IRC National Rankings: 3/25/07

Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Explination of Rankings

The Rankings that follow have been voted on by the IRC to represent what we thought was each teams incoming seed into the national tournament. Using the concept that the NCRHA was attempting to make the pools as even as possible, the DI and DII ranking were calculated to were teams 1,10,11,20 are all in the same pool. The rankings are base off what we think the NCRHA was trying to accomplish, since they don’t post pools. If these rankings don’t interest you, please refer to the most recent normal rankings as the most recent rankings.

Some Interesting Statistics Regarding the Rankings This Year:

Teams Ranked Every Week of Rankings:
DI: Lindenwood, NC State, Michigan State, North Texas, and Florida International
DII: UMSL, Long Beach State, Neumann, Truman State, West Chester, Texas-Dallas, Drexel, Saint Louis, Washington
DIII: St. Charles and Broward
B: Lindenwood Gold, Meramec Gold, Suffolk, St. Charles, North Texas, Florida, Colorado State Green

Total Teams That Spent 1 Week in Rankings:
DI: 25
DII: 28
DIII: 8
B: 21

DI National Rankings - Special Nationals Seedings

#1 – Lindenwood University (23-0-0)
Last Week: 1

#2 - Eastern Michigan University (9-14-1)
Last Week: NR

#3 – North Carolina State University (19-5-0)
Last Week: 5

#4 - CSU San Bernardino (12-9-4)
Last Week: 15

#5 – Rochester IT (20-4-3)
Last Week: 9

#6 –Michigan State University – (23-2-1)
Last Week: 6

#7 – University of Rhode Island (20-4-2)
Last Week: 4

#8 – University of Central Florida (12-5-2)
Last Week: 13

#9 – University of North Texas (22-1-1)
Last Week: 3

#10 - Colorado State University (15-5-2)
Last Week: NR

#11 - University of Texas (16-7-1)
Last Week: NR

#12 – Towson University (19-9-0)
Last Week: 10

#13 - SUNY Buffalo (17-9-0)
Last Week: 14

#14 - Florida International University – (19-6-5)
Last Week: 7

#15 – University of Denver (13-9-2)
Last Week: 13

#16 - University of Missouri (10-5-1)
Last Week: NR

#17 - University of Michigan (18-7-3)
Last Week: 12

#18 - The Ohio State University (16-6-1)
Last Week: NR

#19 – University of Florida (11-4-4)
Last Week: 11

#20 - Purdue University (12-7-3)
Last Week: NR

DII National Rankings - Special Nationals Seedings

#1 – University of Missouri – St. Louis (18-1-1)
Last Week: 4

#2 - SUNY Stony Brook (21-4-3)
Last Week: 5

#3 – Long Beach State – (24-2-0)
Last Week: 2

#4 – Emory University (18-6-0)
Last Week: 7

#5 – Neumann College (21-1-1)
Last Week: 1

#6 – Truman State University (18-2-0)
Last Week: 6

#7 – Hofstra University (16-10-0)
Last Week: 9

#8 – West Chester University (17-8-0)
Last Week: 11

#9 – University of Texas, Dallas (22-1-1)
Last Week: 3

#10 –Drexel University (15-10-0)
Last Week: 10

#11 - Cal Poly Pomona (15-8-1)
Last Week: 15

#12 - University of Reno, Nevada (14-8-1)
Last Week: NR

#13 – Saint Louis University (13-5-2)
Last Week: 14

#14 - University of California, San Diego (14-9-1)
Last Week: NR

#15 - University of San Diego (12-8-4)
Last Week: NR

#16 - Northern Illinois University (4-16-0)
Last Week: NR

#17 - Missouri State University (12-8-1)
Last Week: NR

#18 - State University of New York at Albany (12-10-4)
Last Week: NR

#19 – Washington (STL) University (15-6-0)
Last Week: 9

#20 - Shippensburg University (8-14-4)
Last Week: NR

DIII National Rankings - Special Nationals Seedings

#1 – St. Charles Community College (18-2-0)
Last Week: 1

#2 – Suffolk Country Community College (16-6-1)
Last Week: 2

#3 – Broward Community College (12-4-4)
Last Week: 3

#4 – Nassau Community College (10-10-3)
Last Week: NR

#5 – St. Louis CC - Meramec (10-10-0)
Last Week: NR

B National Rankings - Special Nationals Seedings

#1 – Lindenwood University (GOLD) (21-2-1)
Last Week: 1

#2 – Suffolk County Community College (22-2-2)
Last Week: 4

#3 – STL Community College - Meramec Gold (17-3-1)
Last Week: 2

#4 – St. Charles Community College (16-4-0)
Last Week: 3

#5 – University of Michigan (14-7-1)
Last Week: 10

#6 – Michigan State University (10-5-1)
Last Week: 12

#7 – University of North Texas (16-3-0)
Last Week: 8

#8 - UC Santa Barbara Gold (13-6-0)
Last Week: NR

#9 – University of Florida (16-2-2)
Last Week: 5

#10 – Colorado State University Green (15-3-1)
Last Week: 7

#11– Texas A&M (12-7-0)
Last Week: 13

#12 - Towson University (16-10-2)
Last Week: 15

#13-15 will not be ranked in these rankings.

Monday, March 26, 2007

Nationals

Rankings will be released once the 2006-2007 national championship pools are released. Rankings will be expanded to represent the number of teams at the tourney. Rankings will be based off of the current rankings and the distributions in the pool. Our goal is to place an incoming seed into each bracket for the tourney.

Once again, the rankings are not affiliated with the NCRHA and do not reflect any of the decisions that the NCRHA made in making the pools.

At the conclusion of the season, one final poll will be released. This poll will reflect the 15-15-15-5 formats that we currently are ranking.

The Rankings Explained

Since the conclusion of the season both founders set out to find the best solution to answer the age old question, “Who’s #1?” After much search, the answer was to use a mathematical formula to calculate the answer. Removing the human element from the voting would likely result in less biased rankings towards individual teams and regions.

The solution would be found in the ELO chess rating system. They system was created to rank chess players by another means that wins, losses and draws. The system uses a mathematical formula to reward each person for impressive feats and punish them for lesser impressive feats. Because chess and inline hockey are two different animals, the general equation had to be changed to allow for more hockeys related factors into the equation.

Using the FIFA Women’s World Rankings as a guideline (Elo Based), we managed to change the rankings to suit the nature of our sport. The rankings include the importance of the game, the outcome of the game, the expected result of the game, and the goal differential of the game when calculating a result. To better explain the way the rankings work I give you the following examples (all team start with a ranking of 1500):

Lindenwood University (1500) vs. UMSL (1500): If Lindenwood won the regular season game 4-3; they would be awarded 15 points for the victory and UMSL would be docked 15 points. However, if the game was won 12-2, Lindenwood would earn 39.38 points for the victory and UMSL would be docked 39.38 points. Additionally, the importance of the game could change, using the national title game as the example, with both teams having equal ratings Lindenwood would be awarded 52.5 points for a 6-3 win.

However, as you could assume, two teams having the same rating would be rare. Each teams point total carries over from one week to the next and from one season to the next. The following is a example of two teams with different point values and the different results it can produce.

Lindenwood University (1746.38) vs. Illinois State (1360.88): There are a few things that you can determine because of the vast difference in each teams rating (385.5). The first is that Lindenwood is expected to win the game. The second is that Illinois State winning the game would be a much bigger accomplishment that Lindenwood winning the game. The maximum points Lindenwood can earn from this game is 7.72, which would mean they won by at least 10 goals. However, on the flip side, if Illinois State was to win the game by at least 10 goals they could earn as many as 71.03 points. This is based on the projection that Lindenwood would win the match-up 90% of the time.

As the two examples show, there are a bunch of positives when using this system. For starters, once a team has achieved a high rating, it becomes difficult for them to increase it without playing a higher level of competition. This rewards regions that have more competitive teams. It also rewards teams who travel out of the region and win games against other higher rated teams. For example, last season, Towson and Army both played James Madison who would have had a higher rating that both visiting teams. In the games, Army and Towson both won handily and would have increased their ratings while negatively hurting James Madison. But, the hidden bonus is they now can bring those rating points back into their region. Those points then become spread out over the entire region as the season progresses and teams win and lose.

For the ratings system to work, each game has to have a certain amount of value attached to it. In the system we will be using five different levels to rate the importance of any give game. The first level is the lowest level of importance; it contains all pre-season exhibition games. The second level includes all regular-season regional games, as well as cross-divisional exhibition games. Level three includes all cross-regional games and invitational based tournaments, like WinterFest. The fourth level includes all regional playoff games and the fifth and final level includes all national playoff games.