2025 ARTICLE 18: RPI REPORTS AFTER WEEK 5 GAMES

Now that we have completed the fifth weekend of the season, each week I will publish two sets of reports:

1.  "Predicted" End-of-Season Ranks.  These are RPI reports based on the actual results of games already played plus predicted results of games not yet played, which are the kinds of reports I have published so far after each week of the season.  The purpose of these reports is to give an idea of where teams might end up at the end of the regular season. The reports show both NCAA RPI and Balanced RPI ranks.

New this week, however, the result predictions for future games use teams' actual current NCAA RPI ratings as the basis for predicting future results, rather than the assigned pre-season ratings used in my previous reports.  So these reports show where teams will end up if they all perform exactly in accord with their current NCAA RPI ratings. 

As an interesting note, the actual results of games played so far are slightly more consistent with the assigned pre-season ratings than with the actual current NCAA RPI ratings.

2.  Actual Current Ranks.  These are RPI reports based only on games already played.  Teams' actual ranks in these reports (and the ratings on which the ranks are based) exactly match those published by the NCAA at the NCAA's RPI Archive and also those published at Chris Henderson's 2025 Division I College Women's Soccer Schedule website.  These reports also include teams' current KPI, Massey, and Balanced RPI ranks so you can see how the different rating systems compare.

"PREDICTED" END-OF-SEASON RANKS

Here are the predicted end-of-season NCAA RPI  and Balanced RPI ranks for teams.  For an Excel workbook containing these data, use the following link: 2025 RPI Report After Week 5.

The color coded columns on the left show, based on past history, the teams that would be candidates for NCAA Tournament seed pods and at large positions if these were the final NCAA RPI ranks.

Of particular importance are the differences between teams' NCAA RPI ranks and their ranks, within the NCAA RPI formula, as strength of schedule contributors to their opponents' ratings.  While the NCAA itself publishes various sets of RPI-related data, it does not publish teams' ranks as strength of schedule contributors.  It seems likely they don't publish these ranks because they would expose a serious flaw within the RPI formula.

Here are the predicted end-of-season ranks for conferences:

And here are the predicted end-of-season ranks for the four geographic regions.  Note that at the right end of the table, the table shows the proportions of games for each region's teams that are in-region and out-of-region and the percentages of each region's in-region games that are ties (as an indicator of the level of in-region parity).

ACTUAL CURRENT RANKS

Here are the actual current NCAA RPI and Balanced RPI ranks for teams.  For an Excel workbook containing these data, use the following link: 2025 RPI Report Actual Results Only After Week 5.

As with the end-of-season reports, note the differences between teams' NCAA RPI ranks and their ranks, within the NCAA RPI formula, as strength of schedule contributors to their opponents' ratings.

Also, for each of teams, conferences, and regions, these reports show current KPI and Massey ranks so you can compare them to the NCAA RPI and Balanced RPI ranks.

Here are the actual current ranks for conferences:

And here are the current actual ranks for the regions.  Again, on the far right, you can see each region's distribution of games between in-region and out-of-region games as well as the percentage of each region's in-region games that have been ties.