Bison137
Professor
Posts: 16147
Reg: 01-23-06
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Re: great new site for rpi lovers...
12-11-06 04:57 PM - Post#25971
In response to ericatbucknell
Quote:
http://www.rpiforecast.com/
the author doesnt go into much detail regarding how he predicts games (other than the basic model), but the predictions seem to be decent.
as of today our predicted end-of-season rpi is ~153 and our predicted end-of-season conference rpi is 13. my predictions: bucknells rpi is a bit better than that but the conference finishes 15th (with the mac and colonial passing the pl and the pl passing the horizon).
should be interesting to follow as the season progresses.
It would be great for the league if it could finish as high as #15. Ten days ago I was predicting #17. The way the conference rankings are working out demonstrates that a so-so conference is better off not playing many tough teams. The PL has a great ooc record - easily #1 of the bottom 20 conferences. The PL W-L percentage is .534; the next best of those 20 conferences is .471 (CAA) and then .448. But at the same time, the PL ooc strength of schedule ranks 29th of the 32 conferences. A few conferences that might be better than the PL have collectively taken on difficult schedules and are paying for it with brutal W-L records. A good example is the Big Sky, who was ranked ahead of the PL last year. As a conference, they are playing the 14th toughest schedule but have only won at a .338 pace.
There are two keys to the PL improvement this year. First, Army and Navy are beating all of the weak teams on their schedule this year, and even some of the decent ones, instead of losing to most of them as they did in 2005-06. Last year they were 4-9 at this stage, while this year they are 14-5. And secondly, HC and American have improved significantly. AU downgraded their schedule big-time this year, and is now 7-3 vs 2-6 at the same stage last year. Holy Cross has avoided the injuries that killed them last year in November and December and is currently 6-3 compared to 4-4 last year.
BTW, the conferences with the most suicidal schedule, hands-down, are the SWAC and MEAC. Forced to play a lot of guarantee games, they have the 2nd and 3rd toughest schedules respectively and have 7-58 and 11-55 records. Collectively that is 18-113 (.137).
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