I can't believe you singled out Duke again Chris Chase!!! You are a hack that hates Duke!!!
/speaking for all Duke fans before they get their panties in a wad.
GO HEELS!!!!!!

All about SOS. During the Harrick years Georgia would randomly show up in the Top 5 of the RPI because they played a tough schedule.

You know, if you are looking at them as a guide and not an absolute ranking, that list is pretty good. Only one obvious slip up. Nice job computers.

That's why the NCAA tournament needs to expand to 4,068 teams. That way there will be absolutely no question as to who is the real national champion.

What all of college sports needs is the birthchild of the BCS and RPI rankings, because everyone knows college football has the right idea. -note the sarcasm.

Chris, the RPI is a formula that you can look up. If UNC wanted to be at the top they should have scheduled more difficult out-of-conference games. Duke played Purdue, Xavier, Michigan twice (although one should have been UCLA), and Wake Forest twice (nothing could be done about this). All of those save one Wake Forest game were on the road.

Ken Pomeroy publishes a ranking that is much more accurate at predicting college basketball success - it factors in when games were played (more recent = more weight), more complex offensive & defensive stats, and even provides a "luck" rating that is not factored into the rankings, but can help one weed out the pretenders...
go to: http://www.kenpom.com/rate.php

The big fraud is Michigan State, especially as a Number 1 seed, to wit: 1. Lost AT HOME, by 35 points to NC. Losing to NC is no disgrace, even at home, but no team in the ACC lost to NC by more than 30 points, and that was Georgia Tech (2-14 in ACC) at NC.
2. Lost, AT HOME, by 18 points to Maryland. This is a disgrace. MD didn't beat anybody in the ACC by 18 points, not even GT. Their big blowout win was an 11 point "pounding" of NC State. In the ACC, Michigan State might go .500.
3. Lost, AT HOME, to Northwestern, (8-10 in Big 11, with 4 gift wins from Indiana and Iowa) . No number 1 seed should lose to NW at any time and under any circumstance.
4. And most shocking, lost, AT HOME, to Penn State!!!. The only real, out of conference teams PSU played were Temple and Rhoad Island, and lost both at home. PSU might go .500 in the Atlantic 16. Just for being part of that atrocious 38-33 game at Illinois, PSU should get no bid. (Illinois should be banished to Division II for their performance.)
In short that is not the resume of a number 1 seed -- a 4 seed maybe, but not a 1.

UNC beat duke twice. rpi is a joke.

heelfanatic,
if you look up the rpi formula and plug in all of the numbers duke is ahead of carolina. the formula doesn't change, don't complain about it.

Okay, Chase. Perhaps you initially set out to criticize the RPI in your post, but ultimately rage from your unrequited blind lust for Coach K quickly turned it into an anti-duke one. Why? Because you emphasized that Duke finished third in the ACC standings. First off, that's not entirely true. Duke and WF tied for second in the conference standings, only WF got the #2 seed in the ACC tourney because they had a better record than Duke did against UNC. But the real issue is with your implied apples-to-apples comparison of UNC, Wake, and Duke. The ACC schedule, where each of twelve teams plays sixteen games, is inevitably unbalanced, and this year favored your beloved deacons and tar holes, who had far easier conference schedules than did Duke. Consider the following summary provided by Al Featherston:
"North Carolina won the title, despite playing just six games against the other five first-division teams (Duke twice; Wake, FSU, Clemson and BC once each) with five games against games against the three bottom teams. Wake Forest, which tied Duke for second, played seven first-division opponents (Duke and Clemson twice; UNC, FSU and BC once) and five games against the bottom three."
So the evidence you cite as evidence that the RPI is unreliable--that Duke is ranked higher in the RPI than in their own conference standings--actually does more to demonstrate the RPI's real purpose (value): providing the tournament selection committee with a second point-of-reference regarding a team's worthiness of a bid or of a particular seed. Conference schedule imbalances (post-expansion) have made it impossible for the committee to make those judgments based on conference records alone.
With that being said, for your next blog entry, perhaps you should write about how Wake Forest, the same team that, unlike Duke, only played UNC once this year (at home, no less)......Wake Forest, the team that recently lost to NC State.......yeah, they actually don't deserve the #2 seed in the ACC tourney.

Sorry, I forgot, here's Al Featherston's summary of Duke's in-conference schedule:
"Duke played eight games against first-division teams (UNC, Wake and FSU twice; Clemson and BC once - both on the road) and just three against the bottom three."
Compare Duke's 8 against top-five and 3 against bottom-3 with Wake's 7 against top-5 and 5 against bottom-3 and tell me if you still think Wake deserves the #2 seed, given that Duke and Wake have the same in-conference record, and that Duke and WF split their two games, with Duke's margin of victory against Wake being five times greater than Wake's against Duke.

way to go Loren Woods.
Wildcat reference?