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Andy Wittry | krikya18.com | February 9, 2022

What is KPI in college basketball?

KPI creator examines 3 key questions in the race for NCAA tournament bids

When a school is evaluated for potential NCAA tournament selection and seeding, its resume to date is presented on a team sheet, which in the words of NCAA Director of Media Coordination and Statistics David Worlock, is a "visual snapshot" of a team's resume. A team sheet includes both results-based metrics, which are based on a school's performance thus far, and predictive metrics, which are forward-looking.

One of the metrics included in the former group is KPI, which ranks teams' resumes on a game-by-game basis and which was developed by Kevin Pauga, an associate AD for Michigan State who also created the FAKTOR scheduling platform.

KPI ranks every team’s wins and losses on a positive-to-negative scale, where the worst-possible loss receives a value of roughly around -1.0 and the best-possible win receives a value of roughly 1.0. KPI then averages these scores across a season to give a score to a team’s winning percentage. The formula uses opponent’s winning percentage, opponent’s strength of schedule, scoring margin, pace of game, location, and opponent’s KPI ranking.

Through Feb. 8, 2022, Kansas in men's basketball KPI with a value of 0.427, just ahead of Auburn.

The highest-value win this season, according to KPI, was Kentucky's win at Kansas, which had a value of 1.09. Michigan State's road win at Wisconsin is the second-highest at 1.02.

The lowest-value loss in DI men's basketball was UC Davis' home loss to DII Academy of Art, which received a value of -1.07.

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