UHSAA RPI Volleyball 2020

Best Day of the Year: 2020 Edition

Today, dear reader, is what I consider the best day of the year.  It wasn't Christmas, or a day at Disneyland -- today was our annual STG Fantasy Football League Draft.  Given how crazy everything has been with coronavirus (especially in the sports world), it was nice to have a day that felt normal.  We were able to have 9 of the 12 people attend in person, and the other three (me, Tommy, and Tyler) were able to attend via zoom.  Given our busy schedules, I see this as an absolute win.

We liked having Chad back in the league, but Ren and his site were missed.

For the grades and individual team reports, you can click this link.

For a brief summary for those that don't want to click the link or read, see below for the team owner, their grade, and their chance to make the playoffs (assuming great in-season management).

Kyle: A with a 90% chance to make the playoffs.

Rob: A with a 90% chance to make the playoffs.

Matt: B+ with an 80% chance to make the playoffs.

Brady: B+ with an 80% chance to make the playoffs.

Skyler: B+ with an 80% chance to make the playoffs.

Chad: B with a 75% chance to make the playoffs.

Brandon: B with a 75% chance to make the playoffs.

Tyler: B with a 70% chance to make the playoffs.

TJ: B with a 70% chance to make the playoffs.

Trevor: B- with a 65% chance to make the playoffs.

Jordan: C+ with a 65% chance to make the playoffs.

Tommy: C with a 60% chance to make the playoffs.

Based on just the numbers of the % chance to make the playoffs, the South ended with 310 points, while the North and West finished with 295 points each.  That averages out to 77.5% for the South and 73.75 for the North.

We still have a ways to go until kick-off, but this definitely helped football feel real.  Also, congrats to Matt, TJ, and Chad as they were the winning team for the front 9 golf tournament this morning, and to Jordan, Kyle, Brady, and Brandon for winning the back 9 golf tournament this morning.  Not everyone was able to attend both parts, so the tournament was broken into two.

Also, big shout out to Brady for hosting the draft and getting golf organized.  I think Jordan brought the pizza's, but I don't know for sure.  Also, the draft board was made by Brady -- both the in-person and the virtual version.  The virtual version was top notch this year.  It had drop downs that updated as picks were made, and the cells were colored by position (like you would see with a draft board and stickers).  If for some reason you aren't in our league you should reach out to Brady, ask him for his template, and venmo him some money for the quality work.

Only ~18 days to kick off.  Good luck to everyone (but Tommy) in the first week.

Edit - I am coming back to add in the FantasyPros power rankings

What I find interesting about adding this in, is that Kyle finished high in both, Tommy and Jordan finished low in both, Rob dropped 8 spots.  Most people stayed within 3 spots in both rankings.

UHSAA Football RPI Updates and Schedule Analysis

Welcome back to another year of high school football.  We are only a few days away from a new season kicking off, so I wanted to update those of you who care about the new changes to RPI this year, and how it will affect your teams.

RPI Updates

Before we begin, all of this information can be found on the UHSAA site, but I will try and break it down into a more understandable format.  

The first tweak is to the RPI calculation itself.  Previously, the equation/weight was MWP*0.4 + OWP*0.4 + OOWP*0.2, and then new equation is MWP*0.45 + OWP*0.45 + OOWP*0.1.  So now your results and your opponent's results matter a little more, and your opponent's opponent's results matter half as much as they used to.  

To think about it another way, let's think that the RPI is worth 100 points (it's really worth 1, but I don't like thinking in decimals).  Your season results are worth a possible 45 (if you go undefeated) out of a possible 100 points.  I say 100 points because 45+45+10 is 100, but in reality, the two best teams last year had an RPI of about .750, so realistically, your schedule is worth 45 out of 70-75 points.  

One of the main reasons the best teams didn't have an RPI of 100 is because of OWP and OOWP.  Unless you go undefeated, and every team you play goes undefeated (except for their game against you), you will not earn 45 points from OWP.  The only way that could happen is if you were an independent team, and you only played/beat 1 team per region, and then that team went undefeated.

Sorry for the tangent, I just wanted to explain why the top teams don't automatically have a perfect RPI score, and that seemed like the simplest example I could come up with.

The second tweak is much bigger and helps or hurts a lot depending on who you are, and what classification you are in.  But first, some background on how RPI used to work. For football in Utah, there are 5 classifications.  RPI has a built-in system to account for playing across classifications.  This was the breakdown last year.

Classification	Game Value
2A	1.150000
3A	1.322500
4A	1.520875
Out of State Opponents	1.550748
5A	1.749006
6A	2.011357

The best way to think about this is that if a 2A beats a 2A team, it is worth a normal win (1.15/1.15 = 1), but if a 2A team beat a 6A team, the calculation to determine the win would be 2.011357/1.15, which equals 1.749.

The modification worked in reverse as well. An upper classification team was allowed to play down once, and not take a penalty.  So if a 6A team beat a 2A team, it would count as a normal win (2.011357/2.011357=1).  If a 6A team scheduled two 2A teams in a season (and won both), their first game would count as normal, but the second win would have a calculation of 1.15/2.011357, which would be a win value of 0.572.

The old system was a negative for 6A teams that wanted to play two or more lower classification teams, or out of state opponents.

The new breakdown looks like this

Classification	Game Value
2A	1
3A	1
Out of State	1.25
4A	1.5
5A	1.5
6A	1.5

So now, a 6A team can play as many 4A or 5A teams as they want with no penalty, while 4A has no chance to earn any bonus points for playing an upper classification team, and playing an out of state opponent is now a negative for them, whereas it was a small net gain last year. 3A is in a good spot because they can earn bonus points for playing an upper classification, or out of state opponent, or can play as many 2A teams as they want without taking a penalty.  To summarize, this is a positive for 6A, 5A, and 3A, and a negative for 4A and 2A.

Schedule Analysis

I decided to look at every team's schedule to see how this new change affected them. Here is a link to the spreadsheet I made where I try to determine if each team has a positive, neutral, or negative schedule.  I tried to note each team's exact situation, and then group them into groups.  I got to 27 groups (I was in the middle of 4A) before I realized that it was getting too messy.  So instead I grouped those 27 scenarios into the 3 groups mentioned above, and then I highlighted the teams.  I left the original scenarios below the 3 groups, so you could see what I was trying to look at.

To better understand what my notes mean, if I say 'up' or 'down', the single quotes are to signify that a 6A team is playing 'down' to a 5A team.  They are playing down in real life, but not down for RPI purposes. If you see down without single quotes, that is to signify that someone is playing down (likely a 4A to a 3A team) and it counts as a down game in RPI. OoS is short for Out of State in the notes/key.  

There are a lot of reasons to have a negative or suboptimal schedule.  For example, Desert Hills plays three higher classification opponents, but they get no bonus for it. They are playing tougher opponents, but get no RPI benefit for it, which is suboptimal for RPI.  Ben Lomond has a negative/suboptimal schedule because they play down 3 times.  Assuming they win some of those, those wins will be penalized.  The opposite of Desert Hills is Providence Hall -- they play several higher classification teams and are able to earn bonus points if they win those games, which is a positive/optimal schedule for RPI.  The opposite of Ben Lomond is about half of the 6A teams.  6A teams are able to play multiple 5A and 4A teams, and not take any penalty -- they are playing an easier schedule (obviously some 4A and 5A teams can beat 6A teams, but they are the exception, not the rule), and not being penalized for it.

As a Dixie fan, I don't like the new breakdown because it hurts Dixie, but I can't fault the 6A teams for taking advantage of this scenario.  I think it will be interesting to see come playoff time if the green 6A teams are the ones who get upset earlier in the tournament, or if the orange 5A teams are able to pull some upsets over the green/white teams.  I could see something changing next year to make it closer to last year where each classification has their own value, but instead of making them 15% apart, maybe they are closer to 5-10% apart, but we'll see. The major issue is with out of state opponents -- teams like Bishop Gorman are great matchups as they are a national powerhouse, but in RPI they were worth the same as a 4A school (instead of a 6A school), and now they are worth less than a 4A team.  The other major issue is that Virgin Valley has the same base value as Bishop Gorman, even though they are two classifications lower in Nevada, and obviously not as good. I know the UHSAA isn't in the business of assigning values to 3A and 5A Nevada teams, but if they could, it would definitely help balance the desire to schedule out of state opponents while trying to help your RPI.

One last note on schedule advantages and disadvantages -- the teams with larger regions have the potential to be punished more.  They have fewer games to get quality non-region opponents on their schedule.  Looking at regions 1, 9, and 10 specifically -- most of the region will have a very similar OWP as they share a majority of their opponents.  They will not be able to easily differentiate themselves with their OWP because they only have 2-3 non-region games they can schedule.  However, region 7 has a small region -- over half of their games are non-region games, which gives them the potential to have a stronger OWP.

Best of luck to all the kids and teams kicking off this week!

UHSAA RPI Girls Soccer 2020

For best results, maximize the google data studio window.

The scatterplots are a work in progress, there shouldn't be any data on them right now. I apologize for the confusion and inconvenience.