Is there historical data on how his pre-season rankings compare to season end rankings?
IMO, duke is one of the teams positively affected by "high-profile recruits"...otherwise we're not returning enough to justify our ranking, even with a relatively high baseline. if okafor and perhaps tyus are not "high-profile" not sure who would be. Previously he hinted at having used just a top 100 ranking list...so wouldn't doubt he just used that again.
April 1
Is there historical data on how his pre-season rankings compare to season end rankings?
Sure, because Duke's the only team, ever, in the history of the NCAA tournament to lose to a low-major team.
For what it's worth, Duke was the only ranked team Mercer played last season and Lehigh played just one other ranked team besides Duke. I'm fairly confident that sort of schedule wasn't what Dukehky was talking about.
Would you accept, MC, that it is possible that both can simultaneously occur: (a) he decides that he must modify his methodology so he can sell subscriptions from the beginning of the season and (b) he decides to do the best job he can with the early-season projections?
Sage Grouse
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'When I got on the bus for my first road game at Duke, I saw that every player was carrying textbooks or laptops. I coached in the SEC for 25 years, and I had never seen that before, not even once.' - David Cutcliffe to Duke alumni in Washington, DC, June 2013
duke's 69 point victory over presbyterian apparently not as impressive as louisville's 13 point win over minnesota. things that make you go 'hmmmm'.
does anybody know what our pythagorean rating was prior to the game? i wonder how much the game moved it (now is 0.9470).
Kenpom reduces the effect of huge victory margins, a change made before last season. So there isn't really any way for Duke to help its rating in a game against a very low-ranked team.
take that louisville! our 50 point beat down of fairfield was far more impressive than your night off. 0.9484 and counting.
going back to '02, ken pom's end of year #1 has never been below 0.95. our preseason 0.9466, if translated to end of year, would have us finishing #4, #3, #4, #2, #3, #4, #5, #5, #2, #3, #5, #3, #5 going backwards (last year to '02). naturally, it would be hard for the highest rated team in the country by the end of the year to not have outperformed expectations, but it's a nice reminder that championships aren't handed out at the start of the season.
I wonder if that one day Louisville spent atop the kenpom rankings is going to prevent Duke from going wire to wire #1.
I'm eagerly awaiting the banner hanging in Cameraon: National Champions, November 2014, Kenpom Rankings
Oh wait, we don't do that. That's the "school" 8 miles down the road.
why do the heels need to be #1 in kenpom to hang a banner? i would have guessed they've identified a nice spot to hang a november 2014 kenpom top 25 banner by now. but that does raise the question over whether ken would require them to vacate it if their players are found to have been ineligible...
If they had any academic rigor over there at all, they'd have already calculated HelmsPom ratings from the 1920s and 1930s for even more banners.
After their complete and total annihilation of Kansas, UK is now ranked the #2 offense (behind us), and #1 defense, bumping them to the #1 overall ranking.