A Comparison Of The CAA and Big East Games By Location

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EvanJ
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A Comparison Of The CAA and Big East Games By Location

Post by EvanJ »

As you probably know, the Big East plays much more of their out of conference games at home than the CAA does. Neither one has played any conference games yet. All data in this post is through yesterday because the Big East has played two games so far today and has one more and I wanted the data to be after a day. To start, here is the percent of out of conference games played home, away, and neutral including Division I opponents only:

Big East: 57.0% home, 15.1% away, 28.0% neutral (it adds up to 100.1% due to rounding)
CAA: 38.2% home, 46.1% away, 15.8% neutral (it adds up to 100.1% due to rounding)

Next I will describe teams' plain record and RPI record. In the RPI, your RPI winning percentage is used in the winning percentage component, but your plain winning percentage is used to measure of the strength of schedule of your opponents. Your plain winning percentage is simply wins/(wins + losses), and your RPI record is:

Numerator = 1.4*away wins + 1*neutral wins + 0.6*home wins
Denominator = Numerator + 1.4*home losses + 1*neutral losses + 0.6*away losses

Hofstra has a plain winning percentage of 5/(5 + 3) = .625. Hofstra is 1-0 home, 2-1 away, and 2-2 neutral, for an RPI record of 5.4-2.6 which is .675.

The home and away weighting helps the CAA relative to the Big East. The Big East has a plain record of 73-20 (.7849) and an RPI record of 57.0-19.6 (.7441), with the RPI record being .0408 worse. The CAA has a plain record of 47-29 (.6184) and an RPI record of 45.4-25.0 (.6449), with the RPI record being .0265 better. Alternatively, the plain winning percentage difference is .1665, and the RPI winning percentage reduces the difference to .0992, which is a decrease of 40.4 percent.

Looking at the teams, the Big East and CAA have 10 teams each. In the Big East, Seton Hall has a slightly better RPI winning percentage than plain winning percentage, Xavier and DePaul are the same for both, and the other seven teams have a better plain winning percentage than RPI winning percentage. The plain winning percentage and RPI winning percentage will be the same for any team that is undefeated (like Xavier is) or winless. In the CAA, where nobody is undefeated or winless, College of Charleston and James Madison have a better plain winning percentage than RPI winning percentage, and the other eight teams have a better RPI winning percentage than plain winning percentage.
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