RPI ratings play big role in NCAA tourney

Associated Press

INDIANAPOLIS – Butler won 25 games – and didn’t get into the NCAA tournament.

Gonzaga finished sixth in The Associated Press poll and could manage only a No. 6 seed.

Each year, it seems, the same thing happens: The power conferences take most of the 34 at-large bids and most of the high seeds, while the mid-majors find themselves fighting for respect.

The reason sometimes is as simple as the Ratings Percentage Index, which is designed to measure several factors and determine the best teams.

“The RPI is one of the tools we use,” NCAA tournament selection committee chairman Lee Fowler said. “It’s not like we sit down and go through it from one to 100 and say ‘OK, No. 45 gets in over No. 50.’ Our process is comparing teams to teams.”

The six strongest conferences, however, have clearly dominated the pairings. Of the 34 at-large bids this year, 27 went to teams from the Atlantic Coast, Big East, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-10 and Southeastern conferences.

Their RPIs are helped by the fact that 19 of the Top 25 teams come from their conferences and because the committee looks closely at the final 10 games of the season. Those factors hurt the mid-major programs, who are likely to get major victories only in November and December.

Some teams, however, think there is too much emphasis placed on the RPIs.

“To base everything on the RPI is a circular argument,” Gonzaga coach Mark Few said last week, before his team was seeded lower than he had hoped. “It definitely benefits the football conferences.”

Butler coach Todd Lickliter just found out what Few meant.

He believes the Bulldogs did everything they could by going 25-5. They set a conference record for wins, won the regular-season title and two regular-season tournaments. Butler won at Purdue and at Ball State, when the Cardinals were a Top 25 team, and became the first team to defeat Indiana in the Hoosier Classic.

In fact, it went 13-0 in non-conference games.

But by losing five games, three on buzzer-beaters, Butler was left with a No. 77 RPI ranking – and that cost them.

“I’d heard that the RPIs wouldn’t be weighted that heavily,” Lickliter said. “But as I look at it, it seems it was weighed very heavily.”

Fowler, who is North Carolina State’s athletic director, had said repeatedly that RPI ratings would be only part of the equation.

But those numbers again appeared to make a great impact.

Of the teams with the top 50 RPIs, 46 received bids. Beyond the top 50, only three teams – Missouri, Wisconsin and Wyoming – earned at-large bids.

Perhaps more confusing is the plight of Gonzaga, which went 29-3 and lost only to Pepperdine, Illinois and Marquette – all NCAA tournament teams and members of the Top 25.

Gonzaga shared the regular-season conference title with Pepperdine, then defeated the Waves in the West Coast Conference tournament and is one of only three teams – Duke and Michigan State being the others – to reach the regional semifinals each of the last three years.

Even playing NCAA teams, such as Texas, St. John’s and Montana, and teams that were expected to have good seasons, such as Saint Joseph’s, didn’t help.

Gonzaga’s RPI rating was No. 21, and although Fowler said the committee considered St. Joseph’s a quality opponent with a poor season, he explained another way in which the committee weighs the RPIs.

“Twelve of their wins were against teams with RPIs over 200,” Fowler said of Gonzaga. “The teams they lost to are behind them in the RPIs, those are the things I remember about that situation.”

Illinois was No. 12, Marquette No. 23 and Pepperdine No. 49.

Complicating matters is that the RPI is based in part on strength of schedule.

While Fowler has said that the committee considers the nonconference schedule strength more than the overall strength because teams can control that portion, it appears to hurt the mid-major programs.

Schools such as Butler and Gonzaga have found it difficult to schedule enough top opponents to make an impact on the RPI. Then, when they get into the conference portion, the RPI slides.

“I don’t have a list, but I do know there are major schools that we’ve called to whom we’ve said, ‘We’d like to play you and we’ll go to your place,’ and they don’t want to play,” Lickliter said. “That’s why I appreciate schools like Wisconsin, Purdue and Indiana, who have played us the last couple of years.”

What can be done?

Perhaps not much.

“If I’m picking up Big Ten and Pac-10 teams in exemption tournaments and Missouri Valley Conference and Mid-American Conference teams and still don’t have a good RPI, how do I do it?” Lickliter said. “The only way is to play the top half of the power conferences.”