Beating Oklahoma is more valuable than beating Butler, because 25% of that equation involves who Butler beat./B] OK, I didn't know about that opponents' opponents record. There's two other problems though with looking primarily at RPI. This is I think where Vitale was right on the money. (1) No one will play a Butler or Ball State or Gonzaga. Really, there's nothing to be gained by Texas playing a team like that. You lose, and you lost to a mid-major. You win, you beat a mid-major. If you instead play a decent big-name school -- Texas likes Utah -- then a loss is not a big deal and a win's considered a big win. (This ignores the fact that Gonzaga is ranked this year, which it hasn't been in the past) Yeah, this is not directly an RPI-thing, but mid-majors can't play good teams so they can't prove how good they are. I think that's an issue. (2) More directly related to the RPI, bad major-conference teams will have better records than bad minor-conference teams. A crappy A&M team can pay even crappier minor-conference teams to come play them and boost their record. A crappy West Coast Conference team gets paid by teams like Texas and Arizona to go on the road and lose. So while both teams sucked, A&M still has the wins while the minor-conference teams have the horrible looking records. For example, I think all the Big12 teams (maybe 11) had winning non-conference records. So there's the question of what can a mid-major team do to prove itself in the current system. They can't play super-teams (except in preseason tourneys, where Gonzaga beat Texas) and their conference opponents will drag down their RPI's (while RPI does weigh in that good teams beat their opponents, it weighs the opponent's record twice as much). I think, given the current system, Gonzaga did as much as could be reasonably expected and I think pollsters saw that when ranking them. Just my opinion. PS - That Pythagorean thing is pretty cool. I had heard of that extensively in baseball, but never for basketball!
