RoyalShock wrote:I think the discussion of the effects of an 18-game vs 16-game conference schedule on RPI, and how that affects at-large selections, is overstated.
I believe the committee looks more at the individual games that a team wins or loses and the RPIs of those opponents than the RPI of the team its looking at. That has been fairly well-established over the past few years as the selection process has been a little more public.
Right, but the primary portion of the RPI is made up of your opponents' records. That's 50% of the RPI. An additional 25% is your opponents' opponents' records.
Considering you play your conference opponents twice (or even 3 times if you meet in STL), they'll count two or three times more than any given non-conference opponent. And they'll likewise make up a significent chunk of your OPPOPP, too.
Point being right now the conference goes 10-10 (or whatever) in those games by definition. Make those non-conference games, and you could be looking at a 16-4 record instead, depending on the quality of those non-conference games. That's not an insignificent difference.
