The CIS Blog Top 10: Feb. 9, 2009

NOTE: There's a pretty substantial change in The CIS Blog Top 10 this week, since yours truly discovered a bug in the strength-of-schedule calculations for the RPI. It has been fixed, but some teams jumped 10 or 15 spots as a result, so comparing this week's rankings with previous rankings might not be a good idea.

With that out of the way, here are the latest rankings (explained here) for men's and women's basketball, volleyball, and hockey.


Some other notes:
  • #1 teams: Carleton (men's basketball), SFU (women's basketball), Laurier (men's and women's hockey), Alberta (men's volleyball), and UdeM (women's volleyball).
  • This will be the last update for volleyball for a while, as their regular season is now complete. The rankings below do not include any playoff games already played.
  • The Gee-Gees are just ten points away from having Carleton-Ottawa #1 and #2 in the country. Too bad the Capital Hoops Classic was several days ago.
  • Outside of the top four in women's basketball, it's all extremely close: only five points separate the next seven teams.

MEN'S BASKETBALL
1. Carleton (27-1), .602
2. UBC (24-2), .594
3. Ottawa (26-4), .584
4. Western (18-6), .561
5. Concordia (13-4), .559
6. Calgary (21-6), .555
7. Trinity Western (18-6), .550
t-8. Windsor (16-7), .549
t-8. Victoria (19-7), .549
10. StFX (21-5), .547


WOMEN'S BASKETBALL

1. Simon Fraser (25-1), .602
2. Windsor (27-2), .587
3. Saskatchewan (22-5), .578
3. Alberta (28-6), .578
5. Victoria (19-7), .551
6. UQAM (13-7), .550
7. Memorial (16-6), .549
8. Winnipeg (21-10), .547
9. Dalhousie (16-5), .545
t-10. Western (19-7), .544
t-10. Regina (25-8), .544


MEN'S HOCKEY

1. Laurier, .559
2. Saint Mary's, .553
3. UNB, .552
4. Alberta, .546
5. Moncton, .545
6. Waterloo, .539
t-7. Western, .535
t-7. Acadia, .535
9. Lakehead, .525
10. StFX, .523


WOMEN'S HOCKEY
(no pre-season results)
1. Laurier, .581
2. Alberta, .565
3. McGill, .555
4. Moncton, .547
5. Ottawa, .544
6. StFX, .541
7. Manitoba, .526
8. Guelph, .525
9. Toronto, .518
10. York, .514


MEN'S VOLLEYBALL

1. Alberta (24-1), .593
2. Laval (25-0), .575
3. Dalhousie (24-4), .559
4. Calgary (20-8), .554
5. McMaster (25-6), .554
6. UBC (12-10), .541
7. Winnipeg (11-11), .538
8. Western (25-10), .533
9. Trinity Western (11-11), .531
10. Queen's (22-10), .529


WOMEN'S VOLLEYBALL
1. Montreal (29-1), .611
2. York (28-3), .577
3. Laval (18-10), .558
4. Moncton (15-5), .553
5. Manitoba (25-10), .550
6. Trinity Western (18-7), .549
7. Alberta (23-7), .547
8. Western (21-9), .541
9. McMaster (22-9), .537
10. UNB (16-9), .535
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12 comments:

  1. Rob,
    What was the bug in your RPI? I am still quite confuse with some positions.

    ReplyDelete
  2. One Gaels squad in any of the top 10s; that sounds about right at the moment.
    [/Winter sports are depressing, especially come playoff time]

    ReplyDelete
  3. While I admire you taking the trouble to construct an RPI, it is imperfect when it comes to Men's Hockey. The OUA Far East and Far West teams don't play each other during the regular season, and dominate the other two weaker conferences that they play. This leads to this week's distortion of placing Laurier in top spot. In both the Canada West and the AUS all of the teams play a balanced schedule against each other, which makes the RPI more relevant in their case.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Everybody knows the OUA is historically the Weakest Conference.
    At the last five Nationals OUA teams have gone a combined 5-16 against other Conferences and were outscored 94-36 in those games.
    Top Ten voters obviously take this into consideration when it comes to the top couple of spots.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Ahh, just like football.

    ReplyDelete
  6. The Far East and Far West do play each other, just not every season, and they do have non-conference games. Carleton played Lakehead twice this season, for instance.

    No ranking system is perfect, but it's grist for debate.

    ReplyDelete
  7. The women's volleyball RPI, although likely the least looked at, appears to be pretty far off when one considers the relative strength of the CW compared to say a division such as the AUS. Pretty sure CW and QSSF have dominated CIS volleyball for the last decade or so.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Sager...as it stands now the Far East and Far West OUA teams do not play each other during the regular season...and there are no future plans for them to. In fact, there is a rumour that the sched will go to 24 games when Nipissing joins next year. The only time teams from the Far East and Far West will potentially meet is in the Queen's cup final or in the Nationals (plus some non conf games like Carleton/Lakehead this year).

    They did play an interlocking schedule in 2006/2007...that was the reason the schedule was extended from 24 to 28 games. But they went back to the old framework when Carleton and UOIT joined the conference in 2006/2007. Prior to that, 1990/91 was the last time the two divisions played an interlocking schedule.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Neate's right about Carleton's two games against Lakehead, both of which are included in this RPI. We also have McGill and Ottawa each playing both Laurier and Waterloo, as well as Western against Concordia. The Far West teams won five of those seven games, for what it's worth.

    @ Anonymous #1: The bug was this: for whatever team's RPI was being calculated, the software wasn't skipping over their results in their opponents' strength-of-schedule calculation. The Cheers RPI explains this issue pretty well with its Acadia example.

    ReplyDelete
  10. It's a valid point about the scheduling. I was simply clarifying that there's some non-conference games but didn't quite phrase it right, sorry.

    That is a good question about the U of A. It seems like everyone in the men's and women's game just wants to go along with the notion of getting by without a top player or 2 (or 7) and a coach right at a critical point in the season. You would never see that in the NCAA, but keep in mind the Universiade is much bigger in other parts of the world.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Fine, but a few non-conference games does not make a balanced schedule, and I stand by my point about the RPI weakness for Men's hockey ...

    Obviously one of the CIS media voters reads your blog, because Laurier got a first place vote this week.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Actually, I think that the OUA Far West and OUA Far East are now just as good as the AUS and Canada West; Laurier deserves where it it in both Top 10 and RPI because they play 16 of their games against OUA Far West opponents who are all tough, including Windsor who should be in the playoffs and not Guelph...

    ReplyDelete