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harbo
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Kosty
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 Posted: Sun Apr 22, 2012 11:14 pm Post subject: |
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This post by "glazed-over" pretty much sums up how those that are NOT in the mafia see things.....
| Quote: | You do understand how it works, correct? The ACC is not recognized by the NCAA as a conference in men’s lacrosse because it lacks the requisite six members. All four ACC teams that play men’s lacrosse – Duke, Maryland, North Carolina and Virginia – are traditionally good. Thus they play in a “conference” that offers RPI and Strength of Schedule rewards and no penalties. Contrast that, as an example, to the Big East where for every Notre Dame a Syracuse faces there is also a Providence to balance things out.
Pretty cozy arrangement already, but it gets worse. Seeing the obvious benefits their arrangement breeds, these four ACC teams hold a postseason tournament in which all of them qualify. Nice. There is no ACC in men’s lacrosse as far as the NCAA is concerned, but get this: The NCAA recognizes those tournament games when it makes its selections. The bogus postseason ACC “tournament” is nothing more than an annual chance for the “conference’s” four teams to strengthen their NCAA Tournament credentials by playing each other a second time.
And, you don't think they're working it? Last year, Maryland lost to Duke and North Carolina in the regular season. Then in Maryland's "second chance" (tournament that is not a tournament) to play each, they defeated both, giving them two "quality wins", which pushed their RPI ahead of Colgate’s and sent the Terps to the Tournament even though they lost at home in a head-to-head battle with the Raiders.
Forget the call to expand the tournament - just launch the ACC off on its own to play each other 3 or 4 times a season and tell each other how great they are and have Quint comment on it and let the sport grow without them - it can't grow as long as the current ACC loophole is left open. |
Just wait until Syracuse joins the ACC and they FINALLY add another team to make officially 6 and make it an auto bid league. That will cut down the number of ACC team by at least half each year. And just wait until the current ACC schools start complaining about how SU makes the tourney every year as the autobid and their poor "itty bitty teams" get left out because they didn't win the ACC. |
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econalum
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Location: Acton, MA
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| Posted: Mon Apr 23, 2012 12:23 am Post subject: |
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In a somewhat ironic meeting today, accepted students day at Loyola (my son is going), I met a BC grad. (and Loyola Dad) who says that the BC AD has given BC Lax alums the number he needs to start up a varsity program there. From what he said, it is materializing.
So, BC may be the 6th ACC Lax team.
I am not a NCAA playoff guy, but I believe that there is a ratio that the NCAA has of eligible programs to increasing playoff spots, which explains why D2 is so small.
Anyway, with Michigan in D1, and BU starting up a D1 program, and others contemplating it, my guess is that this ACC/Baltimore bias goes away as more slots are created for playoffs.
We can at least hope so.
Econ.
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Old Cage
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harper31
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| Posted: Mon Apr 23, 2012 1:28 pm Post subject: |
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Back to #2 this week
USILA Division I Coaches Poll - 04/23/2012
Rank Team Points (1st Place Votes)
1 Loyola 215 (7)
2 UMass 211 (3)
3 Notre Dame 196
4 Duke 192
5 North Carolina 166
6 Virginia 164
7 Maryland 147
8 Cornell 134
9 Lehigh 123
10 Hopkins 120
Last edited by harper31 on Mon Apr 23, 2012 3:59 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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Dickie Dunn
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| Posted: Mon Apr 23, 2012 1:52 pm Post subject: |
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The RPI is such a laughably flawed statistic that it is a joke that the NCAA can put so much stock in it (but not surprising ... it is the NCAA, after all). I'm sure UMass87 can back me up on this.
KRACH is a much better evaluator, touted by real mathematicians (check out some of the college hockey discussions on USCHO). For instance, no team ever should see its rating drop because of a victory, which is possible with RPI (college hockey has to make adjustments because of this).
The poster on LaxPower (CU77) who calculates the KRACH was able to help me set it up so that I can calculate it in Excel, and I've been able to study it. He has Loyola at No. 1 and UMass No. 2, and other "mathematically sound" systems like LaxPower's ratings and Massey's ratings have both teams as the top two. Yet RPI has UMass at No. 4. So which should be gospel and which is the outlier? We all know the answer, but the NCAA can't be convinced of that.
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econalum
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| Posted: Mon Apr 23, 2012 7:50 pm Post subject: |
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Ok, I'll bite, was is KRACH - a non cognoscenti.
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Dickie Dunn
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UMass87
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| Posted: Mon Apr 23, 2012 9:53 pm Post subject: |
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| RPI is certainly one of the least sophisticated of ratings calculations. I like the laxpower rating. |
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econalum
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| Posted: Mon Apr 23, 2012 10:04 pm Post subject: |
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^^^^^^^^
Thanks for sharing, truly had NO IDEA about this. I need to think about/study it a bit, we in academia are a bit 'slow'. :^).
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Dickie Dunn
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| Posted: Mon Apr 23, 2012 10:23 pm Post subject: |
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| UMass87 wrote: | | RPI is certainly one of the least sophisticated of ratings calculations. I like the laxpower rating. |
LaxPower uses game scores and sites as its basis for calculation, which takes it a step further than even KRACH (and obviously more than RPI).
The argument there is that teams can boost their numbers by running up the score, although it is pretty easy to build in a maximum +/- (I believe LP uses 10 goals).
Let's say Team A beats Teams C, D, and E ... all by 7 goals and all on the road, while Team B beats each of those three by 1 goal at home. Which team likely is better? Team A, of course, but both KRACH and RPI treat them the same.
College hoop did a sensible thing by making the home/road adjustment to RPI, which prevented the UConns and Syracuses of the world from fattening their RPIs by never leaving campus. But there is no indication that there is a home/road adjustment for RPI in any other sport.
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UMass87
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| Posted: Tue Apr 24, 2012 9:07 am Post subject: |
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The problem with ANY rating in lacrosse is the same problem we bemoan about lacrosse in general: there simply is not enough scheduling parity. If UMass never gets to play UNC or Hopkins or Virginia etc. at Garber then no amount of numerical manipulation is going to resolve relative strength. Football has the same problem but worse because the number of games are so few.
Most relative rating systems are based, to some degree, on the premise that If A beats B and B beats C then A will beat C. We all know that for individual cases that is an absurd premise. When there are enough games between teams in the rating pool then there is some washout of that problem (although it still exists). There never will be a perfect rating system for any human endeavor but the only humans I would trust more than a good rating system are oddsmakers in Vegas (the best of whom seem prescient to me) or the en masse betting public.
I don't believe there are enough games in the Lacrosse season nor enough cross-scheduling to use the RPI. I may be wrong but right now UMass and Loyola are both 12-0. UMass' SOS is slightly stronger than Loyola's. Loyola's RPI is better than UMass'. That means that Loyola's opponents' SOS is stronger than UMass' opponents' SOS. For the RPI to work properly there should be enough games and enough cross-scheduling that the opponents' SOS for all teams should be very close to 0.500 by the end of the year. We'll see at the end of the conference tournaments if both teams are undefeated and the same situation holds. |
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78
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| Posted: Tue Apr 24, 2012 10:29 am Post subject: |
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UMass' strength of schedule is slightly stronger than Loyola's according to Laxpower, but that is not used by the NCAA. Whatever system they use has UMass at 44 out of 61 teams in terms of SOS, which is not good. This is the top 20 according to this system, and as you can see, Loyola's SOS is ranked at 18.
No Team SOS (RPI)
1 North Carolina 0.6060
2 Duke 0.6029
3 Denver 0.5928
4 Syracuse 0.5915
5 Maryland 0.5908
6 Penn State 0.5832
7 Ohio State 0.5814
8 Virginia 0.5809
9 Penn 0.5805
10 Villanova 0.5763
11 Army 0.5755
12 Bucknell 0.5746
13 Johns Hopkins 0.5738
14 Hofstra 0.5726
15 Drexel 0.5725
16 Delaware 0.5699
17 Notre Dame 0.5631
18 Loyola 0.5631
19 Georgetown 0.5606
20 Rutgers 0.5605
These are the NCAA RPIs as of 4/23 (I got both of these lists from the Laxpower forum)
1 Loyola
2 Duke
3 Notre Dame
4 Massachusetts
5 Maryland
6 Virginia
7 North Carolina
8 Johns Hopkins
9 Lehigh
10 Colgate
11 Fairfield
12 Villanova
13 Penn State
14 Princeton
15 Cornell
16 Denver
17 Bucknell
18 Ohio State
19 Syracuse
20 Drexel
21 Navy
22 Georgetown
23 Yale
24 Hofstra
25 Robert Morris
26 Towson
27 Army
28 St. John's
29 UMBC
30 Bryant
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Swampy
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| Posted: Tue Apr 24, 2012 10:44 am Post subject: |
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^ UMass beat #6, 7, 11, 12, 14, 15 with #16 coming on Saturday.
Just keep winning is all you can do! |
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DrG
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| Posted: Tue Apr 24, 2012 11:56 am Post subject: |
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| Yes, but the NCAA criteria seem to reward losing. |
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