The Washington Interscholastic Activities Association tried to fix its RPI rankings for basketball and got it half right.
Since implementing its RPI (Ratings Percentage Index) system last summer, the WIAA said the system would be a work in progress and improvements would be made to it.
Last month, I tried to help the WIAA out by suggesting four changes to the system that would help fix some obvious issues. They were:
• Change the formula for the RPI to put more emphasis on a team’s winning percentage and less on its strength of schedule, which currently comprises 75 percent of the equation.
• Count out-of-state opponents’ actual winning percentage, and not the default .500 percentage that was used in year one.
• Count postseason games. Last season, the rankings were based only on regular-season results.
• Alter the formula so it would adequately weight wins that came against teams from higher or lower classifications.
Well, the WIAA changed two of those items last week, starting with the low-hanging fruit.
Starting next season, out-of-state opponents’ actual winning percentage will be used, and postseason games will be counted into the formula. Those changes were basically no-brainers and should have been part of the formula last season.
But the flaws left unchanged still create some significant issues to the ranking system.
Let’s look at the Kentwood boys team in 4A. Kentwood was frustrated that even though it won the 4A bi-district tournament by beating Union and Federal Way, the Conquerors were still ranked behind those teams because postseason games were not factored in the RPI ranking.
But even if those postseason games had been counted, it’s possible it may not have changed the final rankings much.
Union was ranked No. 1 in 4A in the RPI. The hit the Titans would have taken to their winning percentage from losing to Kentwood likely would have been negated by the boost Union would have seen to its strength of schedule from playing Kentwood.
So would have Kentwood jumped past Union in the RPI rankings if the postseason games had been counted? No.
That’s because strength of schedule matters more than wins in the current RPI formula.
Now, let’s take a look at the Foss boys team, which was like the poster child for what was wrong with the RPI rankings.
Foss was ranked at or near the top of just about every ranking in the state this season, except RPI, which had the Falcons at No. 20.
Foss would go on to win the 2A state title convincingly.
Part of the reason Foss was not ranked higher in the RPI is that the four games the Falcons played against out-of-state opponents in a holiday tournament in California were not properly counted.
But if they had been counted correctly, Foss would have seen its RPI number jump from .545 to .554, which would have moved the Falcons from 20th in the RPI to 13th — and that’s assuming correctly counting out-of-state foes would not have helped other teams ranked ahead of Foss.
So the best team in the state at Class 2A still being ranked 13th still shows a severely flawed ranking system.
Why would Foss still be 13th? Well, strength of schedule is part of it. Foss played in a league that was not particularly strong, and all those games against weaker teams — games the Falcons HAVE TO play — ended up hurting their RPI.
But there is something else. Of those four out-of-state teams Foss played, one was a private school with the same enrollment as Foss. And enrollments between private and public schools are not the same thing.
Of the other three teams, one school had an enrollment 50 percent higher than Foss, and the other two were more than twice the size of Foss.
In the current RPI formula, a game against Almira-Coulee-Hartline — a 1B school — counts the same as a game against Kentwood — a 4A school — if the two teams have the same win-loss percentage. And that’s wrong.
So the WIAA can’t figure out the right balance between winning percentage and strength of schedule, nor does it know how to deal with competitive balance between classifications, so the WIAA just doesn’t deal with them at all.
And what’s worse is now the WIAA is considering implementation of RPI in other sports like football, baseball, soccer and volleyball.
But the WIAA needs to get the system right for basketball first, and it’s only halfway there right now.
Tim Martinez is the assistant sports editor/prep coordinator for The Columbian. He can be reached at 360-735-4538, tim.martinez@columbian.com or follow his Twitter handle @360TMart.
