My Takeaways From the WIAA’s Seeding This Year
The dust has settled on seeding on the girl’s side of things in this state, but I wanted to take a day and talk about some of the takeaways I had from the WIAA’s seeding process this year and other…
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Continue ReadingThe dust has settled on seeding on the girl’s side of things in this state, but I wanted to take a day and talk about some of the takeaways I had from the WIAA’s seeding process this year and other stuff I didn’t account for in raw RPI, that I’ll look to incorporate next year.
The Accuracy
Overall I thought the changes that the WIAA made were for the better. Through the RPI file I worked with, some teams got dinged or helped more so than others, but in the end, I didn’t think there were too many teams who had a legitimate gripe about where they ended up.
Where raw RPI fell short
Let’s talk about DSHA for a second because it’s the best example of what I didn’t add because I had no idea how to weigh it. I believe part of what gets taken is a team’s record against other teams in your sectional. I saw this in a few reports from media outlets on the guy’s side, but DSHA is where I believe this showed itself the most. The Dashers were the No. 2-seed in D1S2 in raw RPI but fell to No. 5 in the WIAA’s seeding. However, when you look at the team’s records against teams in that sectional, DSHA’s win percentage came in 14th out of 18 teams in sectional two. Over the high school offseason, I’ll play with the formula a bit to see how to improve it for next year with the data we have from this season.
Head-to-Heads
As a rule of thumb, head-to-heads don’t matter. If you want a good example, we can look at D5S1S1 with Hurley and South Shore. Hurley had a stronger SOS this season, a head-to-head win over the Cardinals. However, Hurley still got seeded as the No. 2 seed behind South Shore. In reality, it doesn’t matter because the game they’d play in a sectional semifinal would be on a neutral court, and all that seeding would affect is the jersey you’d wear.
Thoughts on Computer Seeding
I’m a fan of what the WIAA has done seeding-wise. Last year, there was some extra weirdness around seeding, including the first year using whatever formula they use, like La Follette having to forfeit games. That said, on the whole, I believe that teams are in the ballpark of where they should be seeding-wise. I’m sure there are ways it could be better, but if they never changed the system they have in place now, I’d have no complaints.
RPI Data
This link contains all the numbers that went into the RPI formula I used all year. It’s not perfect, but this is what I had.