In the past, the No. 12 Arizona Wildcats might have spent their conference bye week at home playing mid-majors from the Western part of the country. The Pac-12 conference competition and early season tournaments like the Mary Nutter or Clearwater sufficed for RPI-building games.
This year, they’re seeking those games in series or two-game schedules against the better teams at on-campus tournaments. That’s where this week’s trip to Baton Rouge comes into play.
It started with a spreadsheet and an overture from LSU head coach Beth Torina.
“We get kind of like a spreadsheet grid of bye weekend opponents that you match up with,” Arizona head coach Caitlin Lowe said back in January. “That’s kind of how it works. Beth reached out, and we knew that was going to be a great weekend for us. I think we kind of fought tooth and nail, like back and forth, on who was going to host it. So they’re going to come to us next year in one of our tournaments, but we will go there this year. And I think it’s just a great like we were on a hot streak for a second of getting that away SEC series or tournament where we could kind of play in that hostile environment. We went to Alabama, Arkansas, and I think it’s really important to experience that as far as being prepared for a postseason environment.”
While Lowe may have lobbied for it to be in Tucson considering that the Wildcats have two Big 12 road series on either side of the LSU trip, it probably works out better in the long run for Arizona to play No. 21 LSU in Tiger Park. The postseason is looming, and these games could affect whether the Wildcats get to host at least the first round.
KPI and DSR are available for committee members to use “as a resource” when it comes time for postseason selections and seeding. Both take into account where a game is played. This could be why both have the Wildcats ranked several spots lower than RPI does.
RPI considers a team’s winning percentage (25 percent of the total), its opponents’ success (50 percent), and its opponents’ opponents’ strength of schedule (25 percent). It gives bonus points for wins against the top 75 teams and applies penalties for losses to teams ranked 227 or worse.
RPI is also used as an official criteria in other ways. The committee considers wins and losses against different RPI quadrants: teams ranked 1-25, 26-50, 51-100, and 101-150. It also considers the average RPI win and the average RPI loss, so the averages are figured for all the opponents a team beat and another average for all the teams that beat the team.
UA currently lands at No. 13 in RPI. DSR and KPI both consider locations of games and margins of victory. Both of those metrics hurt Arizona, which has played 27 of 38 games at home and has had a difficult time keeping opponents’ runs off the board even in wins. The result is a No. 15 ranking in KPI and No. 16 in DSR, right on the edge of hosting regionals if committee members choose to give these systems more weight.
All 11 of the Big 12’s teams are in the top 85 of RPI, but only four are in the top quadrant and one of those is Arizona. The Wildcats have played one of the other three and will miss another one this year, so conference play only offers three more Quad 1 games. Those come immediately after the LSU trip when the team goes to Stillwater to face RPI No. 23 Oklahoma State.
The Wildcats can also hope that some teams they’ve already beaten climb a few spots. If Arizona State starts winning, it could climb above the current No. 27 RPI position it inhabits, giving the league a fifth team in Q1. That would provide Arizona three more Q1 games and a 2-1 record in them. ASU still has series against two Q1 teams (UCF, Texas Tech) and a one-off against a top 30 team (GCU), giving it plenty of opportunities to make up some ground.
GCU climbing above its 29th position could also provide one more win in top quadrant games, but that’s more of a longshot given its conference. Its only opportunity against a top 30 team is the game against the Sun Devils.
LSU is not having the kind of season it expected. The Tigers are 26-13 overall and 6-9 in the SEC, yet they occupy the No. 16 spot in RPI, No. 17 in KPI, and No. 18 in DSR. It’s the kind of team Arizona could find itself battling for a final hosting spot next month, so head-to-head results become especially important.
Those Q1 wins are also especially important. Arizona is 3-6 in its Q1 games this year. LSU is 3-11. Simply playing in the SEC has given the Tigers more opportunities, although they haven’t done much with them.
Winning percentage certainly goes in Arizona’s favor, but that may not be enough since LSU has six more Q1 games after this weekend just in the regular season. They have seven additional games against teams ranked between 26 and 32 in RPI. All of their remaining games are against teams in the top 50.
Arizona gets its chance to improve its resume and damage that of a competitor for regional hosting rights beginning on Friday, Apr. 10 at 4 p.m. MST. Game two will be held Saturday at 3 p.m. MST. Both of those games will stream on SEC Network+, which is available on the ESPN app. The final game of the series starts at 9 a.m. MST on Sunday, Apr. 12. It will air on ESPN and stream on the ESPN app.
