Great Year for the AE in Men's Hoop

[Patch]

The AE is currently the 15th ranked Conference in DI Men's Hoop out of 32. Last year the AE ranked 27th.

 

Here is a comparison of the AE team's RPIs from last season to this season

 

2004 2005

 

84 - 20

115 - 52

154 - 63

155 - 187

204 - 193

235 - 213

266 - 220

273 - 242

299 - 286

309 - 291

 

The Danes jumped from 10th in a weak league to 4th in a much stronger league.

 

Very good improvement but with that said - it should have been much better. If we won 4 or 5 more games our RPI would have probably been in the Low 100s.

[Oldtimer]

USA Today ranks conferences by the middle teams and America East is 21st, just behind the MAAC.

[UAalum72]

USA Today ranks conferences by the middle teams and America East is 21st, just behind the MAAC.

 

Ken Pomeroy's RPI has AEast 15th

If you're looking at the Sagarin Ratings the AEast is back to 18 this morning - the margin between 18-21 is one-third of a point, and from 19 to 28 is three points, so the difference at this level is more the strength of schedule than how strong the teams actually are, and positions change daily.

 

Still, in the teens sounds a lot better than 27th.

[Patch]

UA 72 - Good Points but......

 

Year/ AE RPI /UA RPI UA's Strength of Schedule

2000 24 292 296

 

2001 21 317 304

 

2002 29 299 296

 

2003 25 294 243

 

2004 27 309 246

 

2005 15 186 247

 

The last 3 seasons are strength of schedule has remained the same!!!!!

 

Since 2000 our RPI at UA has never been lower than 292 at season's end.

 

The AE's RPI since 2000 has never been below the 20s until now at 15.

[UAalum72]

I was thinking of league averages, however -

 

Yes, our RPI is up because we won more games, but since RPI doesn't depend on margin, our RPI could be MUCH higher this year if the losses had been to stronger teams.

 

See UMBC, Hart and UNH - almost identical league and overall records, but RPI varies 52 places (from 290 - 238) because of New Hampshire's SOS.

 

When leagues are this close, whether an opponent of an opponent you played in November wins or loses a one-point game in February can affect the relative rankings of these conferences.

[olddog71]

Interesting how the USA Today RPI ranks the America East behind the MAAC, considering the fact that, I believe, the MAAC lost a total of seven games to the AEast out of seven. The games were from a variety of AEast teams against a variety of MAAC teams; it was not a case of the top AEast teams beating the worst MAAC teams by a point or two.

 

I wonder how the USA Today writers could explain this discrepancy.

[Patch]

RPI - All good points but in my little mind going from 309 to 187 is significant and their is a difference going from the 27th ranked conference to the 15th ranked conference.

 

Strength of schedule is an important factor and usually playing 18 Conference games in a weak conference keeps your RPI in the high numbers. Therefore, it's interesting how the strength of the AE teams overall have kept the RPI for the conference in the mid teens, the lowest in a long time and how UA's RPI is below 200 for the first time since going DI, this late in the season.

 

Bottom line is the Great Danes Men are 13-13 and to me that is somewhat disappointing as they very well could have won 17 or 18.

 

17-9 or 18-8 would have been tremendous but in reality I guess we have to crawl before we can walk and 13-13 is a far cry better than 5-23.

 

Hopefully we have improved significantly and will continue to improve and stay in the top half of the AE from here on!!!!