Men’s Soccer Travels to Penn for 1st Round NCAA Tournament Matchup

Update: Game time is set for this Thursday at Penn University at 7 p.m. and will be streamed on ESPN+.

The Rutgers Men’s Soccer Team (10-4-6) will play in their 18th overall NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2015. Knights joins fellow Big Ten members Indiana (the 13th seed) and unseeded Maryland and Ohio. Rutgers travels down Interstate 95 to Philadelphia, where he will stream his first-round matchup against the Penquakers (12-2-2) this Friday night at 7 p.m. on ESPN+.

RPI

Penn earned an automatic bid to the Ivy League field after going 6-1-0 in Ivy play this season. They are currently 13th in the RPI ranking. Rutgers looks “screwed” with the seed, but it’s good to see how the RPI (Rating Power Index) is currently calculated. This explains Penn’s higher ranking and Rutgers’ lower ranking. Is it necessarily fair? Absolutely not. That’s why the Hoopheads rely on more important rankings like KenPom to better evaluate the best teams. The problem I’ve always had with his RPI is that his opponent’s opponent’s win percentage is incredibly uneven in how they measure how good a team is over the course of a season. Alas, here we are. Definition of RPI:

The RPI is best known for its use in collegiate athletics, including NCAA men’s and women’s soccer. The exact calculation of RPI varies slightly from sport to sport, but the general structure of RPI is largely the same.

In the current formulation, the index consists of a team’s win rate (25%), their opponent’s win rate (50%), and their opponent’s opponent’s win rate (25%). Both the opponent’s win percentage and that opponent’s win percentage constitute the strength of the schedule (SOS). So SOS accounts for 75% of his RPI calculation, 2/3 of his opponent’s win rate and 1/3 of his opponent’s win rate. (Courtesy of SoccerWire).

Penn has a clear winning percentage with just 2 losses and 2 ties this season, but RU’s 4 losses and 6 ties puts a lot of pressure on their winning percentage. Mathematics favors the pen. However, I’m a big proponent of seeing how each team fares against common opponents, so I’ve put together the table below.

The obvious game that stands out is Albany. While the Quakers struggled, RPI’s highly respected No. 69 and Team RU beat them with relative ease.

Let’s take a look at the top 50 wins by RPI here. My logic is that this is a field of 48 teams, which is a good indicator of tournament-level teams.

Best win:

pen: No. 10 Cornell, No. 45 Yale, No. 50 Fairleigh Dickinson

Rutgers: No. 20 Indiana, No. 39 Ohio,

Worst loss:

pen: No. 69 Albany

Rutgers: No. 72 Michigan

Penn had the most impressive wins, but the Rutgers had two wins in a very solid conference. Neither team suffered a “bad RPI” loss during the season.You can find Penn’s team stats here and Rutgers herePenn has scored 2.5 goals per game and is giving up 0.75, while Rutgers is averaging just over two goals per game and giving up 1.6. The Penn keeper only needed him to make 37 saves throughout the season, while Rutgers was busier, making 62 saves.

What this tells me is that Rutgers have limited opportunities at the net on Fridays and need to make the most of them.

It should be a fun match and it’s a game Rutgers can win and the winner will face No. 3 Syracuse who have a first round bye. You can come to Philadelphia and help support the Knights.