New Mexico either has the third best men's college-basketball team in the country, or the 36th best. Pitt either has the fifth best, or the 30th. Unfortunately for Pitt, the system that's kinder to New Mexico is the one the tournament selection committee usually consults.

New Mexico's Nick Banyard Associated Press

Despite losing at UNLV on Saturday, New Mexico remains a star in the Ratings Percentage Index, which takes into account a team's record, their opponents' records and their opponents' opponents' records. It doesn't account for victory margin. As a result, analysts have mostly abandoned it—except the selection committee, which considers RPI as one factor.

Ken Pomeroy's ratings, unlike RPI, take into account margin of victory and how recently the game was played. Pomeroy has Pitt well out in front of New Mexico. "I can't speak for the RPI since I don't pay attention to it, but my system factors in how a team played using margin of victory, the quality of the opponent, the site of the game, and how recently the game was played," said college-basketball analyst Ken Pomeroy, in an email. "Those are factors the RPI doesn't use, or uses in a different way than I do." Pomeroy's ratings show Pitt well out in front of New Mexico. RPI and Pomeroy also disagree sharply on a number of other teams ranked in the top 30 by one system or another, with a discrepancy of at least 20 spots between Pomeroy's rankings and the RPI as computed by ESPN. Pomeroy rates Wisconsin, Kentucky and St. Mary's (Calif.) far higher than RPI does. RPI prefers Colorado, Oklahoma, UConn and Butler.

"The RPI is one of many tools the committee uses when evaluating teams for selections," said NCAA spokesman Cameron Schuh, who added that the committee also uses computer models as "a resource throughout the season and during the selection process," but are "not used as a criteria for selection or seeding, however."

Last year, the Big Lead's Jason Lisk demonstrated that by choosing five teams that were highly rated by Pomeroy or Jeff Sagarin but not by RPI, and five vastly preferred by RPI. His RPI All-Stars went 0-5 in the tournament while his Pomeroy darlings went 5-5.

I built on the technique by identifying all teams that were, as of early February in each the last three seasons, rated 20+ spots higher or lower by Pomeroy than by RPI or Real Time RPI or both. Then I checked how many games they won in the NCAA tournament, compared to how many games teams of their seed usually win (not counting play-in games to get into the round of 64). The 10 teams preferred by RPI had an abysmal NCAA record, winning just three games, compared to an expected 9.04. (Including one win by New Mexico, as a five seed last year.) Two of those wins were by Northern Iowa, as a nine seed in 2010. The 16 teams Pomeroy preferred didn't do all that well—winning 12 games compared to an expected 13.65, with two wins coming from 11 seed Marquette in 2011—but that blew away the RPI All-Stars' performance.

This all suggests that if Pitt and New Mexico both get into the tournament, Pitt will be a better bet to go far—but perhaps not as good as teams that the RPI and Pomeroy agree on. As of the latest ratings, Florida and Michigan are two such teams: They're the only programs ranked in the top five by both RPI and Pomeroy.

—Carl Bialik