2017 Rankings

[1972Shocker]

According to RealTimeRPI.com the AAC is paying for its so-so performance, weak scheduling and injury to Cincy's Jordan Thompson as the Conference currently sits at #14 in the RPI rankings. A big drop from its #6 ranking of year ago and 3 spots behing the Missouri Valley Conference.

Unfortunately, this weekend pretty much marks the last opportunity to improve that conference RPI profile but the remaining AAC schedule doesn't provide a whole lot of opportunities to boost that profile outside of WSU vs Iowa State, SMU vs Arkansas and Cincy vs Michigan.

Perhaps fittingly ECU closes out the AAC volleyball non-conference scheduel on Tuesday with matches against #323 NC-Central and #311 NC A&T out of the MEAC.

I suppose this isn't all that surprising considering that the AAC schools will be putting most of their Pow6r focus on football and men's basketball as they no doubt should. Still I believe the AAC can and should be much better than a 14th rated conference in Volleyball and just about any of the olympic sports. Hopefully, this will prove just to be a bit of a down year for AAC Volleyball.

[1972Shocker]

Just discovered a flaw in the RealTimeRPI.com rankings.

The have the Shockers at #19 having moved them up 15 points after the Creighton win. However, when I drilled down to the conferenced details I found that they still have the Shocks as a member of the Valley.

They also have Valparaiso still in the Horizon and for some reason they have no RPI computed for UConn.

So the Valley ratings are overstated and the AAC ratings are probably understated and they totally exclude UConn.

So taking all these issues with the RealTimeRPI.com numbers (which brings is pretty sloppy work) into consideration it looks to me like the AAC is really about 10th in the conference RPI rankings and the Valley is probably about 15th.

But the RealTimeRPI.com sloppiness probably puts that in the unreliable category. Perhaps they will clean that up after the first NCAA official RPI's come out on October 2nd.

I did send RealTimeRPI.com a comment about these items.

[flyingMoose]

In the AVCA poll of 18 Sep, the Shockers move to #24.

Others of interest:

#8 Oregon (from 11)
#15 Creighton (8)
#18 Iowa State (19)
#22 Northern Iowa!!! (NR) - they had a big win over Nebraska

RV29 Cal Poly
RV35 Missouri State

[flyingMoose]

... it looks to me like the AAC is really about 10th in the conference RPI rankings and the Valley is probably about 15th.

Looking at the Pablo rankings published today, @1972Shocker: has nailed it.

[1972Shocker]

Looking at the Pablo rankings published today, @1972Shocker has nailed it.

[flyingMoose]

That projected RPI thing now has the Shockers at 18 at the end of the season with an 18-2 mark in the AAC.

The very wild part of this is Northern Iowa with a projected RPI at 61 while they are at #22 in this week's AVCA poll. The projected RPI of Missouri State is 50.

NOTE: The projected RPI is done with 1000 simulations. The 18-2 mark is an average of those simulations.

FURTHER NOTE: The next best projected record for the AAC is 14-6 for UCF.

[flyingMoose]

Deleted by OP.

[flyingMoose]

This week's Mid-Major poll

Shockers remain at #6.

Others,
#3 Creighton
#4 Cal Poly

#7 Northern Iowa
#9 Lipscomb
#10 Missouri State
#12 Marquette

#19 Miami (OH)
#22 SMU

[flyingMoose]

In the AVCA Poll of September 25, the Shockers drop a spot to #25.

Others of interest:

#12 Oregon (from 8)
#14 Creighton (15)
#18 Iowa State (18)
#22 Northern Iowa (22)

RV27 Cal Poly
RV34 Missouri State

[1972Shocker]

The Shocks' non-conference opponent record is now at 89-59 for a winning percentage of 60.1%. Lambo schedules with the hope that this will end up at 63% to 65% by the end of the season. Still looks like that is doable.

[flyingMoose]

The latest projected RPI thing now has the Shockers at 19 at the end of the season with a projected 18-2 mark in the AAC.

The next best projected RPIs for the AAC are Tulane at 81, UCF at 86 and SMU at 89.

The projected RPI of Missouri State is now 42 with Northern Iowa at 47, a move up from 61.

[flyingMoose]

The Shocks' non-conference opponent record is now at 89-59 for a winning percentage of 60.1%. Lambo schedules with the hope that this will end up at 63% to 65% by the end of the season. Still looks like that is doable.

As noted, part of the projected RPI is season-ending records. Those W/L project at season's end a record of 205-104 for 66.3% for our non-conference opponents.

[flyingMoose]

Here, from a VT post, is some (lightly edited) info about Pablo - mainly, how it is to be used.

"Back to our annual discussion. Pablo generates probabilities ... Whenever I test Pablo - the accuracy in projecting those probabilities is very good. I just checked how Pablo did this last week - looking at only conference matches because that is the way I have the information separated (saved me time) and most of the matches last week were conference matches.


There were 61 matches where Pablo gave a team between 40-50% chance of winning with an expected win% of 45.1%. 27 of those 61 teams won - 44.3%.


There were 66 matches where Pablo gave a team between 30-40% chance of winning with an expected win% of 35.2%. 23 of those 66 teams won - 34.8%


There were 67 matches where Pablo gave a team between 20-30% chance of winning with an expected win% of 25.0%. 16 of those 67 teams won - 23.9%


There were 68 matches where Pablo gave a team between 10-20% chance of winning with an expected win% of 15.0%. 10 of those 68 teams won - 14.7%


There were 55 matches where Pablo gave a team between 0-10% chance of winning with an expected win% of 5.5%. 2 of those 55 teams won - 3.6%


Every time I take the trouble to test the accuracy of Pablo in projecting probabilities like this - it always comes out very accurate."


In the matches played this past weekend by the Shockers, both matches were 80-90% Shocker wins.

[1972Shocker]

In the matches played this past weekend by the Shockers, both matches were 80-90% Shocker wins.

While the Shocks did win both they certainly didn't seem like 80-90% probability wins to me.

[flyingMoose]

While the Shocks did win both they certainly didn't seem like 80-90% probability wins to me.

I agree.

The VT poster's point (in answer to somebody's remark over there) was that Pablo is intended to offer the probability of a win, not measure the "impressiveness" of the win or to make each teams win and losses "line up" all across the land or ... . It does what it is designed to do very well, he says - don't ask it to do something else.