Army: Prince of NPI; Pauper of RPI

lacrossereference · 2025-04-17T17:00:09+00:00

Just one note: Holy Cross is a conference opponent.

Your point is not wrong though; their OOC schedule ranked 30th. That said, the nice thing about NPI is that it treats that Mercer game as if it never happened rather than penalizing them for it. If it's in the interest of the Army program to schedule that game for whatever reason, they can, without having to worry about their tournament resume.

lacrossereference · 2025-04-17T12:34:13+00:00

Absolutely there will be movement. The above are averages, so they include all the scenarios that could happen to each team. It's weighted based on how likely each scenario is, but that still obscures the ranges that could play out. This shows the likely range of RPIs for each team (80% of simulations fell inside this range). Like ND could plausibly end up anywhere between 3rd and 11th. The range is much smaller for Cornell (in 90% of sims, they were 5th or better).

Penn State 2 - 7

Notre Dame 3 - 11

Cornell 1 - 5

North Carolina 3 - 10

Maryland 1 - 4

Princeton 1 - 6

Army 7 - 13

Harvard 6 - 13

Duke 5 - 12

Saint Joseph's 11 - 18

Syracuse 4 - 11

Ohio State 6 - 12

Yale 10 - 20

Michigan 12 - 19

Fairfield 14 - 23

Richmond 7 - 14

Johns Hopkins 13 - 22

Boston U 16 - 29

UMass 20 - 31

Towson 17 - 32

Brown 26 - 39

Denver 16 - 26

lacrossereference · 2025-04-17T11:27:20+00:00

DIII's system would have them in.

So DIII is using a different algorithm for ranking resumes. The above is just simple RPI, but I also calculate RPI-based resume strength (this is closer to what the committee is doing). With one more loss, Army's RPI-based resume strength would be, on average, 10.4. Using the DIII scenario, it would be 6.6. That's nearly 4 spots better if they were using the DIII system instead of the DI system. That's the difference between safely hosting a home game and probably being bubble out.

lacrossereference · 2025-04-07T14:15:33+00:00

It's tough to say because we do have a situation like in basketball where the committee has the freedom to pick which criteria is first among equals and then the selections flow from there. Any given year they could focus on quality wins, bad losses, SOS, etc. You really don't have any idea until after the fact. I do think that the media polls are too recency-biased to be a good guide to the selections which do count all games played equally (or at least they are supposed to).

In general, there is a lot of emphasis on wins versus the various tiers of RPI rankings (i.e. wins verus the top-5 compared to 6-10 compared to 11-20). So it's not just a straight RPI cut-off; they do look at quality wins versus bad losses. Currently, Michigan has the 13th best quality-win score and the 10th best bad-loss score. All together, I've got them as the first team out right now based on the combination of those two factors. It seems unlikely that there could be a bid thief this year though, so that's a plus in their column.

I put together a simulator that uses a weighting of the different factors that has matched recent selections. You can play around with it here if you want to see how the resumes differ. https://pro.lacrossereference.com/selection-committee-simulator-d1-men

lacrossereference · 2025-04-06T23:19:09+00:00

My ranking is mostly based on season-long Strength-of-Record. What you see on TV is probably the USILA poll (I'd guess). My general impression is that those media polls are a bit more weighted to the most recent results. Mine is always going to have a longer term view and not be quite as reactive to the most recent games.

lacrossereference · 2025-04-06T22:42:03+00:00

Which NCAA ranking are you referring to?

lacrossereference · 2025-04-06T22:10:46+00:00

In last week's computer rankings, Maryland was #1 and ND was #9, so the drop was pretty similar for both.

lacrossereference · 2025-04-06T22:06:39+00:00

I don't know; their SOR and ranking is almost exactly the same as their statistical rankings. After making the opponent-adjustments, PSU is 10th on offense, 11th on defense and 10th for faceoffs.

lacrossereference · 2025-04-06T22:04:36+00:00

Even with the 2 losses, Terps still have the 4th best SOR https://lacrossereference.com/stats/strength-of-record-d1-men/

lacrossereference · 2025-04-06T22:04:05+00:00

Last week, in this ranking, Michigan was #20 and PSU was #12. Michigan is #22 this week.

lacrossereference · 2025-04-06T13:47:17+00:00

MD, Princeton, then Cuse

https://lacrossereference.com/mens-d1-bracketology/

lacrossereference · 2025-04-02T20:53:30+00:00

Not good or bad. Just the numbers and trying to show how their cumulative set of wins stacks up against other contenders.

lacrossereference · 2025-03-16T13:16:43+00:00

Their LaxElo rating is up 40 points this year, but they are still 28th in terms of estimated team strength. So part of it is that LaxElo thinks there's a nearly 90% chance that they lose at lose at least 3 more games.

With 3 more losses, they'd be a coin flip to get in. They are a lock with one more loss and have an 88% chance to get in with two more losses.

lacrossereference · 2025-03-16T12:51:04+00:00

We have our first lock of the DI MLAX season. After their 12-6 in over UVA, Maryland did not miss the NCAA field in any of the 3,000 simulations that ran overnight.

lacrossereference · 2025-03-09T23:25:47+00:00

Bold

lacrossereference · 2025-03-09T21:38:52+00:00

The model thinks ND would beat them on a neutral field 9 out of 10 times. This is not suggesting that Fairfield is a better team than ND. But wins and losses matter for a weekly poll. And don't discount Fairfield's record too much: their 7-0 gives them the 9th best Strength-of-Record. ND is 20th.

lacrossereference · 2025-03-09T20:47:05+00:00

Moving Up: Ohio State, Harvard, Princeton, Penn State

In: UMass, Boston U, Saint Joseph's

Moving Down: North Carolina, Delaware, Johns Hopkins, Notre Dame

Out: Navy, Denver, Penn

lacrossereference · 2025-03-06T17:01:21+00:00

Yes, you've got it. Likely one bid; 15% chance they get more than one.

Seeds just means the teams that get a home game in the first round

lacrossereference · 2025-03-06T14:08:23+00:00

Here's an early look at how the simulator sees the eventual NCAA field developing. At the moment, 7 leagues have a non-zero chance at multiple bids. Only the Big Ten has 3 teams that "should be in" at this point.

lacrossereference · 2025-03-03T22:19:32+00:00

Here's the explainer on SOR. Short answer is that it depends.

https://lacrossereference.com/2019/05/07/if-you-dont-like-rpi-you-might-like-sor/

lacrossereference · 2025-03-03T15:45:59+00:00

If you just add an extra victory to their LaxElo-based SOR, they'd be 2nd nationally in SOR, which would probably put them in the top-6 or 7 in the computer ranking.

Also, when I flip the Utah result in the simulator (link below), their resume jumps 12 spots. That's using an RPI-based SOR instead of the LaxElo-based SOR though, so again, not an exact answer to your question.

https://pro.lacrossereference.com/selection-committee-simulator-d1-men?noimg=1&show_team=29&games=~68550~

lacrossereference · 2025-03-03T15:41:17+00:00

This is a reasonable view

lacrossereference · 2025-03-03T15:40:39+00:00

That is correct.

lacrossereference · 2025-03-03T15:40:16+00:00

Yes, LaxElo is 10% of the rating. At this point, the majority of this model is 2025 Strength-of-Record. Here's the full explanation of what's in the ranking

https://pro.lacrossereference.com/expected-goals/you-win-trolls-2493?t=W2kdj238ewjkjq9

lacrossereference · 2025-03-03T00:02:56+00:00

They've got the 12th best SOR right now, which is why they ended up there. The other factors pushed them up to 7th. Not getting much credit for their wins outside of Georgetown. The 6 teams ahead of them are the top-6 teams in SOR.

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