The Horns will travel far to the east this weekend to play road conference games with the Mountaineers. I wanted here to address what seems an unlikely RPI rating of W.Va when you look at their W-L record . "Phil Elliot" in an earlier thread questioned the validity of the RPI rating as it pertained to TxTech. I have also been baffled by the high RPI of W.Va . In the last two weeks their RPI has fallen from 23 to now 36. The RPI of the Horns during that time has been fairly stable in moving from 31 to now 30. Our record is 29-15 while theirs is 20-18. How can this be? The RPI rating technique is strictly calculated by weighting of the winning percentages of teams.
I think it is instructive to compare the records of TCU and WVa because their W-L records are quite similar. Yet the RPI of TCU ( @75 ) is twice that of WVa. I believe the skew in the RPI rating is understandable when you compare the fact that WVa is a much better at playing on the road than at home. This is emphasized by the more severe early spring weather of the states of WVa vs Texas. Also big is that there is a significant difference in the strength of schedule for wins in their competition. At the core of the RPI is that a road win is almost worth twice as much as a home win. The ratio of the weighting is actually 7 / 13. Here is a table of the Big12 current standings with the RPI shown.
STANDINGS
Here are tables for TCU and WVa comparing their records in more detail.
TCU
WVa
The overall records between the two teams are quite similar. However, look at the difference between the records in RPI groups 3 and 4. Also, the ratio of home to road games for TCU is 21:14. The ratio of home to road games for WVa is 15:19 .
I guess we should be glad that we are playing this weekend at their home site????
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Last edited: Apr 25, 2018