Each year during the college basketball season you will no doubt hear the term "RPI" thrown around. One of the tools the NCAA Selection Committee uses to pick and seed teams for the NCAA Basketball Tournaments, the RPI is misunderstood by many. Here is a quick definition:
The Rating Percentage Index is derived from three component factors: Division I winning percentage (FI, 25%), schedule strength (FII, 50%) and opponent schedule strength (FIII, 25%). Games against non-Division I opponents are not used in calculating the RPI.
A snapshot of the RPI for men's conferences as of this morning (2/5/10) looks like this:
15. MAAC
16. MAC
17. Big Sky
18. Southern
19. OVC
20. Ivy
21. Atlantic Sun
22. Big West
23. Sun Belt
While a 19th ranking (out of 33 conferences) does not look overly impressive for OVC men's basketball programs, let's put some perspective to where the OVC has been the last few years.
2006 - 20th
2007 - 27th
2008 - 29th
2009 - 23rd
2010 - 19th (as of 2/5/10)
The OVC has shown tremendous improvement in men's hoops RPI over the last two seasons and there is hope that ranking will continue to grow. One of the goals for the league is to get its teams in the NCAA Tournament the best seed possible and eventually the hope of once again having multiple teams in the NCAA Tournament field (something that has not happened on the men's side since 1987).
OVC INSIDER: Insights, analysis and a behind-the-scenes look at the Ohio Valley Conference.
I doubt the OVC will get multiple bids. Murray State needs to win out to have a decent chance of getting a good seed from the seeding committee. The Racers need the ESPNU BracketBuster win as well, since they do not have a quality win, but they really don't have a bad loss. They only lost to California, LA Tech and Western Kentucky. Good luck Racers.
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