Breakdown of RPI impact of final regular season series
By Carl James @jovian34 May 18th, 2023
What RPI rank is needed?
In order to be reasonable assured of an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament, the goal for Indiana is to be in the top-42 after the Big Ten (B1G) Tournament next Sunday. If you want a breakdown of how I came up with 42 as the target rank, read my prior impact report.
This article is only addressing NCAA at-large bid, not B1G title race (see B1G standings).
How will RPI be impacted by the Michigan State series?
Indiana is in a great starting position, ranked 27th in the RPI as this morning. Applying Warren Nolan’s RPI Impact to the RPI Ladder for three games:
- 3-0 Sweep: 19th
- 2-1 Series win: 24th
- 1-2 Series loss: 28th
- 0-3 Series get swept: 33rd
So even if the Hoosiers were to get swept, the RPI remains easily in at-large range.
To further verify this I looked at Boyd’s Worlds RPI Needs Report and it agreed with what Nolan’s site indicated.
- Remaining: 3 road
- Current RPI: 27
- ROWP: 0.640
- Top 45: No more wins needed.
- Top 32: 1 road wins
- Top 16: No way to reach the threshold.
Indiana doesn’t have any more work to do for the purpose of NCAA qualification in my analysis. Now if the bubble teams mostly finished strong and an unusually high number of stolen bids (explained in prior impact report) happened it could make the Hoosiers sweat a bit. Just one more win gets Indiana to the top-32 (2-seed territory) and eliminates any cause for perspiration.