RENTON — Two changes to the state basketball RPI rankings have been approved by the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association’s Executive Board.
Beginning with the 2017-18 season, the Ratings Percentage Index will include district-tournament results and factor in out-of-state opponents’ winning percentages.
The changes address two much-discussed issues with the original RPI system, which was implemented this past season in an effort to more accurately seed teams for the state tournaments.
“After year one, we were really pleased with how it went,” said Greg Whitmore, the RPI committee chairman and the athletic director at Lind-Ritzville High School. “It wasn’t perfect and we’ll never get it to be perfect, but it was really pretty good.
“So we (tweaked) a couple things, and the changes we’ve made for next year, we’re pretty confident, will make it even more accurate and better.”
The basic principles remain the same. The RPI formula factors in winning percentage (25 percent), opponents’ winning percentage (50 percent) and the winning percentage of opponents’ opponents (25 percent). Teams qualify for state through their district tournaments, and then are seeded based on their RPI.
One issue last season was that the rankings were finalized at the conclusion of the regular season and didn’t take into account district tournaments. The reasoning was that some district tournaments have considerably more games than others, and the WIAA didn’t want that to provide certain teams an advantage.
But because district tournaments had no impact on seeding, their significance was diminished. Once a team clinched one of its district’s allotted state berths, the team’s remaining district-tournament games were essentially meaningless — aside from the opportunity to earn a district-championship banner.
“There were a lot of district games that weren’t played,” Whitmore said. “They already knew they were in the state tournament and they knew the district games wouldn’t affect their RPI, so they said, ‘Hey, why play them?’”
Furthermore, teams weren’t rewarded in the RPI rankings for district-tournament success.
The most notable local example was the Lynnwood girls team, which went undefeated in Wesco 3A play and won the district title. Yet partly because the Royals’ three district-tournament wins weren’t factored in, they were seeded 10th in the state tournament, behind No. 5 Stanwood and No. 6 Snohomish — teams the Royals beat in the district tournament and finished ahead of in the conference standings.
And because Lynnwood wasn’t one of the top eight seeds, the Royals — unlike their higher-seeded Wesco 3A counterparts — had to win a loser-out regional game to advance to the Hardwood Classic.
“I do think it’s a better system,” Lynnwood coach Brent Hudson said of the changes. “If we’re going to play those games and have a district tournament — which I think you’ve got to have it — teams should be rewarded for success that they have in those tournaments and enter the state tournament with a better seeding.”
The other issue with last season’s RPI system was that all out-of-state opponents were calculated with .500 winning percentages — as opposed to their actual winning percentages — for ease of gathering data.
That impacted teams such as the Stanwood and King’s boys, who faced elite competition in out-of-state holiday tournaments but were credited in the RPI with playing middle-of-the-road opponents.
Under the revised system, teams will be responsible for tracking down and reporting out-of-state opponents’ win-loss records.
Snohomish girls coach Ken Roberts, an RPI committee member, said the committee will continue to look for ways to improve the system.
“We’ll evaluate it again this year and try to make sure that the best teams are in the top eight,” Roberts said. “That’s the challenge — to try to get the top eight teams in the top eight spots, and the top 16 teams in order.”
An RPI system could also be implemented in other team sports. The committee recently sent out a survey to athletic directors asking for input on the use of RPI in football, volleyball, soccer, softball and baseball.
“We’re going to see what member schools want and take that into consideration,” Whitmore said. “I think you could see RPI in other sports down the road.”
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