Voted on yesterday and all playoff seedings will be by RPI! Winning your conference will not give you an automatic bid anymore!
RPI
- Thread starter buzzcoach
- Start date
I will probably get some pushback, but buzz you saying winning conference should not be rewarded by a playoff birth. Win and you are in , then let RPI put you where you should be.
Am I missing something here. Conference C-ship means nothing.
So if you are in a weak conference it will hurt you! Not sure why they don't do away with conferences!
Buzz is correct. It is all done via RPI with RPI now being 40-40-20 percentages. I haven't seen it on NCHSAA website yet, but the Citizen Times listed it with other changes in an article.
EDIT to add: Not sure if they will call it RPI as some articles call it "adjusted MaxPreps" rating. "playoff qualifiers will be determined by a modified MaxPreps rating. The new formula will be based on a 40-40-20 scale (winning percentage, opponents’ winning percentage and opponents’ opponents’ winning percentage)"
Its better than it was. Before that part counted 30 percent-the same as your own winning percentage.
With this set up you are correct @buzzcoach....Do away with conferences and allow teams to make the schedule in order to have good RPI. Some teams will be handcuffed by their conference teams. The other question is what happens when 4A team is having to play up a division or two but that team is .500 team in 5A/6A but it would be better that they played an 8-2 2A team that they problem win against.
Basically ur taking in consideration of ur opponents opponents records. Which I think gets complicated. Your trying to schedule a strong schedule but then u gotta worry about ur opponents schedule now. If a team u don't play has a bad year or gets the injury big it effects your RPI standings even though u have nothing to do with that team. Just because they played a team u played
I don't understand why the NCHSAA makes conferences. I think districts should decide on their own. Let them make their own choices on distance and schools they play or don't play.
I'm sure the multitude of split conferences brought about this decision. Probably should have gotten rid of conferences all together and followed the SC model.
I don't disagree that the conference model does seem broken, but do also consider that some schools have a hard time finding opponents to play them at different times. I've always appreciated when Franklin was in a bigger conference because there were years where we would apparently have to add single away games just to fill out the schedule.
They can do away with the 20%, that suks ! !
The RPI formula, which will be run through MaxPreps, will included a 40% weight on a team's winning percentage, a 40% weight on their opponents' winning percentage, and a 20% weight on the winning percentage of their opponents' opponents.
Me and @SWE'98 been discussing this some yesterday. This seems so stupid to not be rewarding a conf champion with higher seeding. Is this final or is there a slim chance common sense can prevail??
The issue is you have multiple split conferences some with only 1 or 2 teams in a classification. Take McDowell for example, they are the only 7a school in their conference. If you go 10-0 and win your conference you are going to be seeded high.
It was voted on by the board so it should be final. Here is an overview of changes expected this coming year.
https://www.nchsaa.org/2025-spring-board-of-directors-meeting/
Here would have been the difference in 1A west if we did not care about conferences. I can't do the different RPI ranking due to NCHSAA not posting the values only final RPI.
| School | RPI | 2025 Seed | Change |
| Mount Airy High School | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| Mountain Heritage High School | 2 | 2 | 0 |
| Murphy High School | 3 | 3 | 0 |
| Eastern Randolph High School | 4 | 4 | 0 |
| Starmount High School | 5 | 9 | 4 |
| Corvian Community School | 6 | 5 | -1 |
| East Wilkes High School | 7 | 10 | 3 |
| Robbinsville High School | 8 | 11 | 3 |
| Mitchell High School | 9 | 12 | 3 |
| Cherokee High School | 10 | 13 | 3 |
| Bessemer City High School | 11 | 6 | -5 |
| Alleghany High School | 12 | 14 | 2 |
| North Rowan High School | 13 | 7 | -6 |
| Union Academy | 14 | 15 | 1 |
| South Stanly High School | 15 | 8 | -7 |
| Mountain Island Charter School | 16 | 16 | 0 |
| Bishop McGuinness Catholic High School | 17 | 17 | 0 |
| Hayesville High School | 18 | 18 | 0 |
| Christ the King Catholic High School | 19 | 19 | 0 |
| Carver High School | 20 | 20 | 0 |
| Jimmy C. Draughn High School | 21 | 21 | 0 |
| Thomasville High School | 22 | 22 | 0 |
| Albemarle High School | 23 | 23 | 0 |
| Andrews High School | 24 | 24 | 0 |
| Avery County High School | 25 | 25 | 0 |
| Cherryville High School | 26 | 26 | 0 |
| South Stokes High School | 27 | 27 | 0 |
| Elkin High School | 28 | 28 | 0 |
| Swain County High School | 29 | 29 | 0 |
| Highland School of Technology | 30 | 30 | 0 |
| North Stokes High School | 31 | 31 | 0 |
| Thomas Jefferson Classical Academy | 32 | 32 | 0 |
| Winston-Salem Preparatory Academy | 33 | ||
| Polk County High School | 34 | ||
| South Davidson | 35 | ||
| Rosman High School | 36 |
That's really good information footballstar_17. So this change will probably be majorly against a few but not kick anybody out of the playoffs. Some conference winners will have to go on the road though.
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Will letting teams pick their games create exciting matchups or widen the gap between strong and weak programs?
If you don't have to schedule your conference members, then conferences truly are dead and everybody might as well be Notre Dame.
I don't have any reason to support this thought but I would imagine the state would count it as a forfeit to duck your conference members.
If there is no benefit to being a conference champion I would say it is dead. The NCHSAA is going to just use RPI but they just did a major conference change putting some teams in a very weak conference to be judged by RPI?? I wouldn’t be shocked if someone tried it.
Take away conferences and it makes it hard for Coach to schedule that many games. For this reason I like conferences. Being crowned conference Champ would still have meaning as taking pride in achieving that goal.
I see what everyone is saying about conferences being pointless (and essentially they are with the exception of making scheduling a little easier). I posted above how it would change the rankings in 1A west this year. The biggest changes are coming from teams like North Rowan and South Stanly that were 3rd in their conference and seeded too highly because of it. SS went 2-2 in conference beating Albemarle and Union Academy (both terrible teams) putting them #3, which gives them an auto-bid and seeding with conference champs. Is it fair to seed them higher than teams like Starmount who went 9-1 and only lost to MA (who was #1 in the west) during conference play?
I think this change will help getting better games in the later rounds.
I think this change will help getting better games in the later rounds.
I think a conference champion should get an autobid with no guarantee of seeding. The exception would be one-team conferences. I think you have to go RPI only there instead of giving them a playoff spot before the season starts. Somebody could make an argument about unfairness somewhere, but the amount of teams making the playoffs dulls the edge on the unfairness arguments. At this point an argument over who should be included and who should not are like who gets to play in the First Four games in March Madness.
I agree and disagree with several things posted here. Here is my biggest problem. The state formed conferences (which took 4 tries, taking what I assume is a lot of valuable time from a lot of people) to turn around and say that conference finish has nothing to do with making/seeding playoffs. So in theory, they could put you in a weak conference, which you have zero control over, then turn around and punish you for not having a strong RPI?! And my last plea will only speak to those of us with a little gray around the edges, but saying conference tournament champs don't get an auto invite means that something like 1983 NC State can never happen.
A lot of people in the media never wanted to admit how good State was. Yea they had to win the ACC tourney or lose in a really good close title game to get in the NCAA tourney. But that is because Wittenberg broke his foot in the 2nd conference game against Virginia. Still they won something like 10 out of 17 games without him in the regular season. Whit came back for the tourney and that helped but good coaching really is what won the tournament for State. No shot clock back then. Valvano was really good at coaching the team to foul to stop the clock. Something most teams would be hesitant to do afraid of the other team making shots. But State was good at fouling the weakest link. They beat some really good teams in the tournament. #2 Virginia they beat in the ACC tourney and again in the ncaa tourney. They also beat a 2 loss UNLV team. Beating Houston was another example of Valvano being good with fouling and Houston struggling at the line. That last prayer thrown up by Whitt was successful only because of coaching. Charles was in position at the rim and Houston had no clue where he was and did not defend the area around the rim. Certainly luck /fate played a roll but Valvano outcoached everyone they played most of the season.
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