2026 ARTICLE 15: ACTUAL CURRENT RANKINGS AND OTHER DATA AFTER WEEK 7

This Article 15 provides current NCAA RPI, KPI, Balanced RPI, and Massey rankings based on the actual results of games played through Week 7 (through September 27) of the season, for teams, conferences, and regions.

Here is a link to an Excel workbook that contains all the information:

2026 RPI Report Actual Results Only as of 9.27.2026

To download the workbook, use the following steps:

1.  Click on the workbook link.

2.  The link takes you to a Google spreadsheet, which you will not want to use.  On the Google spreadsheet, to the left, click on File, which will bring up a drop down menu.

3.  In the menu, click on Download, which will bring up another drop down menu.

4.  In the drop down menu, click on Microsoft Excel (.xlsx).  This will download the Excel workbook.

The first page of the workbook is for Teams, the second for Conferences, and the third for Regions.  The data so far are based mostly on non-conference games, as we're now early in the conference season.  I consider these data very preliminary and expect significant changes over the remainder of the season, particularly in reation to how conferences and regions compare to each other.

On the Teams page, on the left, are color coded columns.  These columns are based on past history.  They show which teams, based on their current ratings, are potential seeds (by seed level) and at large selections for the NCAA Tournament and which already appear assured of getting at least at large selections.  The seed and at large candidate groups still are large and show how unreliable the current rankings are, so far as how the NCAA Tournament bracket will end up is concerned.

As with Article 14 on the full season simulated rankings, starting this week, each week I'll highlight some data from the "actual games only" workbook that may be helpful to those interested in how the NCAA RPI works.  For this week, I'll cover some data related to regions.

As indicated in Article 13, I have organized the conferences into regions based on their historic non-conference scheduling patterns:

Autonomy (i.e., Power 4): ACC, Big Ten, Big Twelve, SEC

Middle: Horizon, MidAmerican, Missouri Valley, Ohio Valley, Summit

MidEast: Atlantic Ten, Big East, Colonial (now Coastal), Ivy

North: America East, Metro Atlantic, Northeast, Patriot

South: American, Southland, Southwestern, Sun Belt

Southeast: Atlantic Sun, Big South, Conference USA, Southern, United

West: Big Sky, Big West, Mountain West, Pac Twelve, West Coast

The following table is from the linked workbook's Regions page:

As you can see, to date teams from the Mideast region, in games against other teams from the region, have played a very high proportion of ties.  On the other hand, teams from the North have played a very low number.  In relation to the 2024 change in the NCAA RPI's Winning Percentage formula, going from treating a tie as half a win to a third of a win, this means the change has affected teams from the Mideast region the most negatively and teams from the North region the most positively.  If you compare this table to the similar table for the full season simulation in Article 14, you will see that the simulation projects that the spread in the above table will narrow.  That will be something to watch for to see if it does.