WeAreNDHockey
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Re: Notre Dame Hockey 2014-15: The year of the Freshman
While a team may have an overall 5-10% better chance of winning at home versus the road when all games are calculated, the kinds of teams that make up the buy games are the bottom feeders of the weaker conferences and as such are even more likely to be easy wins.
In NCAA basketball the road win/home loss difference is even greater, 1.4/0.6, although the use of RPI in selecting and seeding the field for that tournament has largely been overstated, unlike in hockey, where the RPI has become outsized in it's importance in who gets in and who they play.
I wish the NCAA would see as one if its roles a greater need to ensure as level a playing field as possible among teams in the same division, at least when it comes to criteria for selecting participants in a championship tournament. There is nothing Major League Baseball can do to keep the Yankees from making more money on ticket sales and broadcast revenue than the Pirates make (and little they SHOULD do IMO) but they don't let the Yankees play 102 games in the Bronx and only 60 on the road. If teams like Notre Dame (and whoever else) insist upon playing virtually all of their so-called open dates at home against horrible competition, then the NCAA should do even more to ensure it doesn't unfairly advantage them. I hate that Notre Dame jumped on that bandwagon the first chance they got. In the past teams used such scheduling to an even far greater advantage, and this was the reason for the changes in the first place. I'd be in favor of an even greater change in how the RPI is figured, especially when it comes to non-conference games. I do agree that no more changes are likely soon or even ever.
While a team may have an overall 5-10% better chance of winning at home versus the road when all games are calculated, the kinds of teams that make up the buy games are the bottom feeders of the weaker conferences and as such are even more likely to be easy wins.
In NCAA basketball the road win/home loss difference is even greater, 1.4/0.6, although the use of RPI in selecting and seeding the field for that tournament has largely been overstated, unlike in hockey, where the RPI has become outsized in it's importance in who gets in and who they play.
I wish the NCAA would see as one if its roles a greater need to ensure as level a playing field as possible among teams in the same division, at least when it comes to criteria for selecting participants in a championship tournament. There is nothing Major League Baseball can do to keep the Yankees from making more money on ticket sales and broadcast revenue than the Pirates make (and little they SHOULD do IMO) but they don't let the Yankees play 102 games in the Bronx and only 60 on the road. If teams like Notre Dame (and whoever else) insist upon playing virtually all of their so-called open dates at home against horrible competition, then the NCAA should do even more to ensure it doesn't unfairly advantage them. I hate that Notre Dame jumped on that bandwagon the first chance they got. In the past teams used such scheduling to an even far greater advantage, and this was the reason for the changes in the first place. I'd be in favor of an even greater change in how the RPI is figured, especially when it comes to non-conference games. I do agree that no more changes are likely soon or even ever.
