The Numbers, Gamed?
Missouri Valley Conference Teams Have Used Savvy Scheduling to Boost Their RPI and Possibly Burst the Bubble Hopes of Some Major Programs

By Eric Prisbell
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 5, 2006

It was not unusual Wednesday to see two ACC coaches greet each other before a critical game, shake hands and engage in a brief pregame chat. The unusual part was the topic of conversation: the Missouri Valley Conference.

No men's basketball conference has sparked more debate this season among coaches and commissioners than the MVC, a 10-team conference spread across six Midwestern states that has become, by some measures, one of the nation's best. The Valley has never had more than three teams make the NCAA tournament but could land as many as six invitations this season, maybe more than traditional power conferences such as the ACC, Big 12 and Pacific-10.

Shrewd scheduling practices, increased parity across the country and a few key nonconference victories have boosted the Valley's position in the Rating Percentage Index, a mathematical measurement of a team's strength that is used by the NCAA selection committee to help determine tournament berths.

Four seasons after being rated the nation's 14th-best conference in the RPI, the Valley ranks sixth. And Friday, before the start of the MVC tournament quarterfinals in St. Louis, the Valley was one of three conferences (joining the Big East and the Big Ten) with at least six teams in the RPI's top 45.

"I've been beating the drum since October, when I told everyone to get on top of the hill and sing like Julie Andrews in the 'Sound of Music,' " Missouri State Coach Barry Hinson said. "Whether you want to call it a fluke or a phenomenon, so be it. I rest my case: It's the sixth-best conference in the country."

The NCAA tournament selection committee will decide how much weight to give the Valley's gaudy RPI rankings when the 65-team field is unveiled a week from today. Last season, no team with an RPI ranking worse than 63rd received an at-large bid, and no team with an RPI ranking better than 39th was left out.

But some coaches, whose teams also are jockeying for tournament bids, suggest privately and publicly that the Valley's RPI credentials are inflated, and that they have outsmarted the computer formula. Doug Elgin, the Valley's commissioner, has heard coaches such as Houston's Tom Penders refer to the Valley's "hype machine" and such analysts as ESPN's Jay Bilas say the selection committee needs to look beyond RPI numbers.

"Any major coach hiding behind that notion that we have cracked the code, tell that coach to come play our teams and see how overrated we are," Elgin said. "That notion that we have somehow outsmarted the system is a bunch of crap. . . . It's easy to make those statements when you're not willing to back it up."

In response, Maryland Coach Gary Williams said: "They haven't been banging down anyone's door in the ACC to play. The phone works both ways, last time I checked."

Penders praised the Valley as a conference but added that it does not include a team he would be afraid to play on a neutral court.

"What is RPI, garbage in and garbage out?" Penders said, speaking in general about the formula. "How do you build RPI, go out and play no one? If it's just a computer thing this year, I was born in 1945, I don't know much about computers. . . . The committee will dictate what guys do the next few years. If teams are rewarded for playing no one in the computers, then we should all do that."

As many as six Valley teams could be seeded anywhere from sixth to 12th in the NCAA tournament, according to some projections, even though Creighton Coach Dana Altman readily admits that the conference lacks a great team. Houston's Conference USA, however, has only two teams -- Alabama-Birmingham and Memphis -- ranked in the RPI's top 50, even though Memphis remains in contention for a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament. Similarly, the Atlantic 10 consists of one-loss George Washington and only one other team, Saint Joseph's (15-12), ranked in the RPI's top 50.

"The Missouri Valley needs to be studied," Saint Joseph's Coach Phil Martelli said. "How did they get there? What did they do? I do think we have to look at what is going on -- where are our numbers falling short? And we're going to need administrators at some schools to back their coaches. If there needs to be changes, let's make changes."

Elgin decided to make a change in early 2000 after seeing the Valley's nonconference strength-of-schedule ranking drop from eighth to 25th. The conference decided to withhold an annual $50,000 NCAA tournament distribution from programs that did not play a nonconference schedule consisting of opponents with a three-year average RPI of 149 or better. Two teams, Elgin said, did not make the cut. But Elgin ditched the policy after two years, and now the league office works in conjunction with teams to assemble nonconference schedules.

"They've outsmarted it? Good," said Thomas Yeager, the commissioner of the Colonial Athletic Association. "A lot of these coaches from bigger programs think [at-large bids are] a birthright in their league or in their program. Look at some of the nonconference schedules they play. The home team wins two out of every three games, regardless of whether you are Duke or St. Mary's of the Swamp. If I'm sitting in one of those power leagues, all I'm trying to do is hold serve at home and maybe sweep a couple of the bottom-feeders. You have teams coming out of the Colonial and the Valley that are crashing the party, and some of the guys that might get squeezed out don't think it's right."

Critics affiliated with larger conferences say Valley teams rarely play stiff competition outside their conference. But, as Yeager explained, some big programs routinely avoid strong smaller programs to "go find Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to play."

Williams said the ACC and its teams need to examine the RPI and decide whether it is beneficial to continue to schedule difficult nonconference opponents. Williams suggested that it might be better to play a lower-ranked team on the road, even though that takes away one revenue-generating home game.

Williams, who compared the RPI to the Da Vinci Code, also said the ACC should consider lobbying for its teams more aggressively because the MVC has "done a great job publicity-wise, I'll say that for them."

"Somebody has" beaten the RPI, Williams added. "The Missouri Valley has. I've looked at all their schedules. They didn't play anybody. If they would have played all the Big Ten teams or something, then that's different. The only thing I can figure, and I don't know if this is true, is if you lose to a team with a pretty good RPI, that's better than beating a team that has a low RPI. If you look at our league, those stats, what's the problem?"

Consider the top six teams in the Valley and the ACC, all potential NCAA tournament teams. The ACC group played 43 games against top 50 competition, including 13 opponents outside the ACC. The Valley group played 68 games against top 50 competition, but only eight opponents outside the Valley. In games against top 50 teams outside their conference, the Valley group is 4-4 and the ACC group is 9-4.

One outcome that significantly helped the Valley came when Northern Iowa won at highly rated Louisiana State on Dec. 19. Northern Iowa Coach Greg McDermott and Elgin had discussed whether to schedule the game, but Elgin felt the decision was a "lobbed softball" because the Panthers were experienced and many of the Tigers' fans were expected to be away for the holidays.

"We rolled the dice, and it worked out," McDermott said. "Not only has it benefited us, but everyone in our league has benefited."

The victory lifted Northern Iowa to 11th in the RPI rankings, which meant every other Valley team would benefit from playing, and beating, the Panthers during the conference season. In turn, other Valley teams would then be rewarded for playing other teams that beat Northern Iowa, which finished 11-7 in conference play.

"They study the RPI and the mechanics and know the formula," said Craig Thompson, the Mountain West Conference commissioner and a former chair of the selection committee. "They start out the conference with a high RPI, then when they keep playing each other it's like a vortex, just feeding on itself. I don't know if that's outsmarting it, but they've done a great job utilizing the formula."

The "vortex" effect, in which conference teams benefit from playing each other, is nothing new to college basketball -- it has helped power conferences for years -- but it is a change for the Valley, which has not been this deep in the past. Another change will come this week, Wichita State Coach Mark Turgeon noted, when a half-dozen Valley teams start rooting for teams in other conference tournaments, all in the interest of improving seeding or receiving an at-large berth. And when the committee reveals the 65-team field next Sunday, they will find out how much strength there is in numbers.

"If you look at the RPI, look at the strength of schedules, look at what our conference has done, I rest on that," Hinson said. "If I were in a court of law, I would look at the judge and look at the jury and say, 'Your Honor and ladies and gentleman of the jury, I rest my case.' "