For every “good win,” a team will receive an RPI bonus. If the win is on the road, the bonus will be higher. Although the criteria remains objective, the NCAA has added a bit of mystery to the final selection by refusing to release the exact bonus formula.
How Does PWR Work?
The PWR ranks all Division I programs with a RPI of .500 or above. These are called teams under consideration (TUC).
Each team under consideration is then compared to every other TUC based on a number of criteria. If a team wins the comparison, it gains one point in the pairwise rankings. The number of points are then totalled and each team is ranked.
There are currently 30 teams with RPIs of .500 or better.
There are four comparison criteria: RPI, record against TUC teams, record against common opponenets (COP) and head-to-head. For each head-to-head win a team earns one point and ties are broken by the team with the higher RPI.
—Staff Writer Timothy Jackson can be reached at jackson2@fas.harvard.edu.