Pac-12 schedule: A victim of RPI?

WASHINGTON WILL PLAY ARIZONA AND ARIZONA STATE ONLY ONE TIME EACH THE NEXT TWO SEASONS.

As we reported last week, the Pac-12 will switch to an unbalanced schedule next season. And yesterday’s Selection Sunday outrage over the use of the RPI helps explain why.

The Pac-12’s Natalia Ciccone told Volleyblog Seattle this afternoon that each conference volleyball team will play a 20-match league schedule starting in 2012. Conference members have always played every other team twice—once at home and one on the road. Next year, however, schools will skip one team at home and skip that team’s regional partner on the road. The following season, schools will skip the same two regional partners, but reverse the home/road schedule with that pair.

“Regional partners” are the Pac-12’s natural rivalry pairings: UW/WSU, UO/OSU, UA/ASU, Cal/Stanford, UCLA/USC, and Utah/Colorado.

Washington fans won't see Arizona State in Hec Ed Pavilion in 2012
[Volleyblog Seattle photo by Leslie Hamann]

The most recent draft of the Pac-12’s 2012 schedule calls for the Washington schools to skip one match each with the Arizona schools. Next season, UW is scheduled to visit WSU the first week of the season. The next day, both teams fly to Arizona, where UW plays ASU and UA plays WSU. After those two matches, both Washington teams depart, without playing the other Arizona team. On the final week of league play, UA travels to Seattle and ASU to Pullman. That same week, WSU comes to Seattle.

Washington Coach Jim McLaughlin tells Volleyblog Seattle he has not seen the 2012 proposal, but says he expects to talk with WSU coaches about whether the two schools might tinker with the two dates they play each other. That’s what happened this season, when WSU’s -opening match at UW was moved to the final week, when the rivals played twice in four days.

Volleyblog Seattle has also learned that the latest draft schedule has the Oregon schools missing matches against the LA schools the next two seasons, and the Bay Area schools missing the Rocky Mountain schools.

[USC coach Mick Haley told Volleyblog Seattle he initially thought the LA schools would skip matches against the Bay Area schools in 2012-13, but says a USC official showed him another schedule that puts the LA/Bay Area skip several years down the line. He could not confirm whether the Oregon schools will be skipping the LA schools in 2012-13.]

The Pac-12’s Ciccone, Assistant Commissioner for Communications, said “the opponents selected to play once each year is random,” and confirmed schedules will use two-year cycles. She said rival schools will always play each other twice.

Why the change?

Several sources, including Ciccone and Haley, confirmed that it has to do with the NCAA’s controversial use of the RPI (Ratings Percentage Index) to determine tournament at-large bids and seeding. This year’s seedings have set off a firestorm of criticism, mostly from those who believe the Pac-12 and Big-Ten—traditionally the two most powerful volleyball conferences—were slighted in this year’s brackets. USC, the Pac-12 champion and top-rated team in both the coaches’ and media poll, was deemed by the NCAA selection committee as merely the seventh-best team in the nation.

[For an explanation of the RPI’s mechanics, see: Selection Sunday | RPI (round two) | A Primer]

So what does the RPI have to do with creating an unbalanced Pac-12 schedule?

RPI rankings place extreme emphasis on nonconference matches. Among the teams that finish in the mid-to-upper half of their conference, those who play—and defeat—other teams with high RPI rankings earn the highest rankings in return. As such, the NCAA system demands that all 311 Division 1 schools schedule (and win) as many nonconference matches as possible against teams with Top 50 RPIs.

Dropping two conference matches per season gives Pac-12 teams the chance to try to schedule an additional week of nonconference matches, in the hope of having a shot at an at-large entry or one of 16 home-court seeds in the 64-team tournament.

“Coaches want that extra week to schedule out of the conference,” Ciccone said.

The Big Ten—which has 12 teams—initiated a skip schedule this season when Nebraska joined the conference. Illinois played—and lost—at Nebraska, but did not get a return date at home. Illinois, Purdue and Penn State all finished conference play with 4 losses; Nebraska had 3, and won the conference title. Other skips also had a significant outcome on Big Ten standings.

Last week, Washington’s McLaughlin called the RPI “a joke” and “hocus-pocus”. Yesterday, USC’s Haley joked that coaches ought to “Occupy NCAA” to protest the selection committee’s use of the RPI.

There are many questions about the RPI’s integrity; we’ll discuss more of them in the days ahead. For now, coaches have shared a couple of their biggest concerns.

THE RICH GET RICHER

The RPI awards an unspecified number of bonus points to teams that schedule matches against teams ranked 1-50 in the RPI, and for wins against teams ranked 1-25 in the RPI. It also issues penalty points for scheduling lower-rated teams, and even more penalty points for losing to those teams.

If teams in the Top 50 all schedule each other—as the selection committee seems to encourage—the other 280 D1 teams are shut out, and even suffer penalty points for being forced to schedule lower-rated teams. A coach from a team that considers itself up-and-coming says the RPI is strong incentive for the rich to get richer.

THE .500 CONUNDRUM

Teams must have at least a .500 record to qualify for the tournament. This season, many teams without a winning conference record earned at-large bids ]see: Arizona (11-11 in the Pac-12), Michigan State (10-10 Big-Ten), Ohio State (9-11 Big Ten), Michigan (8-12 Big Ten), Oklahoma (8-8 Big-12), Missouri (7-9 Big-12), Baylor (5-11 Big-12), etc.] All those teams won more nonconference matches than they lost, but scheduling too many Top 50 nonconference matches might have knocked them out of the tourney.

AVOIDING THE BIG DOGS

The very best teams can have a hard time getting other top teams to play them, especially on their home courts. The system is biased toward those teams that somehow manage to schedule—and beat—teams rated in the 40-50 range.

SLIM PICKINGS

Teams in the very best conferences have fewer possible top-tier nonconference opponents to schedule. For most weeks this season, 5 of the top 10 teams in the coaches’ poll were from the Pac-12; some weeks, four of the top five were from the conference. In last week’s poll, 6 of the top 13 were from the Pac-12. Those teams are, of course, unavailable to each other for the RPI’s all-important nonconference schedules.

WANTED: CLAIRVOYANTS

Maybe the biggest fallacy of the RPI is how it forces coaches who want to meet the RPI standards to have some sort of crystal ball.

Consider Utah State. In 2010, the Aggies swept Hawai’i to win the WAC tournament, and roared into the NCAA tournament with a 24-8 record. A smart coach might have tried to get the Aggies on their 2011 schedule, especially since All-American Liz McArthur had one more year of eligibility. But Utah State went flat in 2011, missing the NCAA tournament with a 12-17 record.

How could anyone know which team will end up in the RPI’s Top 50?

LET PEOPLE WHO KNOW VOLLEYBALL IN THE DOOR

USC’s Haley thinks the selection committee uses the RPI as a substitute for thoughtful and informed judgment.

“The committee is not strong enough,” he said. “They don’t understand volleyball, so they rely on the RPI, which is meaningless. People who understand the game are in a better position to evaluate which teams are deserving and where the top teams are seeded.”

“Members of the committee are afraid to study the game of volleyball,” said Haley. “For many of them, being on the volleyball selection committee is just a way to someday be appointed to the basketball selection committee.”