After Wednesday's Lamar win, Walt wrote:

(05-01-2013 11:34 PM)waltgreenberg Wrote:  As predicted, with our win tonight, Warren Nolan has us at #31 in RPI, and I wouldn't be surprised if we're a couple spots higher still on Boyd's tomorrow morning. But we can ill-afford a loss to UAB this weekend if we hope to evens obtain our position.

Saturday morning, Nolan has us at #36 -- 0.5539.

Needs Report says we need to win out to get in the top 32.

(05-04-2013 10:25 AM)d1owls4life Wrote:  Needs Report says we need to win out to get in the top 32.

That's pretty crazy since we're currently at #36 according to Boyds. The needs report is meaningless, IMO, since it assumes all other teams remain where they are....and that simply is not reality.

I think the needs report assumes our opponents (in aggregate) continue at their current WP -- probably a pretty realistic stat at this point in the season.

(05-04-2013 11:46 AM)grol Wrote:  I think the needs report assumes our opponents (in aggregate) continue at their current WP -- probably a pretty realistic stat at this point in the season.

Not really, since many of those teams played home-baked, powderpuff out-of-conference schedules for the first third of the season.

(05-04-2013 11:49 AM)waltgreenberg Wrote:  

(05-04-2013 11:46 AM)grol Wrote:  I think the needs report assumes our opponents (in aggregate) continue at their current WP -- probably a pretty realistic stat at this point in the season.

Not really, since many of those teams played home-baked, powderpuff out-of-conference schedules for the first third of the season.

I'll take Walt's side here. Still a lot of assumptions necessary to make predictions. I'm happy to wait and see and hope to be pleasantly surprised. Did things change Sunday AM on our RPI standing?

(05-05-2013 01:23 AM)Rick Gerlach Wrote:  

(05-04-2013 11:49 AM)waltgreenberg Wrote:  

(05-04-2013 11:46 AM)grol Wrote:  I think the needs report assumes our opponents (in aggregate) continue at their current WP -- probably a pretty realistic stat at this point in the season.

Not really, since many of those teams played home-baked, powderpuff out-of-conference schedules for the first third of the season.

I'll take Walt's side here. Still a lot of assumptions necessary to make predictions. I'm happy to wait and see and hope to be pleasantly surprised. Did things change Sunday AM on our RPI standing?

Yes, and no. We stayed at #35, but we're now in a virtual tie (all at 0.555) with #34 Cal Poly and #33 Michigan State, and only .004 out of #30. BTW, I would have been correct had we, in fact, swept UAB-- we most definitely would have cracked the Top 30 by Monday morning, and might have been as high as #26 or #27.

MUST win this morning. 10:00am moved up start time. We need Big John to be Big Game John.

In other news, Stanford has save their season by winning the first two games at Arizona State (after being swept at Oregon last weekend). Their RPI has dropped from #98 (and out of the post-season) to #71 over the past two days. They still have considerable work to do to move into "at large" territory (and the Pac-12 has no tournament for them to win an automatic bid), but they're back in the game.

(05-04-2013 10:54 AM)waltgreenberg Wrote:  

(05-04-2013 10:25 AM)d1owls4life Wrote:  Needs Report says we need to win out to get in the top 32.

That's pretty crazy since we're currently at #36 according to Boyds. The needs report is meaningless, IMO, since it assumes all other teams remain where they are....and that simply is not reality.

And I swear that something like this is the case every year - the Needs Report always says X number of wins are needed to get to a certain level, yet Rice invariably needs X minus a couple of wins to get to that same level. It always seems like teams are coming back to Rice's position, in addition to Rice climbing. This year may be more extreme in Rice's precarious position, but I would take any number of "necessary" wins in the Needs Report with a heap of salt.

(05-05-2013 01:23 AM)Rick Gerlach Wrote:  

(05-04-2013 11:49 AM)waltgreenberg Wrote:  

(05-04-2013 11:46 AM)grol Wrote:  I think the needs report assumes our opponents (in aggregate) continue at their current WP -- probably a pretty realistic stat at this point in the season.

Not really, since many of those teams played home-baked, powderpuff out-of-conference schedules for the first third of the season.

I'll take Walt's side here. Still a lot of assumptions necessary to make predictions. I'm happy to wait and see and hope to be pleasantly surprised. Did things change Sunday AM on our RPI standing?

I'd have to agree just from my impressions, even if I couldn't substantiate anything if asked. I'm not sure exactly why - Walt may be right by surmising that it's the balance of OOC schedule - but it seems that year in year out when we look at the needs report, week by week, Rice would need to finish with no more than 2 losses to reach a top 8 ranking, then the next week, they need less than 4 losses, then less than 6. I don't think there's anything fundamentally wrong with the needs report, but it may be nice if Boyd could put a few asterisks when there's a large mismatch between OOC SOS and Intraconference SOS.

(05-05-2013 07:57 AM)waltgreenberg Wrote:  Yes, and no. We stayed at #35, but we're now in a virtual tie (all at 0.555) with #34 Cal Poly and #33 Michigan State, and only .004 out of #30. BTW, I would have been correct had we, in fact, swept UAB-- we most definitely would have cracked the Top 30 by Monday morning, and might have been as high as #26 or #27.

Err.. no. Based on this morning's RPI, had we won Friday's game, we'd be sitting at #31 between Kentucky and Alabama.

Louisiana Tech on Wednesday is going to be as bad a drag on our OWP as UAB was (LaTech is 16-30 ex-Rice; UAB is 17-28 ex-Rice).. win and we tread water - maybe move up a place or two depending on what people around us do; lose and we fall quite a ways.

That said, our RPI needs prospects still have us at win-out for top 32.

As for those criticizing the needs report for always failing in some way at the end, the main shortcoming with the needs report is not its failure to take into account the remaining schedule, which it does quite well, but rather the impossibility of taking into account the pre-tournament post-season, i.e. the conference tournaments. It can only take those as they come and Boyd immediately loads it with whatever information he can, so that the conferences with round-robins rather than brackets provide far more data in a more timely manner than do the dbl-elim tourneys. As such, the needs report is only useful in estimating what we need to do to end up in which RPI group prior to the conference tournament.

(Also, the double-elim tourneys tend to be a marginal drain to most of the top teams' win % unless they win the tourney (because once you lose your two, you no longer have an opportunity to win any more and the 2nd best team in a 4-team dbl elim can do no better than .600; and the runner-up in an 8-team dual-bracket tourney will be between .750 and .600). But the deeper a team goes -- assuming predictable results (i.e. team with higher win % wins each game) -- the they should also see a smaller marginal increase in OWP).

(05-05-2013 08:00 PM)I45owl Wrote:  

(05-05-2013 01:23 AM)Rick Gerlach Wrote:  

(05-04-2013 11:49 AM)waltgreenberg Wrote:  

(05-04-2013 11:46 AM)grol Wrote:  I think the needs report assumes our opponents (in aggregate) continue at their current WP -- probably a pretty realistic stat at this point in the season.

Not really, since many of those teams played home-baked, powderpuff out-of-conference schedules for the first third of the season.

I'll take Walt's side here. Still a lot of assumptions necessary to make predictions. I'm happy to wait and see and hope to be pleasantly surprised. Did things change Sunday AM on our RPI standing?

I'd have to agree just from my impressions, even if I couldn't substantiate anything if asked. I'm not sure exactly why - Walt may be right by surmising that it's the balance of OOC schedule - but it seems that year in year out when we look at the needs report, week by week, Rice would need to finish with no more than 2 losses to reach a top 8 ranking, then the next week, they need less than 4 losses, then less than 6. I don't think there's anything fundamentally wrong with the needs report, but it may be nice if Boyd could put a few asterisks when there's a large mismatch between OOC SOS and Intraconference SOS.

Your memory/impressions are wrong, with respect to last season. Detailed post-mortem of last year's Needs Report, and how dead-on it was, here: http://csnbbs.com/showthread.php?tid=571077

That said, this year's Needs Report is a very different beast, with the new RPI. But I haven't been following it, because it's not really relevant to us this year. We're going to be a #2 or #3 seed somewhere (unless we fall apart and miss the NCAAs), and that's been clear for some time.

(05-06-2013 10:00 AM)JOwl Wrote:  That said, this year's Needs Report is a very different beast, with the new RPI. But I haven't been following it, because it's not really relevant to us this year. We're going to be a #2 or #3 seed somewhere (unless we fall apart and miss the NCAAs), and that's been clear for some time.

I've been pessimistic about prospects for hosting and being a one seed, but if Rice does win out, I think it's still likely that Rice hosts as a #1 seed, even with an RPI in the mid-high 20s. However, I don't think it's likely that Rice wins out based on the season to date.

(05-06-2013 10:00 AM)JOwl Wrote:  

(05-05-2013 08:00 PM)I45owl Wrote:  

(05-05-2013 01:23 AM)Rick Gerlach Wrote:  

(05-04-2013 11:49 AM)waltgreenberg Wrote:  

(05-04-2013 11:46 AM)grol Wrote:  I think the needs report assumes our opponents (in aggregate) continue at their current WP -- probably a pretty realistic stat at this point in the season.

Not really, since many of those teams played home-baked, powderpuff out-of-conference schedules for the first third of the season.

I'll take Walt's side here. Still a lot of assumptions necessary to make predictions. I'm happy to wait and see and hope to be pleasantly surprised. Did things change Sunday AM on our RPI standing?

I'd have to agree just from my impressions, even if I couldn't substantiate anything if asked. I'm not sure exactly why - Walt may be right by surmising that it's the balance of OOC schedule - but it seems that year in year out when we look at the needs report, week by week, Rice would need to finish with no more than 2 losses to reach a top 8 ranking, then the next week, they need less than 4 losses, then less than 6. I don't think there's anything fundamentally wrong with the needs report, but it may be nice if Boyd could put a few asterisks when there's a large mismatch between OOC SOS and Intraconference SOS.

Your memory/impressions are wrong, with respect to last season. Detailed post-mortem of last year's Needs Report, and how dead-on it was, here: http://csnbbs.com/showthread.php?tid=571077

That said, this year's Needs Report is a very different beast, with the new RPI. But I haven't been following it, because it's not really relevant to us this year. We're going to be a #2 or #3 seed somewhere (unless we fall apart and miss the NCAAs), and that's been clear for some time.

We're going to be a #2 seed unless we fall apart at the finish.

(05-06-2013 10:34 AM)I45owl Wrote:  

(05-06-2013 10:00 AM)JOwl Wrote:  That said, this year's Needs Report is a very different beast, with the new RPI. But I haven't been following it, because it's not really relevant to us this year. We're going to be a #2 or #3 seed somewhere (unless we fall apart and miss the NCAAs), and that's been clear for some time.

I've been pessimistic about prospects for hosting and being a one seed, but if Rice does win out, I think it's still likely that Rice hosts as a #1 seed, even with an RPI in the mid-high 20s. However, I don't think it's likely that Rice wins out based on the season to date.

Actually, I think we can go 12-1 and still host...but that would require losing only once to Memphis this weekend (facing 3 of the Top 4 left-handed pitchers in the conference, and 2 of the best starting pitchers in the conference in Moll and Shroenrock)...winning out the regular season and then sweeping to the conference tournament championship. It would be very hard for the Committee not to have Rice host IF it wins both the regular season and conference tourney, has 40+ wins, one of the best road records in the country, and an RPI in the 20s.

Unfortunately, I wouldn't give better than 33% odds of this happening, even with the tournament at Reckling.

(05-06-2013 10:42 AM)waltgreenberg Wrote:  Actually, I think we can go 12-1 and still host...but that would require losing only once to Memphis this weekend (facing 3 of the Top 4 left-handed pitchers in the conference, and 2 of the best starting pitchers in the conference in Moll and Shroenrock)...winning out the regular season and then sweeping to the conference tournament championship. It would be very hard for the Committee not to have Rice host IF it wins both the regular season and conference tourney, has 40+ wins, one of the best road records in the country, and an RPI in the 20s.

Unfortunately, I wouldn't give better than 33% odds of this happening, even with the tournament at Reckling.

Especially with so many other teams in the state of Texas under-performing this year. Funny that the committee might stretch to include a Texas team for hosting for geographical balance!

Rice #37
Baylor #59
TAMU #60
UT #62
Sam Houston #65
Texas Tech #87
Lamar #95
No other Texas teams in top 100 RPI.

Guess it's a good thing UT ducked us. We don't need the RPI drag.

Apparently we're still the best team in Texas, which is not saying quite so much this year as in years past.

We're down to #41 today, thanks to some poor performances by previous opponents yesterday. :(

#46 after Friday loss to Memphis