Editor's note: This story originally published on Jan. 31, 2025. Though the formula and process for NEPSAC girls basketball playoff seeding has remained the same, we've updated this story to reflect the changes in class structure.
This week, the NEPSAC Girls Basketball Coaches Association (NEPSGBCA) released its first update on the class-by-class standings.
It's the first time this winter we can take a closer look at the potential March playoff picture. But the standings snapshot just lists the teams with no sort of record – because postseason seeds aren't determined simply by overall, class or head-to-head records. So... how does making the NEPSAC playoffs actually work?
The process is layered and the seeding formula is complex, a result of years of discussion and testing. Ayo Hart, NEPSGBCA president and Sacred Heart head coach, explained the seeding formula in detail in the latest NEPSAC Insider newsletter she self-publishes. You can read that 2025 story here.
As an admittedly confused viewer myself, I wanted to understand more. Hart took time to answer all of my questions about everything NEPSAC girls postseason: how the seeding formula came to be, how it currently works, how teams are eligible to qualify and more. Here's what you need to know.
How does the formula work?
If you thought the MIAA power rankings were complicated, buckle up. The NEPSGBCA seeding system has several components that we'll break down, step-by-step, here. Put on your math caps.
Ratings Percentage Index (RPI):Â This is a fairly common formula that provides a weighted base number for a team's win percentage relative to their opponents' strength. College basketball used RPI for decades as a component of its decision-making for the NCAA Tournament. Prep hockey also uses this formula.
Let's call our mock team Team X. The formula for RPI: 0.25 (Team X win percentage) x 0.21 (Team X's opponents' win percentage) x 0.54 (Team X's opponents-opponents' win percentage). Those locked weighted variables are used by prep hockey (girls basketball may be different); they can be changed depending on how you'd like to weigh certain parts of the equation.
Head-to-head wins: This part is a simpler calculation: the total number of wins a team has against in-class teams in contention, multiplied by 0.08. The "in contention" part means only wins against in-class teams that are also over .500, either overall or in-class, count. For example, if Team X beats a bad in-class rival with, say, a 4-8 overall record and a 2-5 in-class record, that win does not count towards the head-to-head win total.
Quad value: This component is new this season. The entirety of the NEPSAC girls basketball landscape is divided into quadrants based on teams' current RPI. Each quad gets assigned quad values based on playing a game and earning a win. I won't list them all here, but you can read them in Hart's newsletter explainer. Once the game quad values are totaled, they're divided by a team's games played to get an average. This is a key strength of schedule indicator.
Final rating:Â Each component gets weighted and summed. RPI counts for 50 percent of a team's overall rating, head-to-head counts for 30 percent and quad value counts for 20 percent.
Above is a look at a sample team's record and data that goes into its final rating calculation. This comes from Hart's newsletter, which, again, I recommend looking at if you want more explanation on the numbers.
There are two important nitty-gritty notes to remember.
Games against non-NEPSAC opponents do not factor into any part of the formula.
And, if a team has the same result against an opponent three times in a season (either three wins or three losses), only two count towards the final rating. This is to limit inflation from a team beating up on the same opponent.
How did we get here?
NEPSAC girls basketball is in its fourth year of using a pure formula to determine standings. Before that, seeding was determined by an actual committee. Hart is in her fourth year as NEPSGBCA president, but she wasn't always part of the tournament committee. Before that, she heard about how seeding committee members like John Monagan (Ethel Walker coach) and former president Matt Ward would spend hours pouring over the NEPSAC landscape and making decisions.
"They literally would sit around the table and have this huge, architect-type paper with everything for every class drawn up," Hart said. "They looked at pretty much everything. They looked at head-to-head in class, they looked at strength of schedule, but that was just a little bit more subjective."
Eventually, NEPSGBCA decided they wanted a concrete, objective way to rationalize seeding. A group led by Monagan and Kristen Campopiano (Dexter Southfield coach) looked at NEPSAC hockey's RPI and started with that formula as a framework to be tweaked for basketball. The current, complete formula has been modified with input from other coaches, including John Smith (Berwick) and Adrian Stewart (Loomis Chaffee).
Behind the scenes, NEPSGCA considered all sorts of additional components to its final formula. They even discussed a margin-of-victory element; this is the defining characteristic of the MIAA's power rankings. Margin of victory, as Hart described, brought a "very animated and short conversation," and the idea was quickly dispelled because of the effects it would have on in-game coaching.
In previous years, the composite score was a bit different. It included the Saylors Ranking System (I won't unpack that whole formula) which specifically weighed the class of a NEPSAC team. But because of NEPSAC's new scheduling guidelines — teams must play at least six in-class games and no more than six above-class games out of league — teams in leagues with several above-class opponents would be favored heavily. So that component got axed. The Quad Value is also the next evolution after 'Top 40" opponents previously held higher weight in strength of schedule.
Hart remembers that in the first year, there was a bit of "culture shock" and growing pains that came with choosing seeds by the numbers. But they had previously tested it on old years of NEPSAC competition and the picture the formula painted came very close to the eye test of schools. Literal head-to-head results sometimes cause gripes; Hart recalls the 2023-24 season when her own team was seeded above Kent in Class A despite Kent beating Sacred Heart. But over the course of a season, there are so many conflicting and overlapping results that seeding by literal head-to-head outcomes is unrealistic.
"It can't just come down to one game," Hart said. "Because you don't know. Maybe you were home, maybe you were away, maybe they were missing their star player, right? There's so many variables that go into one game; it shouldn't weigh that much."
Now, there's a general understanding that the seeding formula gets the playoff picture close to accurate in an objective manner. Hart even hired someone to create a computerized sheet, so that school results could be plugged in with less work by hand. And if there's an outlier, obvious problem, the tournament committee still exists to make corrections as a backup.
Who's eligible for the playoffs?
In Class AA-C, the top eight teams in the final standings make the postseason — if eligible.
Last year, only six Class AA schools made the playoffs, as well as in Class D (which no longer exists). This means they either did not finish over .500 (neither overall nor in class), did not pay dues or complete other administrative requirements, or did not report scores.
Seeding can change among the playoff teams, even after team ratings and standings are finalized. Travel could be a reason. NEPSAC wants to limit travel to under 2.75 hours for a first-round playoff game. If this would occur, the tournament committee has the discretion to move a team up or down a seed to make matchups fit in the travel guidelines. They look at travel, student class time, and playoff implications before making a potential change.
What happens in the new Class AAA?
Everything you've read to this point? Throw it out the window for Class AAA.
With only eight schools, every Class AAA team makes the playoffs automatically (pending eligibility), with the top seed earning a first-round bye. Every AAA school must play each other twice (one home and away game). This means AAA has a more insulated set of class matchups to judge from, and as a result, the playoff teams will be seeded by committee. The formula is just a data point.
