Why South Carolina’s Mark Kingston isn’t a fan of key NCAA selection factor

It’s a metric that has often been debated in the world of college basketball, but it’s also a bedrock of the college baseball selection process.

And South Carolina’s Mark Kingston isn’t a big fan of RPI.

“I think it’s just too basic a metric these days to measure what teams are and who the best teams are,” Kingston said. “My personal opinion.”

The metric is one-fourth a team’s winning percentage, one-half opponent’s winning percentage and one-fourth’s the opponent’s opponents’ winning percentage, with some adjustment for home and road games. RPI is simple, without much nuance and can lead to some odd outcomes.

A good example is South Carolina this week. Had the Gamecocks played Tuesday’s game against USC Upstate (ranked 230), which was rained out, South Carolina would’ve almost assuredly slipped, regardless of how thoroughly they won. On the other side of the coin, their trip to No. 14 Texas A&M will likely raise USC up even if they take a sweep.

The Gamecocks were No. 38 as of Wednesday morning.

Kingston has long been an advocate of using advanced numbers and metrics. He uses them to help his own team, and he thinks they could be useful to build a better selection process.

“I think these days, there’s a lot more that could be put into it,” Kingston said. “I think scoring margins could be put into it. I think trends could be put into it. I think you could take out the bottom and the top games. I think there’s a lot more ways with as much technology is available to everybody these days, with as deep as statisticians can go into evaluating players and teams.”

This story was originally published May 16, 2018 at 3:59 PM with the headline "Why South Carolina’s Mark Kingston isn’t a fan of key NCAA selection factor."