Fresno State (and WAC womens basketball)

[weunice]

I posted this on the WAC forum ... Some interesting info I dug up ...

I don't know if anyone has noticed, but Fresno state is 9-6. Two more wins will eclipse any win total over the previous 3 seasons (11,10,9) ... You hired a good coach out there. Tech assistants make up the head coaching positions at Arkansas (#9), Louisiana Tech (#12), Baylor (12-3 unranked), Purdue (#8) and now Fresno State (9-6 unranked).

The WAC conference RPI right now is 10, which is the highest it has been in the seasons leading up to and after Louisiana Tech joining the conference. The three years prior (in chronological order) the WAC was 16, 12 and 12. The Sun Belt is currently at 13, which is the lowest they have been over the same time period. The three years prior (in chronological order) they were 8, 9 and 11. The Sauceda and Massey rankings have the WAC and Sun Belt rated at 10 and 15 respectively.

It now appears that the one sport that Louisiana Tech was taking a hit in when moving to the WAC has improved a great bit. The one weakness in the WAC is now another strength. Way to go WAC!!!

Coaches poll rankings used for the Tech assistant listings ...

[american]

Is there a web site where you can get up to date women's rpi's? What are these Massey and Sauceda rankings?

Take care.

[weunice]

Here are my "research" links. I am a stat head and I like this type of thing.

http://www.mratings.com/cb/compare.htm - Mens ranking comparison
http://www.vaporia.com/sports/wcpage.html - Womens ranking comparison
http://www.mratings.com/cf/compare.htm - Football ranking comparison

Keep a couple of things in mind. RPI is a glorified SOS ranking with a little weight given to your own performance. Many of the other rankings I listed are power ratings and systems used to predict outcomes of head to head matchups. Many spreads in Vegas are based on these.

http://www.kenpom.com/rpi.html - DAILY updates on mens RPI
http://www.collegerpi.com/women/ - Very good updates on womens RPI. See the rankings comparion for others.

One more for football.
http://cfbdatawarehouse.com/index.php

If anyone has some good links that contain historical data for mens and womens basketball, I would appreciate it. Also, I am looking for a good resource of historical box scores. I want to know little tidbits about games 3 or 4 years ago quite frequently and sometimes they are next to impossible to find.

This one is useful when you need some quick Techster history as compared to other schools (Champ ... you paying attention?)... Contains brackets and scores for womens college basketball WAY BACK until about 2000.
http://www.geocities.com/Colosseum/1244/

[american]

Thanks for the url's.

With the RPI assigning half of your score to the win-loss percentage of your opponents, we're going to get killed when we play Centenary. Last year I did a quick computation, taking Centenary out of our schedule, and we jumped up 8 or 10 places. It doesn't matter if we beat them by 100 or 1, or if it's in the Gold Dome or at the TAC. The RPI doesn't take into account margin of victory or whether you play on the road. I don't understand why we've had them on our schedule the last few years. If it's to have a cupcake win against a geographically close school, why not play Grambling. They are ranked 158 and Centenary is 321. I bet we might even draw a couple thousand more fans.

Interesting to see that Hawaii is 37 in the RPI. Tulsa is way back.

[champion110]

Yep, I was paying attention. I have some of those sites as "favorites" and check them from time to time. I am going to have a good time looking at a couple of them that I don't have.

I am not a strong believer in RPI as a determing factor for anything. There are other factors that are not taken into consideration. It unfairly punishes programs that are in weaker conferences. Tough to figure out a way to calculate it any other way, though.

Thanks!

American,
You are right about Centenary. Barmore was doing that coach a favor and trying to help him build a program. It really brings us down though and we need to reconsider that game on our schedule for the future. It hurts us way too much. If we were in the SEC, it wouldn't matter much, but it does in the WAC.

Well, I am off to Austin again today. I have been to Austin twice and San Antonio once in the last two weeks. This will make trip #4 for me. I am getting worn out on the road.

Catch ya'll later.....