NCAA champs Loyola ranked No. 1 in season’s final RPI

There is no controversy at the top of the season’s final RPI rankings.

Loyola finished at No. 1 in the final RPI rankings released earlier this week after it beat Lewis in a fifth-game overtime on Saturday to win its second consecutive NCAA championship.

The Flyers with their NCAA Tournament finals loss dropped to No. 2 in the final poll. In addition, UC Irvine, Hawai’i and Ohio State rounded-out the top five.

The RPI is determined by a mathematical formula that uses a team’s winning record, its opponents’ winning record and its opponents’ strength of schedule. This also was the first year that the RPI will be part of the criteria used to select the NCAA Tournament field.

RPI rankings (2015 final)
1. Loyola
2. Lewis
3. UC Irvine
4. Hawai’i
5. Ohio State
6. Penn State
7. Pepperdine
8. Pfeiffer
9. USC
10. BYU
11. Erskine
12. IPFW
13. UC Santa Barbara
14. Lindenwood
15. Quincy
16. Long Beach State
17. Ball State
18. UCLA
19. George Mason
20. Grand Canyon
21. Stanford
22. Harvard
23. CSUN
24. Mount Olive
25. Limestone
26. McKendree
27. Princeton
28. King
29. Barton
30. Sacred Heart
31. St. Francis
32. Belmont Abbey
33. Cal Baptist
34. NJIT
35. UC San Diego
36. North Greenville
37. Lees-McRae
38. Coker
39. Charleston