3-0 neutral- 22 new 18 old -4
Geo- 12-3 home, 4-3 away, 2-2 neutral- 21 new 16 old -5
Xav- 13-2 home, 4-6 away, 1-2 neutral- 29 new 33 old- +4
SJ- 14-4 home, 3-5 away, 1-0 neutral- 44 new 35 old -9

St John's makes sense. I think for Butler, PC, and Georgetown- it's probably got a lot to do with teams around them.

[XUFan09]

I totally get the criticism of using the old RPI, but they have been very successful without changing their formula.

[stever20]

I totally get the criticism of using the old RPI, but they have been very successful without changing their formula.

yeah. I do wonder if as you get to the end the 2 RPI's kind of meet in the middle a smidge more...

I also wonder though if there's been a team like St John's with such an extreme difference. 9 spots is a lot.

[stever20]

just looking last year.....
they did miss 1 team- California. The old/new RPI difference may have had something to do with it. 56 with the old RPI, 63 with the new RPI.

Xavier was #39 on their list, with 44 old RPI.