CIS CORNER: RAVENS REMAIN NO. 1 IN SOME EYES

The Carleton Ravens and Ottawa Gee-Gees are receiving more credit from the Canadian university basketball blogosphere (yes, there is such a thing) than in the official CIS coaches' poll which appears in all the newspapers.

The capital's university basketball squads are ranked No. 3 and No. 10 in Canada according to the latest coaches' poll. Mark Wacyk's invaluable CIS Hoops.ca also has the Ravens at No. 3, but pegs the Gee-Gees at No. 7, noting that they've had three very close losses in recent weeks.

Then there's the Bob Adams CIS Sports Page, which has calculated the RPI (Ratings Performance Index) for CIS basketball, men's and women's, using software written by Mark Cheers. True, only the most reprobate among reprobate sports geeks would find this is interesting, but the Cheers RPI lists the Ravens as the No. 1 team in Canada. The Gee-Gees come in at No. 6.

(UPDATE, Feb. 11: As a reader pointed out, there's another independent ranking system that also puts Carleton at No. 1 and Ottawa at No. 6.)

The Brandon Bobcats, who supplanted Carleton at No. 1 last week and took 40 of 42 first-place votes this week, slide all the way to No. 4 in Cheers RPI. In the States, RPI is part of the basketball lingo and is used to help determine the field for the NCAA men's and women's tournaments. Canada is just behind the times here.

It's fascinating to see what rankings a computer program (ideally neutral, but only ideally) spits out compared to how a coach or an informed fan forms an opinion. The conditioned response to seeing Carleton lose twice in a short span two weeks ago (almost getting blown off the court in the first 20 minutes vs. York at home 10 days ago) was to wonder how far Dave Smart's Ravens would drop in the coaches' poll, and if they had hit the Dynasty Wall (still possible) after four and a half seasons of having every team in Canada gunning for them.

The Cheers RPI (see the short explanation below) doesn't worry about when a team lost, but who it lost to and who those teams played. In Carleton, the computer just sees a 25-2 team whose losses were against strong competition. Brandon is 25-3 but has lost twice to a .500 Winnipeg team and once to sub-.500 Trinity Western. However, 25 days passed between the Bobcats' first two losses, and 29 more before their next defeat, which makes it harder to see a pattern in their losing.

That said, neither way is right -- it's probably better to have teams moving up and down each week based on their most recent showings, since a coach has to play the team he has today, not the one from two months ago.

Short primer: The version of RPI used by the NCAA weighs a team's winning percentage, its opponents' winning percentage and its' opponents' opponents' winning percentage. It's also been amended within the past few years to factor in home and road victories.

That's all for now. Send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca.