Questions Abound but RPI Gives No Answers

“This is Mike Griffin. You’ve reached the RPI basketball office. Sorry to miss your call, but I’m away from my desk.”

Yes, well, people are going to have a lot of questions about the RPI between now and Sunday.

Griffin, however, is not your man.

He’s the coach at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., a Division I hockey powerhouse and a Division III basketball program that made the NCAA Division III tournament’s Sweet 16 in 1996.

“Sometimes alumni say they think it’s kind of neat that RPI is mentioned in the paper so much as basketball season winds down,” Griffin said.

RPI, the school, has nothing to do with RPI, the Ratings Percentage Index.

But Griffin is familiar with using statistical formulas to try to gauge postseason merit in his work on the Division III tournament’s Eastern regional selection committee.

“We look at different percentages, record within the region, home and away,” he said. “Yet when it comes down to it, you still have the ability to use subjectivity.”

The NCAA selection committee insists RPI is only a starting point too.

The RPI is not perfect, but at least it is not sacrosanct--unlike college football’s bowl championship series standings.

“People put words to those initials that are not so complimentary,” RPI’s Griffin said of the BCS.

“I’m glad that’s not us. They rarely get that right.”

The generally accepted wisdom is that an RPI in the 40s or better gets you an at-large bid, and an RPI in the 50s means your leg will be shaking as you watch the selection show--and maybe the tournament too--on TV.

An RPI in the 60s means you’re Not In Tournament without an automatic bid, with rare exception.

That’s why 25-5 Butler’s one-point loss to 9-21 Wisconsin Green Bay in the Horizon League quarterfinals was so devastating.

Butler beat Indiana on a “neutral” court in the Hoosier Classic in Indianapolis and beat upset-king Ball State, but Butler’s RPI is 75.

The lowest-ranked team to get an at-large bid was No. 74 New Mexico in 1999--when the New Mexico athletic director and Mountain West commissioner were both on the committee.

The NCAA selection committee emphasizes that the RPI is only a starting point. Members receive a “Nitty-Gritty” report of the top 105 RPI teams that includes such information as road record, record in the last 10 games and how teams did against teams in the top 25, top 50, beyond the top 100 and so forth.

“We don’t depend on RPI,” said Lee Fowler, chairman of the selection committee and athletic director at North Carolina State. “There are a lot of other things we depend on besides RPI.

“[And] our RPI is different than what the public sees.”

(Among the attempts to duplicate the confidential formula available online is Jerry Palm’s CollegeRPI.com.)

“When we get to the last four or five, there’s more studying done on those teams than the others that get in.... We have all the information we possibly could have in front of us--who they played, where they played, when they played. It’s all discussed,” Fowler said.

The problem is getting into that discussion.

Teams in the 50s such as Pepperdine (22-8) and Southern Illinois (26-7)--an upset victim in the Missouri Valley final--will get a thorough look. Pepperdine in particular should meet the standard easily.

But the way the committee could prove it means what it says about understanding teams have to play the teams in their conference would be to bring Butler--and teams like it--into the conversation.

It’s time to prove they don’t assume the dregs of the Big East are better just because they play in the Big East, which is what the RPI assumes.

(Georgetown, with a record of 0-6 against the teams in the top 25 entering the Big East tournament, had an RPI of 54.)

Scheduling can be difficult, but when teams play nonconference road games against major competition, that needs to be rewarded.

One former chairman of the selection committee, Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany, has his own favorite measure of a team’s worthiness, major or mid-major.

It’s road record against top 50 teams.

Let’s call it our version of the RPI: Road Prowess Indicator.

“The best teams win games against the top 50 on the road. It’s not easy to do,” Delany said. “That is the best test, the hardest test.”

It’s a fair test too, because it diminishes the influence of all those home-road splits in the major conferences.

It’s one reason Pepperdine shouldn’t have to sweat despite an RPI in the low 50s.

The Waves played one of the five toughest nonconference schedules in the country and won some of those games too, beating UCLA at Pauley Pavilion and USC at the Sports Arena.

When the committee weighs Pepperdine against its companions in the RPI’s 50s such as Southern Illinois, the Waves’ victories will look better than the Salukis’ best against Indiana at home.

Not that the Salukis aren’t a deserving team.

They’re just in the group with a bunch of others, pulling for certain teams ranked higher in the RPI--such as Xavier, Kent State and Pennsylvania--to win their conference’s automatic bids and not take another of those precious final at-large spots.

In any case, anyone who owns an RPI sweatshirt might want to consider not wearing it Sunday.

Wooden Bulletin: There Might Be a Race

Duke’s Jason Williams once was the runaway favorite to win the Wooden Award as national player of the year.

But with images of Williams’ six missed free throws against Florida State, six turnovers against Maryland and late missed free throw and eight turnovers against Virginia in voters’ minds, Drew Gooden of No. 1 Kansas seems to be gaining ground.

The dramatic development in the list of 20 finalists is the surge by five players who made the ballot after not being included on the midseason top 30 list--and deservedly so, in every case.

They are Frederick Jones of Oregon, Kirk Hinrich of Kansas, Hollis Price of Oklahoma, Erwin Dudley of Alabama and Luke Walton of Arizona.

Other finalists in addition to Williams, Gooden and the five new nominees are Lonny Baxter and Juan Dixon of Maryland, Caron Butler of Connecticut, Dan Dickau of Gonzaga, Mike Dunleavy of Duke, Jason Gardner of Arizona, Udonis Haslem of Florida, Casey Jacobsen of Stanford, Jared Jeffries of Indiana, Steve Logan of Cincinnati, Tayshaun Prince of Kentucky, David West of Xavier and Frank Williams of Illinois.

USC’s Sam Clancy would have been included but did not meet the minimum academic standard.

Balloting by a panel of 1,000 voters that includes sportswriters and sportscasters continues through March 25, the day after the Final Four is determined.

Williams is still the favorite, but if Duke is upset before the Final Four and Kansas isn’t, there might be another upset in the works.

Arkansas Saga

Arkansas is responding to queries by Nolan Richardson’s lawyer about the reason for Richardson’s termination by citing his statement that “they can pay me off and I’ll be on my way.”

If everyone who had a take-this-job-and-shove-it moment said so in a public forum as Richardson unwisely did, unemployment would be rampant.

Arkansas would like the issue to be about the negative impact of such comments on the program, but it’s far too late for that.

No matter what the tangled motivations of both sides, it is now about race.

Richardson’s other controversial comments made it so, putting Arkansas in an interesting position.

Hiring should be colorblind, but can’t be this time.

Best solution: Give former Richardson assistant Mike Anderson, who is African American, a very long look.

A worthy outside candidate would be Western Kentucky Coach Dennis Felton.

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