Before the rant, let’s get this out of the way:
-I hate baseball. I’m already sick of the A-Rod story.
-The timekeeper in the Duke game was one of the worst of all time. How many times did the officials correct him at the end of the game?
-Jay Bilas is right when he says we should eliminate the situation where officials check if the shot is a 2 or a 3. This has just gotten excessive. We don’t review if a player is out-of-bounds. Just make the call and live with the occasional human error.
-Bob Knight, “shot fakes”, got it. OK, I’m ready for you to go back to coaching now.
-Don’t look now, but the Big 12 North isn’t terrible. Nebraska, Missouri, and Kansas St. are all decent teams. Not that any of them are ever going to beat Kansas, but at least the race for Big 12 NCAA slots should be fun.
The Rant
As readers of this blog know, I cheer for three teams: Georgetown, Minnesota, and Illinois. Since Jan 15th, these three teams have combined to go 5-12 in games against outside opponents. This is absolutely crushing my enthusiasm for the college basketball season. Normally by this point, I have a rooting interest in just about every game in the nation. For example, I would have been cheering for UConn, Syracuse, and Memphis today, because those are Georgetown’s 3 signature wins. But at 4-7 in the conference, after watching the Hoyas blow a 12 point lead late in the game at home, any such cheering is purely a joke.
Georgetown is just not an NCAA quality team. At one point you could point to the losses and say there were specific correctable problems. I.e. defensive rebounding, perimeter defense, turnovers. But by the time a team loses 5 of 6 games, they invent new ways to lose.
Sunday this included the Georgetown starters sleepwalking to such an extent against Cincinnati that JT3 pulled the old, “sub in 5 bench players” trick. One catch, Georgetown only has 5 bench players. And as Cincinnati noticed, with 5 underclassman and only one good ball-handler, this was the perfect time to employ full court pressure. Georgetown spent the next 4 minutes struggling to even get off a shot. [Head buried in hands.]
Still, this motivational ploy appeared to work as Georgetown built a 12 point second half lead with the starters back in the lineup. But wait, Georgetown had more disappointment in them. A stretch of absolutely horrid defense allowed Cincinnati to tie the game and send it into OT. And in OT where Georgetown’s defense finally stepped up, craziness ensued. Neither team made a FG in overtime. Allow me to repeat that. Neither team made a FG in overtime. How often does that happen?
And while Greg Monroe was missing FTs, Cincinnati made enough FTs to win the game. Losing a game where the opponent doesn’t even make a basket in OT, now that’s inventing a new way to lose.
What was at one time simply a lack of energy, now seems to have become a lack of ability. Cincinnati was better than Georgetown on Sunday and we can fully expect to hear how the Bearcats swept the Hoyas 200 times during the Big East tournament in March.
The worst part is, I can’t even look forward to next year. Yes Georgetown only has one senior, Jesse Sapp. And yes, Sapp has completely wasted his senior season. His reaction to the 5 player sub was to sit on the bench and pout while playing with his towel like a little kid. JT3 was so shocked with his behavior, that I didn’t even see Sapp in the game in the second half. So certainly on paper, you drop Sapp and pencil in incoming freshman wing Hollis Thompson into the lineup, and next year’s team looks fantastic.
But I can’t shake the belief that Greg Monroe is going to leave early. Yes, his numbers have been average, but anyone who watches the team play knows he is clearly the best player on the court, and he is clearly the most consistent player on the Hoyas. His raw talent would make any NBA GM drool and he’s only coming back next year if he wants to come back.
All I can say is, I hope some people are getting some serious “Schadenfreude” out of this. I hope after back-to-back outright Big East titles, there are a lot of people out there that smile when they look at the standing and see Georgetown will be playing in the Big East tournament’s new Tuesday edition.
Oh, and as for Hollis Thompson coming in next year and playing well, I’ll also believe it when I see it. Case in point: Alex Legion of Illinois. Has there ever been a player with more hype relative to actual ability? (OK, Demar Derozan.) Still, after Illinois spent last season imploding like Shaun Pruitt at the free throw line, all Illinois fans read about was how Jamar Smith and Alex Legion were filling up the basket in practice and how both would lead the offensive resurgence this year. Guess what? Smith got kicked of the team this summer. And Alex Legion doesn’t know the meaning of the word “Quality Shot”. How’s 24 of 81 or 29.6% on FGs for you? If last year’s free throw shooting didn’t cost Bruce Webber his job, trying to mix Alex Legion into the lineup just might do the trick.
On the plus side, I actually think Illinois is the mostly likely of my three teams to pull another huge upset. Any time you play lock-down defense, you’ll always have a chance to win. But Illinois is purely a jump shooting team, and no team can advance deep in tournament play with that type of offense.
Finally we come to the Gophers. My heart reaches out most to this team because the team’s success is predicated on hustle. The Gophers lead the nation in blocked shots, and are 9th nationally in steals. They clearly give 100% every time on the court, and if they don’t, Tubby will trot in someone else from his 11-man rotation. But at the end of the day, the Gophers are simply not an efficient team offensively or defensively. At the end of the day, if a good team is playing well, they will always be able to out-execute the Gophers.
What a colossal nightmare. At the end of January, all 3 of my teams were ranked in the Top 25, and Georgetown had been up in the Top 10. Yes, the polls are overrated, but they express sentiment, and my hopes had been raised. Today the conference season has exposed all 3 as flawed teams. None are bad enough that I can simply avoid watching the games. (Dan Monson did give me about 4 hours more free time per week.) But after a 5-12 stretch, I’m pretty much running on empty.
I’m also a big believer in enjoying the season for what it is. So if nothing else good happens, I’ll always have these 3 games.
Minnesota defeats Wisconsin
Illinois defeats Purdue
Georgetown defeats Connecticut
But I also can’t take much more of this.
Friday, February 6, 2009
Final Word on Experience
Today’s post concludes my discussion on experience. I’ve previously argued that the most experienced teams are often not significantly more efficient than the year before.
I’ve also pointed out that year–to–year improvements in efficiency are usually because of new players or coaches, not because of the current players getting significantly better. That’s not to say that players don’t improve, but these improvements are a lot less predictable than we might think.
The problem of course is that we don’t know which new coaches or new players will be able to make a difference ahead of time. Certainly McDonald’s All–Americans are good bets to have an impact. But MAA’s don’t have an impact every year. And it is often hard to tell whether a veteran coach or an up–and–coming coach will make a difference.
Given a choice between a number of high variance teams with new parts and a few low variance experienced teams, most preseason publications will pick the low variance experienced teams, even though we know every year that someone will surprise us.
If experience is over-rated, what about youth?
Today I wanted to look at whether the biggest impact from experience might come from freshman teams becoming sophomore teams, not from junior teams becoming senior teams.
According to Kenpom.com, the 15 least experienced BCS teams in 2007–08 were Texas, Kansas St., USC, Florida, Syracuse, Purdue, Virginia Tech, St. John's, Oregon St., Wake Forest, Northwestern, Arizona St., Michigan, Villanova, and Boston College.
We probably need to throw out several of these teams because they all lost a significant player to the NBA. See Texas (DJ Augustin), Kansas St. (Michael Beasley), USC (OJ Mayo), Florida (Marreese Speights), and Syracuse (Donte Greene).
I believe I'm stealing this line from Rush The Court, but can we all admit we are surprised to see Speights on this list? Look at his NBA numbers.
And indeed the five teams that lost key players to the NBA have all performed worse offensively than last year.
OEff – Deff – Team Year
107.3 – 87.5 – Texas 2009
123.8 – 91.8 – Texas 2008
109.4 – 90.9 – Kansas St. 2009
117.1 – 90.2 – Kansas St. 2008
106.2 – 87.7 – USC 2009
111.9 – 88.7 – USC 2008
115.1 – 95.8 – Florida 2009
117.7 – 96.0 – Florida 2008
113.6 – 93.4 – Syracuse 2009
114.3 – 94.3 – Syracuse 2008
Another interesting case is Purdue whose defense has improved while the offense has dropped off. I’m not ready to assign this to the loss of Scott Martin, but I think the injuries to Robbie Hummel are taking a toll. Hummel is still an incredibly efficient scorer, but his offensive rebounding and his free throw rate have fallen dramatically which may be due to his more limited mobility. Also, while E’Twaun Moore has taken on a larger percentage of the Purdue shots, his 3 point percentage has fallen from 43% to 35%. The net result is a team that is slightly worse offensively and missing an expected second year bump in production.
108.4 – 84.5 – Purdue 2009
112.2 – 88.5 – Purdue 2008
St. John’s and Virginia Tech are also surprisingly disappointing. While both have improved offensively as their very young players have matured, both teams have also suffered rather important drops in defense. It is very hard to get a read on St. John’s which also lost Anthony Mason Jr. to injury early this year, but Virginia Tech hasn’t quite found the dominant defense in ACC play it had at the end of 2008. Prior to the season ending loss to Ole Miss, Virginia Tech held its final 7 opponents under 100 in efficiency last year, and that included UNC.
110.4 – 96.2 – Virginia Tech 2009
107.9 – 86.7 – Virginia Tech 2008
101.5 – 96.4 – St. John's 2009
98.0 – 93.2 – St. John's 2008
The rest of the teams show clearer gains:
108.6 – 85.5 – Wake Forest 2009
108.6 – 94.1 – Wake Forest 2008
108.9 – 95.1 – Northwestern 2009
104.7 – 104.5 – Northwestern 2008
117.1 – 91.7 – Arizona St. 2009
111.5 – 93.5 – Arizona St. 2008
111.7 – 87.7 – Villanova 2009
110.2 – 91.7 – Villanova 2008
112.0 – 98.0 – Boston College 2009
109.3 – 98.3 – Boston College 2008
109.3 – 96.8 – Michigan 2009
103.3 – 96.3 – Michigan 2008
It should be noted that Wake Forest and Northwestern both added size this year in the freshman class which might explain some of the defensive improvement, but for the most part, the above teams have gotten better by utilizing their existing players more effectively.
In terms of the overall Pomeroy rank, Michigan has raised from 112 to 73, Boston College from 89 to 63, Nova from 43 to 17, Arizona St. from 48 to 14, Northwestern from 158 to 62, Wake Forest from 68 to 18, St. John’s from 123 to 111, and Purdue from 23 to 13. Of the teams without an NBA player defection, only Virginia Tech fell from 31 to 60.
Thus in my view, the younger teams gained more consistently from experience than the older teams. That’s good news for Ole Miss, Indiana, Arkansas, Vanderbilt, St. John’s, Kansas, Colorado, Cincinnati, Ohio St., Iowa, Oregon, Mississippi St., Florida, Virginia, and Georgetown.
Unless these teams lose a player to early entry (See Greg Monroe, Sylven Landesberg, Cole Aldrich, Deonta Vaughn, Nick Calathes) or suffer significant injuries, they should all expect some improvement in efficiency next season.
The Curse of Identification
I can’t end this discussion without a look at Oregon St.
103.4 – 101.8 – Oregon St. 2009
94.4 – 100.8 – Oregon St. 2008
There’s no question Craig Robinson has Oregon St. playing better than they were last season, but how much of that is better coaching, and how much of that was to be expected as players learned from last year?
Realistically, we can’t separately identify the two effects, but I’m still going to give a lot of credit to the coach. This clearly wasn’t a naturally better team when they stepped on the court in November. In fact, the first four games were the worst of the season for Oregon St. The in-season improvement suggests that Craig Robinson is having an impact in my humble opinion.
The Curse of Sample Size
Finally, I want to emphasize that I’m using a very small sample in all these arguments. In fact, because of the wackiness of finding the oldest and youngest teams, Villanova and Texas showed up in both arguments. They were among the youngest last year and the oldest BCS teams this year.
In fact, all I’ve really shown you is that Baylor, Notre Dame, and North Carolina are a bit disappointing this year. But based on my observations over time, there are always a few disappointing older teams each year.
If anyone wants to do a comprehensive study or look at returning minutes instead of the class of the returning players, I could certainly change my opinion. But until then, I stick to the following:
-Youth makes mistakes
-Talent and coaching wins games
-And only some players get better over time
Monday, February 2, 2009
Cheap, Easy, and Obsolete
Ken Pomeroy’s removal of the RPI has actually done wonders for my health. I no longer feel the need to track my teams’ RPI on a daily basis and that’s a good thing. In fact, it wasn’t until mid-January that I even looked at the full RPI for the full time.
But as much as I enjoy predictive ratings (Pomeroy, Sagarin), at a certain point, I need to see the committee’s measure of accomplishment. I need to see the record vs the RPI Top 50 and vs the RPI Top 100.
Case in point, South Carolina upset Kentucky over the weekend. I found myself ready to write a post about South Carolina, and yet I had no idea what to make of that game. Was South Carolina in the discussion for an NCAA berth? Were they already in? Were they out due to the SEC’s futility this year?
Finding that no one had a free “vs RPI top 50” that was easy to access, I decided to download the full schedule and merging this with the NCAA’s weekly report on the RPI, I wrote a program to calculate each team’s accomplishments. I basically did this for myself, but figuring there are other people who like free stuff, I’ll try to share this on a semi-regular basis on Monday nights through the rest of the season.
Of course, by the time you read this, you’ll see UConn is leading Louisville meaning these numbers are about to become obsolete. Look, if you want up-to-date stuff, go to ESPN and sign up for insider. Or go to statsheet.com and look up your own team. But if you want a free comparative conference-by-conference look, you came to the right place.
Three Reasons the Nitty Gritty is better than a Bracket Projection
1) Do you really want to depend on someone else to tell you where your team ranks? Look at the numbers and decide for yourself how many teams have a better profile.
2) Most people who project brackets count the last 12 as if the season ended today. Guess what? Games in the first week of January are never part of the last 12. Assuming most teams play at least one game in the conference tournament, I start counting with the 11th to final regular season game. Most major conference teams have only played 1-3 games in the Last 12.
3) It really sucks to look at seed projections because 9 out of 10 times you are going to feel like your team got robbed on Selection Sunday. That’s just the way it is. Just look at these numbers and don’t get your hopes up too much.
CR is conference Record.
T50 is record vs the RPI Top 50.
N50 is record vs the RPI 51-100.
BL is bad losses.
RPI is the NCAA’s official figures post on web1.ncaa.org.
L11+ is the teams record starting with the 11th to last regular season game.
Games through Sunday, February 1st
I’m only listing teams that are currently in the RPI top 100.
CR Big 12 T50 N50 BL L11+ RN RPI
8-0 Marquette 4-2 4-0 0 W 5-2 13
8-0 Louisville 5-2 3-1 0 W 5-2 10
9-1 Connecticut 5-1 5-0 0 WW 10-0 6
7-2 Pittsburgh 5-2 3-0 0 W 6-2 2
6-3 Providence 1-5 3-2 0 WL 3-5 63
5-3 Villanova 2-4 4-0 0 W 6-3 12
5-4 Syracuse 3-3 3-2 0 LL 5-3 24
4-4 West Virginia 2-5 4-1 0 L 8-4 16
4-5 Cincinnati 3-6 0-2 0 WL 4-5 58
3-6 Georgetown 3-5 4-2 1 LL 3-6 18
3-6 Notre Dame 2-7 0-0 1 L 4-6 76
I’ve seen some smart people say that Providence only needs 3 more Big East wins to make the tournament, but that seems overly optimistic to me. If the Friars only beat Rutgers twice and South Florida from here on out, they would have a horrible record against the RPI top 100. The Friars deserve respect for how they’ve started, but they still have work to do.
CR ACC T50 N50 BL L11+ RN RPI
6-1 Duke 6-1 4-1 0 W 6-2 1
5-2 North Carolina 4-1 5-1 0 WW 9-1 4
4-2 Wake Forest 5-1 2-0 1 L 8-1 14
4-2 Clemson 5-2 1-0 0 W 8-1 8
5-3 Boston College 3-4 3-0 2 WWW 5-3 51
4-3 Virginia Tech 2-4 3-1 2 LL 7-5 38
3-3 Florida St. 2-4 4-1 0 L 8-2 27
3-4 Maryland 2-5 3-1 1 LW 2-5 80
3-5 Miami (Fla.) 1-5 4-1 1 LLL 5-4 49
1-5 Virginia 0-7 0-1 2 L 1-5 97
7 wins against the RPI top 100 is not quite the resume of a 1 seed, but wins against UNC and Duke may be all Wake needs.
CR Big 12 T50 N50 BL L11+ RN RPI
7-0 Oklahoma 9-0 5-1 0 WW 9-1 3
6-0 Kansas 5-2 2-1 1 W 4-3 23
5-2 Missouri 4-2 1-2 0 LW 4-4 28
4-2 Texas 5-2 1-3 0 L 6-4 29
3-4 Texas A&M 2-4 3-1 0 WW 4-4 36
3-4 Baylor 2-6 3-0 0 LL 4-4 43
3-4 Kansas St. 2-3 2-3 1 W 3-5 78
3-4 Nebraska 1-4 2-0 3 LW 2-4 81
2-4 Oklahoma St. 2-7 3-0 0 L 4-5 26
If you are in the camp that says the ACC and Big East deserve all the 1 seeds, take a long look at Oklahoma’s numbers. No one has more quality wins than the Sooners and they are certainly on pace to take one of the number 1 seeds.
CR Big 10 T50 N50 BL L11+ RN RPI
7-2 Michigan St. 7-1 4-3 0 WL 10-2 5
6-2 Purdue 4-3 4-1 0 W 6-2 25
6-3 Minnesota 4-2 5-1 0 WW 5-1 22
6-3 Illinois 4-3 3-1 0 LW 6-3 17
6-3 Penn St. 2-4 3-1 0 WW 5-3 66
5-4 Ohio St. 2-5 4-0 0 WW 4-3 33
4-5 Northwestern 4-4 0-3 0 W 2-5 56
4-6 Michigan 3-6 3-2 0 LL 3-6 54
3-6 Wisconsin 1-7 4-2 0 LL 4-6 37
2-7 Iowa 1-6 2-3 1 LL 2-8 89
I really have no basis for this, but remembering past seasons when Michigan St. would shock everyone with a 1 seed with 7 losses, I can definitely still see a scenario where the Spartans earn a top overall seed. If the Spartans can win the Big Ten regular season and conference title they will have a boatload of quality wins. Of course Purdue will have something to say about that before all is said and done.
CR Pac 10 T50 N50 BL L11+ RN RPI
7-2 Washington 4-3 3-1 1 W 4-4 21
7-2 UCLA 2-3 5-1 0 W 6-3 31
6-3 USC 2-4 4-0 2 WW 3-5 42
5-4 California 4-4 3-1 1 LL 4-5 41
5-4 Arizona St. 2-4 5-1 0 LL 7-3 45
4-5 Arizona 3-7 2-1 0 WW 3-6 62
4-5 Washington St. 1-7 1-2 0 WL 5-3 94
3-6 Stanford 1-4 2-1 1 L 3-4 69
Despite a hot start, Arizona St. probably has the 5th best profile in the Pac 10 right now. Despite a cold start, Arizona is still in good shape to be in the discussion. Now all Arizona needs is a few road wins.
CR SEC T50 N50 BL L11+ RN RPI
5-1 LSU 2-3 3-0 1 W 2-3 55
4-2 Tennessee 5-5 0-2 0 W 6-3 19
5-2 South Carolina 2-2 2-1 1 WW 3-3 47
5-2 Florida 1-4 3-0 0 WL 6-4 35
5-2 Kentucky 2-4 1-1 1 LL 6-3 68
3-4 Mississippi 0-5 2-3 1 WW 3-7 65
1-5 Arkansas 2-1 1-2 3 L 2-4 82
And finally we come to South Carolina, the team from the introduction. Prior to the win against Kentucky, they had just 3 wins against the Top 100 and hardly looked like a tournament team. Now they have arguably a better profile than Florida and Kentucky. What a crazy year.
CR MWC T50 N50 BL L11+ RN RPI
5-2 UNLV 3-1 5-1 2 WW 7-2 46
5-2 Utah 2-4 5-1 2 WW 5-5 15
5-2 San Diego St. 1-3 1-2 0 WW 5-4 53
4-3 Brigham Young 1-4 4-1 0 LW 6-3 34
4-3 New Mexico 1-2 2-4 3 WL 3-7 83
3-4 Wyoming 0-5 2-1 1 WL 4-7 93
UNLV’s win at Louisville is looking all the more impressive.
CR A10 T50 N50 BL L11+ RN RPI
7-0 Xavier 3-2 5-0 0 WW 9-1 7
6-1 Dayton 1-0 3-1 1 WW 6-2 32
5-1 St. Josephs 0-4 2-2 2 L 6-5 67
4-2 Temple 1-3 1-3 2 W 7-7 48
4-3 Rhode Island 1-4 3-2 1 WW 6-6 64
Xavier and Dayton are in good shape, but with only one Top 50 win, Dayton is no lock. St. Joe’s has a nice conference record, but no NCAA profile yet.
CR MVC T50 N50 BL L11+ RN RPI
10-1 Northern Iowa 0-1 4-2 3 WWWW 7-4 73
7-4 Creighton 1-0 4-3 3 WLWW 6-4 74
7-4 Illinois St. 0-0 3-2 2 LWLW 6-4 59
7-4 Bradley 0-3 1-3 3 LWWL 5-7 91
6-5 Evansville 0-2 2-3 2 LWW 2-5 70
Unfortunately, the Bracket Busters games weren’t readily available the last time I checked so the last 11+ is actually the last 12+ for these teams. I assume you can manually erase the first L or W for anyone in the Bracket Busters. As discussed previously, the MVC picked up few BCS wins this year and with no conference teams in the RPI top 50, the conference champ is no lock for an NCAA bid. Northern Iowa better keep winning.
CR CUSA T50 N50 BL L11+ RN RPI
7-0 Memphis 2-3 5-0 0 W 6-2 11
5-2 Tulsa 2-5 2-0 2 WW 5-5 72
4-3 UTEP 1-4 2-1 3 WW 6-5 86
4-3 UAB 0-4 2-3 1 LW 5-8 44
3-3 Southern Miss 0-1 1-4 2 L 5-5 85
Tulsa would look a lot better if they had a one point win over Memphis instead of a one point loss.
CR Horizon T50 N50 BL L11+ RN RPI
10-0 Butler 2-1 5-0 0 WWW 8-1 9
9-2 Green Bay 0-3 1-0 3 LWWW 7-4 79
6-5 Cleveland St. 1-3 0-2 3 LLWW 5-6 95
Everyone likes Butler.
CR WCC T50 N50 BL L11+ RN RPI
7-0 Gonzaga 4-2 2-1 1 WW 8-3 39
5-2 St. Marys 0-1 2-1 1 WWLL 10-3 50
Everyone likes Gonzaga.
CR Team T50 N50 BL L11+ RN RPI
11-0 Siena 0-4 7-0 1 WWWW 6-5 20
11-0 Davidson 1-3 0-0 0 WW 8-3 30
9-0 Utah St. 1-1 3-0 0 WWW 9-1 39
5-2 Miami (Ohio) 1-5 0-1 1 WW 7-5 52
10-1 Northeastern 0-1 4-3 2 WWWW 9-4 57
8-3 George Mason 0-1 1-2 3 LLWL 5-6 60
9-2 VCU 0-1 5-2 3 WWLW 7-5 61
6-1 Buffalo 1-2 1-2 1 WW 8-3 71
7-3 Niagara 0-2 2-0 4 LWW 10-4 75
8-2 W. Kentucky 1-1 0-1 5 LW 4-7 77
I said in a previous post that I wasn’t going to show any other mid-majors, but the above teams are all worth keeping an eye on. Siena would probably get an at-large even without a Top 50 win if the season ended today. Meanwhile, if your favorite team beat any of the teams listed below, you better hope they keep winning, because they could fall out of the Top 100 in a heartbeat:
CR Team T50 N50 BL L11+ RN RPI
5-3 Boise St. 0-3 1-1 2 WLW 4-5 84
6-1 St. F. Austin 0-1 1-1 3 WW 5-5 87
7-5 Fairfield 0-6 2-0 3 LLLWW 6-7 88
6-2 Nevada 0-4 1-0 4 WLW 5-4 90
5-1 American 0-2 0-2 3 LWW 7-6 92
4-0 Cornell 0-3 0-1 2 W 5-6 96
10-1 N. Dakota St 0-2 0-1 2 WWWW 6-5 98
6-5 Hofstra 0-1 1-5 2 WWWL 8-5 99
8-3 Drexel 0-2 3-4 2 WWWW 6-5 100
Note: I know Statsheet has a listing of the record vs the RPI Top 50 and Top 100, but my teams’ were always wrong when I looked. That probably has to do with the timing of when he ran the summary statistics relative to the daily RPI fluctuations, but I decided to just program this myself.
With the full schedule I can actually calculate the RPI myself, but I don’t want to deal with the home/away distinctions. Just to give you some idea of how annoying this is, RealtimeRPI has Southern Miss at 90th this morning, while the NCAA’s official list has Southern Miss at 85th. There are actually 22 differences between those two RPI measures this evening, using what I believe to be the exact same set of games. This is highly irritating, so I’m just going to use the NCAA’s official numbers. Unless I change my mind and decide to get the RPI some other way, the only time you should look for these charts is on selected Monday Nights between now and the end of the season.
But as much as I enjoy predictive ratings (Pomeroy, Sagarin), at a certain point, I need to see the committee’s measure of accomplishment. I need to see the record vs the RPI Top 50 and vs the RPI Top 100.
Case in point, South Carolina upset Kentucky over the weekend. I found myself ready to write a post about South Carolina, and yet I had no idea what to make of that game. Was South Carolina in the discussion for an NCAA berth? Were they already in? Were they out due to the SEC’s futility this year?
Finding that no one had a free “vs RPI top 50” that was easy to access, I decided to download the full schedule and merging this with the NCAA’s weekly report on the RPI, I wrote a program to calculate each team’s accomplishments. I basically did this for myself, but figuring there are other people who like free stuff, I’ll try to share this on a semi-regular basis on Monday nights through the rest of the season.
Of course, by the time you read this, you’ll see UConn is leading Louisville meaning these numbers are about to become obsolete. Look, if you want up-to-date stuff, go to ESPN and sign up for insider. Or go to statsheet.com and look up your own team. But if you want a free comparative conference-by-conference look, you came to the right place.
Three Reasons the Nitty Gritty is better than a Bracket Projection
1) Do you really want to depend on someone else to tell you where your team ranks? Look at the numbers and decide for yourself how many teams have a better profile.
2) Most people who project brackets count the last 12 as if the season ended today. Guess what? Games in the first week of January are never part of the last 12. Assuming most teams play at least one game in the conference tournament, I start counting with the 11th to final regular season game. Most major conference teams have only played 1-3 games in the Last 12.
3) It really sucks to look at seed projections because 9 out of 10 times you are going to feel like your team got robbed on Selection Sunday. That’s just the way it is. Just look at these numbers and don’t get your hopes up too much.
CR is conference Record.
T50 is record vs the RPI Top 50.
N50 is record vs the RPI 51-100.
BL is bad losses.
RPI is the NCAA’s official figures post on web1.ncaa.org.
L11+ is the teams record starting with the 11th to last regular season game.
Games through Sunday, February 1st
I’m only listing teams that are currently in the RPI top 100.
CR Big 12 T50 N50 BL L11+ RN RPI
8-0 Marquette 4-2 4-0 0 W 5-2 13
8-0 Louisville 5-2 3-1 0 W 5-2 10
9-1 Connecticut 5-1 5-0 0 WW 10-0 6
7-2 Pittsburgh 5-2 3-0 0 W 6-2 2
6-3 Providence 1-5 3-2 0 WL 3-5 63
5-3 Villanova 2-4 4-0 0 W 6-3 12
5-4 Syracuse 3-3 3-2 0 LL 5-3 24
4-4 West Virginia 2-5 4-1 0 L 8-4 16
4-5 Cincinnati 3-6 0-2 0 WL 4-5 58
3-6 Georgetown 3-5 4-2 1 LL 3-6 18
3-6 Notre Dame 2-7 0-0 1 L 4-6 76
I’ve seen some smart people say that Providence only needs 3 more Big East wins to make the tournament, but that seems overly optimistic to me. If the Friars only beat Rutgers twice and South Florida from here on out, they would have a horrible record against the RPI top 100. The Friars deserve respect for how they’ve started, but they still have work to do.
CR ACC T50 N50 BL L11+ RN RPI
6-1 Duke 6-1 4-1 0 W 6-2 1
5-2 North Carolina 4-1 5-1 0 WW 9-1 4
4-2 Wake Forest 5-1 2-0 1 L 8-1 14
4-2 Clemson 5-2 1-0 0 W 8-1 8
5-3 Boston College 3-4 3-0 2 WWW 5-3 51
4-3 Virginia Tech 2-4 3-1 2 LL 7-5 38
3-3 Florida St. 2-4 4-1 0 L 8-2 27
3-4 Maryland 2-5 3-1 1 LW 2-5 80
3-5 Miami (Fla.) 1-5 4-1 1 LLL 5-4 49
1-5 Virginia 0-7 0-1 2 L 1-5 97
7 wins against the RPI top 100 is not quite the resume of a 1 seed, but wins against UNC and Duke may be all Wake needs.
CR Big 12 T50 N50 BL L11+ RN RPI
7-0 Oklahoma 9-0 5-1 0 WW 9-1 3
6-0 Kansas 5-2 2-1 1 W 4-3 23
5-2 Missouri 4-2 1-2 0 LW 4-4 28
4-2 Texas 5-2 1-3 0 L 6-4 29
3-4 Texas A&M 2-4 3-1 0 WW 4-4 36
3-4 Baylor 2-6 3-0 0 LL 4-4 43
3-4 Kansas St. 2-3 2-3 1 W 3-5 78
3-4 Nebraska 1-4 2-0 3 LW 2-4 81
2-4 Oklahoma St. 2-7 3-0 0 L 4-5 26
If you are in the camp that says the ACC and Big East deserve all the 1 seeds, take a long look at Oklahoma’s numbers. No one has more quality wins than the Sooners and they are certainly on pace to take one of the number 1 seeds.
CR Big 10 T50 N50 BL L11+ RN RPI
7-2 Michigan St. 7-1 4-3 0 WL 10-2 5
6-2 Purdue 4-3 4-1 0 W 6-2 25
6-3 Minnesota 4-2 5-1 0 WW 5-1 22
6-3 Illinois 4-3 3-1 0 LW 6-3 17
6-3 Penn St. 2-4 3-1 0 WW 5-3 66
5-4 Ohio St. 2-5 4-0 0 WW 4-3 33
4-5 Northwestern 4-4 0-3 0 W 2-5 56
4-6 Michigan 3-6 3-2 0 LL 3-6 54
3-6 Wisconsin 1-7 4-2 0 LL 4-6 37
2-7 Iowa 1-6 2-3 1 LL 2-8 89
I really have no basis for this, but remembering past seasons when Michigan St. would shock everyone with a 1 seed with 7 losses, I can definitely still see a scenario where the Spartans earn a top overall seed. If the Spartans can win the Big Ten regular season and conference title they will have a boatload of quality wins. Of course Purdue will have something to say about that before all is said and done.
CR Pac 10 T50 N50 BL L11+ RN RPI
7-2 Washington 4-3 3-1 1 W 4-4 21
7-2 UCLA 2-3 5-1 0 W 6-3 31
6-3 USC 2-4 4-0 2 WW 3-5 42
5-4 California 4-4 3-1 1 LL 4-5 41
5-4 Arizona St. 2-4 5-1 0 LL 7-3 45
4-5 Arizona 3-7 2-1 0 WW 3-6 62
4-5 Washington St. 1-7 1-2 0 WL 5-3 94
3-6 Stanford 1-4 2-1 1 L 3-4 69
Despite a hot start, Arizona St. probably has the 5th best profile in the Pac 10 right now. Despite a cold start, Arizona is still in good shape to be in the discussion. Now all Arizona needs is a few road wins.
CR SEC T50 N50 BL L11+ RN RPI
5-1 LSU 2-3 3-0 1 W 2-3 55
4-2 Tennessee 5-5 0-2 0 W 6-3 19
5-2 South Carolina 2-2 2-1 1 WW 3-3 47
5-2 Florida 1-4 3-0 0 WL 6-4 35
5-2 Kentucky 2-4 1-1 1 LL 6-3 68
3-4 Mississippi 0-5 2-3 1 WW 3-7 65
1-5 Arkansas 2-1 1-2 3 L 2-4 82
And finally we come to South Carolina, the team from the introduction. Prior to the win against Kentucky, they had just 3 wins against the Top 100 and hardly looked like a tournament team. Now they have arguably a better profile than Florida and Kentucky. What a crazy year.
CR MWC T50 N50 BL L11+ RN RPI
5-2 UNLV 3-1 5-1 2 WW 7-2 46
5-2 Utah 2-4 5-1 2 WW 5-5 15
5-2 San Diego St. 1-3 1-2 0 WW 5-4 53
4-3 Brigham Young 1-4 4-1 0 LW 6-3 34
4-3 New Mexico 1-2 2-4 3 WL 3-7 83
3-4 Wyoming 0-5 2-1 1 WL 4-7 93
UNLV’s win at Louisville is looking all the more impressive.
CR A10 T50 N50 BL L11+ RN RPI
7-0 Xavier 3-2 5-0 0 WW 9-1 7
6-1 Dayton 1-0 3-1 1 WW 6-2 32
5-1 St. Josephs 0-4 2-2 2 L 6-5 67
4-2 Temple 1-3 1-3 2 W 7-7 48
4-3 Rhode Island 1-4 3-2 1 WW 6-6 64
Xavier and Dayton are in good shape, but with only one Top 50 win, Dayton is no lock. St. Joe’s has a nice conference record, but no NCAA profile yet.
CR MVC T50 N50 BL L11+ RN RPI
10-1 Northern Iowa 0-1 4-2 3 WWWW 7-4 73
7-4 Creighton 1-0 4-3 3 WLWW 6-4 74
7-4 Illinois St. 0-0 3-2 2 LWLW 6-4 59
7-4 Bradley 0-3 1-3 3 LWWL 5-7 91
6-5 Evansville 0-2 2-3 2 LWW 2-5 70
Unfortunately, the Bracket Busters games weren’t readily available the last time I checked so the last 11+ is actually the last 12+ for these teams. I assume you can manually erase the first L or W for anyone in the Bracket Busters. As discussed previously, the MVC picked up few BCS wins this year and with no conference teams in the RPI top 50, the conference champ is no lock for an NCAA bid. Northern Iowa better keep winning.
CR CUSA T50 N50 BL L11+ RN RPI
7-0 Memphis 2-3 5-0 0 W 6-2 11
5-2 Tulsa 2-5 2-0 2 WW 5-5 72
4-3 UTEP 1-4 2-1 3 WW 6-5 86
4-3 UAB 0-4 2-3 1 LW 5-8 44
3-3 Southern Miss 0-1 1-4 2 L 5-5 85
Tulsa would look a lot better if they had a one point win over Memphis instead of a one point loss.
CR Horizon T50 N50 BL L11+ RN RPI
10-0 Butler 2-1 5-0 0 WWW 8-1 9
9-2 Green Bay 0-3 1-0 3 LWWW 7-4 79
6-5 Cleveland St. 1-3 0-2 3 LLWW 5-6 95
Everyone likes Butler.
CR WCC T50 N50 BL L11+ RN RPI
7-0 Gonzaga 4-2 2-1 1 WW 8-3 39
5-2 St. Marys 0-1 2-1 1 WWLL 10-3 50
Everyone likes Gonzaga.
CR Team T50 N50 BL L11+ RN RPI
11-0 Siena 0-4 7-0 1 WWWW 6-5 20
11-0 Davidson 1-3 0-0 0 WW 8-3 30
9-0 Utah St. 1-1 3-0 0 WWW 9-1 39
5-2 Miami (Ohio) 1-5 0-1 1 WW 7-5 52
10-1 Northeastern 0-1 4-3 2 WWWW 9-4 57
8-3 George Mason 0-1 1-2 3 LLWL 5-6 60
9-2 VCU 0-1 5-2 3 WWLW 7-5 61
6-1 Buffalo 1-2 1-2 1 WW 8-3 71
7-3 Niagara 0-2 2-0 4 LWW 10-4 75
8-2 W. Kentucky 1-1 0-1 5 LW 4-7 77
I said in a previous post that I wasn’t going to show any other mid-majors, but the above teams are all worth keeping an eye on. Siena would probably get an at-large even without a Top 50 win if the season ended today. Meanwhile, if your favorite team beat any of the teams listed below, you better hope they keep winning, because they could fall out of the Top 100 in a heartbeat:
CR Team T50 N50 BL L11+ RN RPI
5-3 Boise St. 0-3 1-1 2 WLW 4-5 84
6-1 St. F. Austin 0-1 1-1 3 WW 5-5 87
7-5 Fairfield 0-6 2-0 3 LLLWW 6-7 88
6-2 Nevada 0-4 1-0 4 WLW 5-4 90
5-1 American 0-2 0-2 3 LWW 7-6 92
4-0 Cornell 0-3 0-1 2 W 5-6 96
10-1 N. Dakota St 0-2 0-1 2 WWWW 6-5 98
6-5 Hofstra 0-1 1-5 2 WWWL 8-5 99
8-3 Drexel 0-2 3-4 2 WWWW 6-5 100
Note: I know Statsheet has a listing of the record vs the RPI Top 50 and Top 100, but my teams’ were always wrong when I looked. That probably has to do with the timing of when he ran the summary statistics relative to the daily RPI fluctuations, but I decided to just program this myself.
With the full schedule I can actually calculate the RPI myself, but I don’t want to deal with the home/away distinctions. Just to give you some idea of how annoying this is, RealtimeRPI has Southern Miss at 90th this morning, while the NCAA’s official list has Southern Miss at 85th. There are actually 22 differences between those two RPI measures this evening, using what I believe to be the exact same set of games. This is highly irritating, so I’m just going to use the NCAA’s official numbers. Unless I change my mind and decide to get the RPI some other way, the only time you should look for these charts is on selected Monday Nights between now and the end of the season.
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