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Martinez: Flawed RPI does serve a purpose in prep basketball rankings

High school sports

The Columbian
Published: January 14, 2025, 8:05am

The WIAA released its first RPI rankings for boys and girls basketball last week.

Some people were excited. Perhaps their favorite team was ranked high.

Other people were frustrated. Perhaps their favorite team was ranked lower than expected.

But there are two things you need to know about these rankings before you get all worked up — these rankings have many flaws, and they don’t really mean that much.

Let’s start first with the flaws.

MORE DATA PLEASE: Like any data-driven ranking system, the more data that is available, the better the end result.

Right now, most playoff-bound teams are about halfway through their schedules.

High school teams play 20 or 21 games in the regular season, then more in league and district playoffs.

By the time teams qualify for the state playoffs, they will have played anywhere from 24 to 28 games.

So these rankings are currently about half-cooked.

UNDERSTANDING THE SYSTEM: RPI is computed by combining three factors: a team’s winning percentage (40% of total), the combined winning percentage of its opponents (40% of total), and the combined winning percentage of its opponents’ opponents (20% of total).

So 60 percent of a team’s rating is based on factors that the team cannot control.

Some people were upset about the Mark Morris boys being ranked at No. 9 in 2A on Monday morning, even though the Monarchs are 11-1 and ranked behind No. 5 Columbia River (10-2) despite the fact the Monarchs beat the Rapids.

The number that is dragging down Mark Morris’ ranking is its opponents winning percentage is .3725. Only three other teams in Class 2A have a lower OWP.

CLASSIFICATION DOESN’T MATTER: There is no adjustment made to RPI for games played between teams from different classifications.

For example, Mark Morris has wins over 3A Greater St. Helens teams Mountain View and Kelso. But as far as RPI is concerned those wins might as well have come against 1B teams Three Rivers Christian and Columbia Adventist.

RPI sees them as the same, even though they are not.

RPI would work best if every team played games exclusively in their own classification. But that is just not practical.

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OUT-OF-STATE GAMES: Games played against out-of-state opponents are not being counted toward a team’s RPI.

For example, the Camas boys are 9-3. But in the eyes of RPI, the Papermakers are 7-0. Camas has played five games against teams from out of state (four from Oregon, one from Idaho).

There are two arguments for counting just in-state games.

One, the RPI system doesn’t have access to win-loss records of out-of-state teams or their opponents, so those results are somewhat tainted.

Secondly, these are rankings of Washington teams, so it should be comprised of results between Washington schools.

The drawback to this is that it limits the data for teams that play a lot of out-of-state opponents — like teams in Southwest Washington or over in Spokane.

THE CHURN: A ranking system like RPI works best when teams play other teams from around parts of the state. Teams from Southwest Washington should schedule non-league games against teams from Seattle, Tri-Cities and Spokane, and vice-versa.

I like to refer to this as “the churn.”

If you are making a soup, you can add all the right ingredients into the pot, but it will not taste good if you don’t stir the pot.

Unfortunately, it is very difficult to make that happen. Playing a team that is two, four or six hours away is expensive and time consuming.

Most teams pack their schedules with teams in their own region.

The Columbia River boys team plays its entire 20-game regular season against teams from Clark and Cowlitz counties.

So what is River’s data going to tell us about how the Rapids stand against teams from other parts of the state? Not a whole lot.

But River’s close-to-home schedule is not unique. In fact, it’s more like the norm for teams from around the state.

WHAT DOES THIS ALL MEAN? When the WIAA first starting using RPI about a decade ago, it was the only tool that was used to seed teams into state-playoff brackets.

But then the flaws started becoming more evident.

Soon after, the WIAA moved to seeding committees to set the state brackets, trusting humans to be better positioned to factor all the variables that RPI could not.

RPI remains a tool available to the seeding committees in determining brackets. But there about 10 other factors that are also considered, lessening the impact of RPI.

SO WHY RELEASE RPI AT ALL? If RPI is so flawed, why release them at all?

The answer is simple: Fans love rankings.

While there are media outlets that will release state rankings for high-profile sports like football and basketball, the other sports are largely left in the lurch.

The RPI system can be applied to other sports and provide rankings for every team sport.

That’s something people want to see.

For years, The Associated Press has released weekly basketball state rankings. But diminishing participation by a shrinking number of media outlets covering prep sports makes producing these rankings difficult.

It appears there will be no AP state basketball rankings this winter. RPI helps fill the void.

So check out those RPI rankings if you like. They will give you some idea of which teams around the state are playing well.

Just remember to keep the grain of salt handy.

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