Okay, here's a chart of all at-large tournament entries 2007-2011. You can see the cluster at the upper left, indicating that most at-large teams have a lot of wins and fairly low RPIs. NU's current RPI, according to Boyd's World as of today, is 72. If we assume NU will get 37 wins this season, the red dot indicates where NU would wind up. Looking at the trend line, it's clear that NU either needs more wins or a better RPI if it is going to get an at-large selection. At 37 wins, it would need an RPI near 40 to be confident (prob > .70) of selection.
View attachment 2922
The next chart illustrates the probability of a post-season appearance (automatic or at-large) of a team with an RPI between X and X+4 (1-5, 6-10, etc). Each bin has five RPIs and five years, so the probability that a team makes the post season if it is in that particular bin is (the number of teams with that RPI in the regionals) / 25.
The red oval represent where NU's RPI has hovered over the last several weeks. Unfortunately, the reality is that even if NU's RPI improves significantly, the odds of an at-large appearance are low.
View attachment 2924
We need to win the conference tournament.
Okay, here's a chart of all at-large tournament entries 2007-2011. You can see the cluster at the upper left, indicating that most at-large teams have a lot of wins and fairly low RPIs. NU's current RPI, according to Boyd's World as of today, is 72. If we assume NU will get 37 wins this season, the red dot indicates where NU would wind up. Looking at the trend line, it's clear that NU either needs more wins or a better RPI if it is going to get an at-large selection. At 37 wins, it would need an RPI near 40 to be confident (prob > .70) of selection.
View attachment 2922
The next chart illustrates the probability of a post-season appearance (automatic or at-large) of a team with an RPI between X and X+4 (1-5, 6-10, etc). Each bin has five RPIs and five years, so the probability that a team makes the post season if it is in that particular bin is (the number of teams with that RPI in the regionals) / 25.
The red oval represent where NU's RPI has hovered over the last several weeks. Unfortunately, the reality is that even if NU's RPI improves significantly, the odds of an at-large appearance are low.
View attachment 2924
We need to win the conference tournament.
There was an interesting comment on another board from Boyd earlier this year about what it might take for Nebraska to get an at-large bid and whether it would be treated still like a Big XII team or a B1G team. Anyway here's the link
http://nebraska.rivals.com/showmsg.asp?fid=284&tid=154250558&mid=154250558&sid=928&style=2
That post was from 3-4 weeks ago. If Nebraska goes on some kind of magical run to finish the season and gets to 40 wins, maybe they're in. I just don't see that happening. Boyd has a nifty chart called RPI Needs, which calculates the record a team would need to reach a given number RPI. 8,16, and 32 are all so unlikely to be shown as infeasible. NU would need to go 15-3 to get to RPI 45.
The more I've dug into this, the more convinced I am that NU must win the conference tournament to get in.
Great work on the numbers, but it leads to an interesting question(s):
1) How much is Nebraskas weak SOS holding down their RPI (SOS b/w 106 & 120, depending on the source)
2) I wonder if bringing up the RPI's of the bottom half of the B1G would raise Nebraska's RPI considerably? That is, say all the B1G had RPI's of above 100, would this raise Nebraska's SOS and RPI enough to put them in a "probable" position of at-large selection (the rising tide floats all boats theory)?
I believe the largest component of the RPI is W/L record. In order for the bottom half of the conference to raise their RPI at this point in the season, it would come at the expense of the top half...and that would probably be a net negative for NU at this point.
Thanks Queso for the chart....which demonstrates the ugly reality that we will have to win the tourney or just about win out to get in.
Actually I'm talking about in theory and not this season in particular.
If the bottom half of the B1G had a better won/loss record in out-of-conference play, thus leading all B1G teams to a stronger RPI, I wonder how much this would raise Nebraska (and the other members of the conference) RPI to produce more at large berths?
I guess the thing I'm asking is: Is it necessary for Nebraska to upgrade its schedule, or would it be better for the rest of the conference to get better in baseball, or a combination of both? Or will the weak conference sisters continue to drag the conference into minimal at large berths?