NPI Rankings (Week 8)

I didn’t realize the Latvians had sent me the NPI rankings last night. Finally asked this morning only to look stupid. Most of the time that happens without me asking. Regardless, the NCAA actually dropped the official rankings a week early! You can find them here. When they used the selection criteria in the past, they would have one secret practice session. This was followed by a release of the teams alphabetically because one of the criteria (Ranked Results) doesn’t come into play until the 2^nd real release as it relies of data from the first release. The rankings didn’t normalize until the 3^rd real release when all of the criteria was properly used. Whew! We knew they were doing a run this week but thought that it would be practice or just not released. It really didn’t make any sense because this is just a formula and it’s good to go from the start. Maybe the NCAA came to that realization, too. (Or it’s a mistake and they will pull down the data right after I publish this article?)

I have published the Latvian’s simulated results but they are slightly off from Ned’s and slightly off from the NCAA. With respect to Ned, we probably have a match or two slightly different. With respect to the NCAA, we will look at it. Ferrum being included is certainly a difference. Wait!?! Did I mention that the NCAA is including Ferrum after telling us that they weren’t!?! It makes sense for them to be included as they are still a DIII institution so glad we have that decided. Maybe. We also don’t know how many iterations the NCAA is running and that will cause a slight difference in the numbers if off from what we are doing. Overall, the ordering really didn’t change much. There is a team here or there that is one spot higher on one list than another. All-in-all, a great success for Ned and the Latvians!

Looking at the ranking, the all-important Top 8 are:

1. Juniata

2. MIT

3. Johns Hopkins

4. Emory

5. Hope

6. Marietta

7. Colby

8. UW-Oshkosh

UW-Whitewater is the 9^th team although they have been going back and forth with Washington & Lee this week. The difference between 9^th and being protected is 0.28 points.

IWU is our last team inside the at-large window and are ranked 41^st. The cut line is 59.09. That means (with 21 at-large teams) there are 20 teams inside the window that have the highest NPI in their conference. These are the teams that will take an at-large if they happen to lose in their conference tournament. Always something to watch out for during tournament weekend.

First team out is Gallaudet but they are leading in NPI in their conference. The same goes for the next team, Stevens. The third team is Springfield sitting at 58.55 or just 0.54 points below IWU. Starting with, maybe, Middlebury and working down the window, these teams are really at risk of dropping out of the at-large window with any type of loss. We’ve seen with NPI this season that losses are huge regardless of who the loss is to.

Looking at losses, the highest loss total for any at-large team is 9 by NYU. You have to play a number of high Strength of Schedule (SOS) opponents and win a number of those matches to pull this off. Other “high” loss teams are Carnegie Mellon, Calvin, UW-Stevens Point and Chris Newport. It should surprise anyone that 3 of these teams play in the ultra-competitive UAA and WIAC.

Sitting at 255st is Westfield State with an NPI of 48.03. They would be the lowest team in the tournament if they win their conference tournament. Teams outside the at-large window with high SOS numbers that might have done better with the old selection criteria are Wesleyan and Swarthmore (they are Region V and that chair always got an ‘S’ team in when they shouldn’t have). (To be clear, ‘S’ meant that a school that starts with the letter ‘S’. Some of you have dirty minds.)

The lowest SOS teams inside the at-large window are Whitworth (0.539) and Babson (0.546). Whitworth will probably win the NWC but Babson will be a team to watch as they play a number of tough teams to round out the regular season.

I had published a small User’s Guide in the Weekly Wrap-Up yesterday going off the Men’s Soccer NPI page. I have reprinted that section below as it also applies to Volleyball although we have no ties.

 A quick user’s guide:

• Updates will be weekly. Not daily.

• The NPI rank can be clicked. It will bring up that team’s match data.

Match Data:

• Outcome is the result of the game (HW = Home Win, AW = Away Loss, HT/AT = Home/Away Tie, HL/AL = Home/Away Loss). Let me know if anyone sees a tie for volleyball.

• NPI is the opponent’s NPI.

• Win Value is the value for this team if they won the match.

• Loss Value is the value for this team if they lost the match.

• QWB is the Quality Win Bonus received for the match (if any).

• Net NPI is the match NPI that this team received.

• Adj Wins and Adj Loss are adjusted wins and losses. I think ties make this needed. A tie would be 0.5 in each column.

• At the beginning of this screen, you get the NPI rank and team name of the opponents.

Main Screen

• Each Team is listed by rank. The team can be clicked to get their team sheet.

• Conference is listed.

• Region is listed.

• There is a result column but I’m unsure if those are matches from the previous day only. If you click the ‘W’ or ‘L’, you’ll get the box score.

• NPI is the overall NPI for the team.

• Prev NPI is their ranking the previous week.

• DIII WL is the win/loss record against DIII opponents only.

• Win Value is the value you can expect to gain for a match if you beat this team.

• Loss Value is the value you can expect to gain for a match if you lose to this team.

• QWB is the Quality Win Bonus you’ll get by beating this team.

• vAbove is the record of this team of opponents ranked higher than this team.

• vBelow is the record of this team of opponents ranked lower than this team.