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JasonEvans
12-26-2011, 06:14 PM
The new polls (http://espn.go.com/ncb/rankings?wjb) are out.

Duke remains at #5 in the USAT/ESPN poll and #7 in the AP. There was little movement in the polls. Harvard is back in the AP poll after dropping out for a couple weeks. Way to go Tommy! Virginia, which had already been ranked in the AP, makes it into the USAT/ESPN poll as well.

Xavier dropped out after some nasty results. It is clear that the brawl with Cincy utterly discomboobulated (did I spell that right?) the Xavier team. They had been riding high and now, even with their key players back from suspension, they seem utterly lost. There is little question that the Long Beach State and Hawaii losses will have an impact on their seeding down the road... assuming they can right the ship and get back to being a sure-fire NCAA Tourney team again.

-Jason "maybe I'll check on the dork polls and post something about them soon" Evans

uh_no
12-26-2011, 07:11 PM
While the punishments could have been longer, there's no doubt they've had the intended affect on xavier (though the same can't be said of cinci) they've taken 3 straight losses and will certainly lose seeding places. They dropped from 9th to 28th in the country. Hope the kids learned something riding the pine watching as they could help the team getting beaten. With the BE season starting tomorrow, and the uk ul game saturday, next weeks poll should be more eventful

Bob Green
12-26-2011, 07:27 PM
Here is the current rankings from Ken Pomeroy:

http://kenpom.com/index.php

Here is how the ACC teams break out with Strength of Schedule in brackets:

5) Carolina [47]
11) Duke [14]
25) Virginia [304]
33) Florida State [126]
38) Virginia Tech [222]
62) Miami [51]
63) NC State [59]
80) Georgia Tech [238]
93) Clemson [303]
165) Maryland [279]
168) Wake Forest [235]
245) Boston College [275]

Based upon the fact they have the weakest SOS of all ACC teams, I believe it best to take a wait and see approach to Virginia. Along with Duke and Carolina, Miami and N.C. State should be commended for their strong early season schedule.

tommy
12-26-2011, 11:00 PM
Here is the current rankings from Ken Pomeroy:

http://kenpom.com/index.php

Here is how the ACC teams break out with Strength of Schedule in brackets:

5) Carolina [47]
11) Duke [14]
25) Virginia [304]
33) Florida State [126]
38) Virginia Tech [222]
62) Miami [51]
63) NC State [59]
80) Georgia Tech [238]
93) Clemson [303]
165) Maryland [279]
168) Wake Forest [235]
245) Boston College [275]

Based upon the fact they have the weakest SOS of all ACC teams, I believe it best to take a wait and see approach to Virginia. Along with Duke and Carolina, Miami and N.C. State should be commended for their strong early season schedule.

What I can't believe is that our strength of schedule is only rated 14 nationally at this point. I checked out KenPom's list, and in the top 200 teams in overall ranking, only 6 have their schedules rated higher than Duke. And of those 6, four of em seem shaky to me:

Kansas, overall rank 8, SOS 13. Fine.
Long Beach, overall rank 40, SOS 4. Fine.

Davidson, overall rank 91, SOS 10. How are they 10? The only other ranked team they've played is Kansas, and the only other BCS conference team they've played is Vanderbilt. That schedule is tougher than ours?

Florida Atlantic, overall rank 144, SOS 9. Ranked opponents have been Kansas, Mississippi State, and Harvard. Also played Miami and Washington. Nice schedule, but not better than Duke's to this point IMO.

Wisconsin-Green Bay, overall rank 172, SOS 2. Have played Wisconsin, Marquette, and Virginia. No other BCS teams. That's the second hardest schedule in the country? Come on now.

Austin Peay, overall rank 183, SOS 12. Notables are Tennessee, Memphis, Cal, and Belmont. Better than Ohio State, Kansas, Michigan, Michigan State, Tennessee, and Belmont? How?

brevity
12-26-2011, 11:09 PM
Xavier dropped out after some nasty results. It is clear that the brawl with Cincy utterly discomboobulated (did I spell that right?) the Xavier team.

No, but your misspelling is awesome. The Xavier-Cincinnati brawl utterly discombobulated (http://www.onelook.com/?loc=pub&w=discombobulated) the Musketeers.

Compare: the Super Bowl audience was discomboobulated (http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=discomboobulated) by Janet Jackson's performance.

hurleyfor3
12-26-2011, 11:29 PM
"Discomboobulated" sounds like the result of bad plastic surgery.

Kedsy
12-27-2011, 12:32 AM
What I can't believe is that our strength of schedule is only rated 14 nationally at this point. I checked out KenPom's list, and in the top 200 teams in overall ranking, only 6 have their schedules rated higher than Duke. And of those 6, four of em seem shaky to me:

Kansas, overall rank 8, SOS 13. Fine.
Long Beach, overall rank 40, SOS 4. Fine.

Davidson, overall rank 91, SOS 10. How are they 10? The only other ranked team they've played is Kansas, and the only other BCS conference team they've played is Vanderbilt. That schedule is tougher than ours?

Florida Atlantic, overall rank 144, SOS 9. Ranked opponents have been Kansas, Mississippi State, and Harvard. Also played Miami and Washington. Nice schedule, but not better than Duke's to this point IMO.

Wisconsin-Green Bay, overall rank 172, SOS 2. Have played Wisconsin, Marquette, and Virginia. No other BCS teams. That's the second hardest schedule in the country? Come on now.

Austin Peay, overall rank 183, SOS 12. Notables are Tennessee, Memphis, Cal, and Belmont. Better than Ohio State, Kansas, Michigan, Michigan State, Tennessee, and Belmont? How?

The only thing I can think of is he must weigh true road games very heavily. Davidson has played 4 of its 10 games at opposing teams' arenas, including @Duke and @Kansas. Wisconsin-Green Bay has played 6 of 10 road games, Florida Atlantic 9 of 12 road games and AUstin Peay 8 of 12 road games. Duke has played two tough road games, @Michigan State and @Ohio State, but those are our only two road games out of 11 (he probably doesn't weigh neutral site games very heavily).

gam7
12-27-2011, 12:46 AM
The only thing I can think of is he must weigh true road games very heavily. Davidson has played 4 of its 10 games at opposing teams' arenas, including @Duke and @Kansas. Wisconsin-Green Bay has played 6 of 10 road games, Florida Atlantic 9 of 12 road games and AUstin Peay 8 of 12 road games. Duke has played two tough road games, @Michigan State and @Ohio State, but those are our only two road games out of 11 (he probably doesn't weigh neutral site games very heavily).

MSU was at MSG. If it was a "road" game according to kenpom, I would imagine he'd categorize it as "semi-away," which probably doesn't have the same weight as a true away game. I can't access the team pages but he can't consider MSU a road game for Duke.

Kedsy
12-27-2011, 12:52 AM
MSU was at MSG. If it was a "road" game according to kenpom, I would imagine he'd categorize it as "semi-away," which probably doesn't have the same weight as a true away game. I can't access the team pages but he can't consider MSU a road game for Duke.

Oh, you're right. I guess I messed that up (I didn't get the schedules from KenPom, I got them from StatsSheet and I must have misread the Duke/Mich St game). So we only have one road game, which makes the point even more pronounced.

tommy
12-27-2011, 02:20 AM
The only thing I can think of is he must weigh true road games very heavily. Davidson has played 4 of its 10 games at opposing teams' arenas, including @Duke and @Kansas. Wisconsin-Green Bay has played 6 of 10 road games, Florida Atlantic 9 of 12 road games and AUstin Peay 8 of 12 road games. Duke has played two tough road games, @Michigan State and @Ohio State, but those are our only two road games out of 11 (he probably doesn't weigh neutral site games very heavily).

Still. Look at Green Bay. Yes, they played 6 of 10 games on the road. Their tough road games were Wisconsin, Marquette, and Virginia. Nice teams, sure. Possible tournament teams. Not exactly like going to Kentucky, Syracuse, and Carolina though. And their other 3 roadies have been Duquesne, North Dakota State, and Indiana State. Three of the four home games have been against real cupcakes. So even if he's weighting true road games heavily, I just can't fathom how that's the second hardest schedule in the country so far.

phaedrus
12-27-2011, 10:35 AM
Still. Look at Green Bay. Yes, they played 6 of 10 games on the road. Their tough road games were Wisconsin, Marquette, and Virginia. Nice teams, sure. Possible tournament teams. Not exactly like going to Kentucky, Syracuse, and Carolina though. And their other 3 roadies have been Duquesne, North Dakota State, and Indiana State. Three of the four home games have been against real cupcakes. So even if he's weighting true road games heavily, I just can't fathom how that's the second hardest schedule in the country so far.

Wisconsin and Marquette are both top 15 teams. They're closer to being Kentucky, Syracuse, and Carolina than they are to being merely "possible tournament teams."

Kedsy
12-27-2011, 10:37 AM
Still. Look at Green Bay. Yes, they played 6 of 10 games on the road. Their tough road games were Wisconsin, Marquette, and Virginia. Nice teams, sure. Possible tournament teams. Not exactly like going to Kentucky, Syracuse, and Carolina though. And their other 3 roadies have been Duquesne, North Dakota State, and Indiana State. Three of the four home games have been against real cupcakes. So even if he's weighting true road games heavily, I just can't fathom how that's the second hardest schedule in the country so far.

Except Pomeroy doesn't think they're real cupcakes. He rates Duquesne, North Dakota State, and Indiana State, 111th, 106th and 89th in the country. Depending on how much he weights true road games, those could easily be considered more "difficult" games than Davidson (91st), Washington (64), and Michigan (49), and certainly better than Tennessee (124). Playing @Marquette (12) and @Virginia (24) very easily could be considered harder games than Kansas (8) and Michigan State (13) at neutral sites. And Wisconsin is Pomeroy's #1 team, so it's exactly like going to Kentucky, Syracuse, or UNC -- except a little better.

Kedsy
12-27-2011, 11:44 AM
Still. Look at Green Bay. Yes, they played 6 of 10 games on the road. Their tough road games were Wisconsin, Marquette, and Virginia. Nice teams, sure. Possible tournament teams. Not exactly like going to Kentucky, Syracuse, and Carolina though. And their other 3 roadies have been Duquesne, North Dakota State, and Indiana State. Three of the four home games have been against real cupcakes. So even if he's weighting true road games heavily, I just can't fathom how that's the second hardest schedule in the country so far.

OK, I did a quick analysis of Duke's and Green Bay's schedules. I know Sagarin thinks home advantage is worth 4 points. It's a lot more complicated that this, but in the Pomeroy system, 4 points roughly translates to 6 points per 100 possessions, which is how he expresses his ratings. So I added 6 points to opponents playing at home and subtracted 6 points from opponents playing at Duke or Green Bay.



DUKE Green Bay
@Ohio State 96.7 6 102.7 @Wisconsin 97.7 6 103.7
Kansas 93 0 93 @Marquette 91.9 6 97.9
Michigan State 91.7 0 91.7 @Virginia 88.7 6 94.7
Michigan 81.1 0 81.1
Belmont at Duke 85.5 -6 79.5 @Indiana State 70.6 6 76.6
Washington 77 0 77 @N Dakota State 67.2 6 73.2
Davidson @Duke 69.6 -6 63.6 @Duquesne 65.3 6 71.3
Tennessee 61.9 0 61.9 Wyoming @GB 70.6 -6 64.6
Col State @Duke 62.9 -6 56.9 Idaho @GB 63.3 -6 57.3
Presby @Duke 39.4 -6 33.4 Loyola Chi @GB 37.1 -6 31.1
UNCG at Duke 20.7 -6 14.7 Ill-Chicago @GB 22.9 -6 16.9


Looking at it this way, the schedules seem pretty comparable. If you average each team's opponents' ratings (again, a gross simplification of what Pomeroy does), Duke's average opponent is 68.68 and Green Bay's average opponent is 68.73, so Green Bay's schedule is a little better.

Now, if Pomeroy weights home games more heavily than Sagarin, let's say 5 points instead of 4, that would translate into another point per 100 possessions for all Green Bay's away games and a point less for Duke's extra home game. In which case Green Bay's schedule (68.93) would be considered that much more difficult than Duke's (68.32).

Not saying this is real life, but in Pomeroy's computer's world, this is sort of what we're talking about.

Wander
12-27-2011, 12:28 PM
What I can't believe is that our strength of schedule is only rated 14 nationally at this point.

I hope this isn't considered too nitpicky but it doesn't make sense to say we "only" have the 14th rated schedule - that's really, really high! Kansas and Duke have by far the toughest schedule of any BCS conference teams. And this includes Belmont and Washington being fairly big disappointments.

Schools like Duke and Kansas will never have the single highest rated non-conference schedule, simply because all the low-major teams play so many true road games for money. It's actually really impressive that we're as high as we are.

hurleyfor3
12-27-2011, 12:51 PM
I hope this isn't considered too nitpicky but it doesn't make sense to say we "only" have the 14th rated schedule - that's really, really high! Kansas and Duke have by far the toughest schedule of any BCS conference teams. And this includes Belmont and Washington being fairly big disappointments.

Schools like Duke and Kansas will never have the single highest rated non-conference schedule, simply because all the low-major teams play so many true road games for money. It's actually really impressive that we're as high as we are.

This is the correct answer. For those who obsess over this, we somehow moved up a spot in Pomeroy to the #13 SoS this morning. Most importantly, this puts us at about the 96th percentile in all of Division I. With only a dozen or so games played so far I'm not sure the difference between us and say, a top-10 SoS is statistically significant.

People tend to focus on the good opponents teams have played, while the SoS cares about all opponents, good and bad. Now to a team like Duke (or Kansas) there's not a lot of difference subjectively between playing the #100 team and playing the #200 team, but the math doesn't know this.

tommy
12-27-2011, 01:23 PM
This is the correct answer. For those who obsess over this, we somehow moved up a spot in Pomeroy to the #13 SoS this morning. Most importantly, this puts us at about the 96th percentile in all of Division I. With only a dozen or so games played so far I'm not sure the difference between us and say, a top-10 SoS is statistically significant.

People tend to focus on the good opponents teams have played, while the SoS cares about all opponents, good and bad. Now to a team like Duke (or Kansas) there's not a lot of difference subjectively between playing the #100 team and playing the #200 team, but the math doesn't know this.

Oh, I agree. That's why I pointed out in my original post questioning the SOS numbers that of the top 200 teams overall, only 6 have higher SOS than ours. Of those six, only one, Kansas, is generally regarded as being in our class. Meaning that almost all of the top teams in the country have schedules weaker than ours has been so far, and most of them have been far, far weaker.

tommy
12-27-2011, 01:35 PM
Except Pomeroy doesn't think they're real cupcakes. He rates Duquesne, North Dakota State, and Indiana State, 111th, 106th and 89th in the country. Depending on how much he weights true road games, those could easily be considered more "difficult" games than Davidson (91st), Washington (64), and Michigan (49), and certainly better than Tennessee (124). Playing @Marquette (12) and @Virginia (24) very easily could be considered harder games than Kansas (8) and Michigan State (13) at neutral sites. And Wisconsin is Pomeroy's #1 team, so it's exactly like going to Kentucky, Syracuse, or UNC -- except a little better.

I thought I had indicated that the cupcakes were the 3 out of 4 home games they've had. Duquesne, North Dakota State and Indiana State were road games.

Tell you what, Kedsy, and I mean this in only the most positive, just talkin' hoops kind of way:

Take any college basketball team you want, or the average team, or Duke, or whoever, and there's going to be one game that you bet your life, or your house, on.

Would you rather your team play that game:
a) at Indiana State, or
b) on a neutral floor vs. Michigan

Would you rather play it:
a) at North Dakota State, or
b) on a neutral floor vs. Washington

Would you rather play it:
a) at Duquesne, or
b) home to Davidson (may want to confer with Kansas on that one)

Would you rather play it:
a) at Marquette, or
b) on a neutral floor vs. Kansas

Would you rather play it:
a) at Virginia, or
b) on a neutral floor vs. Michigan State

Reasonable minds can differ, but if my life, or my wallet, depended on it, I'm preferring a) on every one of those. You?

Wander
12-27-2011, 02:55 PM
Would you rather your team play that game:
a) at Indiana State, or
b) on a neutral floor vs. Michigan

Would you rather play it:
a) at North Dakota State, or
b) on a neutral floor vs. Washington

Would you rather play it:
a) at Duquesne, or
b) home to Davidson (may want to confer with Kansas on that one)

Would you rather play it:
a) at Marquette, or
b) on a neutral floor vs. Kansas

Would you rather play it:
a) at Virginia, or
b) on a neutral floor vs. Michigan State

Reasonable minds can differ, but if my life, or my wallet, depended on it, I'm preferring a) on every one of those. You?

a, a, b, b, b. But none of these are obvious choices, except for maybe the Duquesne/Davidson one. North Dakota State would be playing the biggest game in school history, on its home floor, and was very competitive against a 12-1 Minnesota team on the road. It's still unclear how good Michigan State is, since their losses were to two top-10 teams, and in the first two games of the season. Did Indiana State beating Vandy say more about ISU or Vandy? The Missouri Valley does look really good this year. And so on.

IMO you're really underrating the home/away effect (I think it's been shown that college basketball is the sport where this is the most important).

Kedsy
12-27-2011, 04:41 PM
Reasonable minds can differ, but if my life, or my wallet, depended on it, I'm preferring a) on every one of those. You?

What you or I think is not very relevant to Pomeroy's strength of schedule calculation. I wasn't saying I thought Green Bay's schedule was harder than ours; I was showing why Pomeroy's computer thinks so. Apparently KenPom thinks the home advantage means a lot more than you think it does. I don't know who's right, but if we believe in Pomeroy's ratings for other purposes, I'd say we have to accept it on this as well.

I only took a quick look, but it seems Pomeroy's computer thinks (a)(a)(b)(b)(b).

Jderf
12-27-2011, 06:14 PM
I don't know who's right, but if we believe in Pomeroy's ratings for other purposes, I'd say we have to accept it on this as well.

Agree with you in general, but I'm not so sure about this specific sentence. I don't think it is unreasonable to give a lot of weight* to Kenpom's general rankings, while having less respect for the SOS metric itself. I'd say the SOS metric incorporates a lot of judgments that are, let's say, less-than-mathematical: How much are home, away, and neutral site games each worth? Where do we draw the line between a dominant team, a tough team, a mediocre team, a weak team, and a cupcake? Is a game against a cupcake and a dominant team equal to two games against mediocre teams? To determine the "strength" of a schedule, questions like these need to be answered -- and for Pomeroy, they need to be answered quantitatively. But these are really just judgment calls, and it is very easy to disagree on the right answer. To me, it seems perfectly plausible to disagree with Pomeroy's methodology in this instance while agreeing with him elsewhere.

*Note that it isn't a question of whether or not the rankings are right or wrong, but how much weight we should give them.

loran16
12-27-2011, 10:24 PM
What I can't believe is that our strength of schedule is only rated 14 nationally at this point. I checked out KenPom's list, and in the top 200 teams in overall ranking, only 6 have their schedules rated higher than Duke. And of those 6, four of em seem shaky to me:

Kansas, overall rank 8, SOS 13. Fine.
Long Beach, overall rank 40, SOS 4. Fine.

Davidson, overall rank 91, SOS 10. How are they 10? The only other ranked team they've played is Kansas, and the only other BCS conference team they've played is Vanderbilt. That schedule is tougher than ours?

Florida Atlantic, overall rank 144, SOS 9. Ranked opponents have been Kansas, Mississippi State, and Harvard. Also played Miami and Washington. Nice schedule, but not better than Duke's to this point IMO.

Wisconsin-Green Bay, overall rank 172, SOS 2. Have played Wisconsin, Marquette, and Virginia. No other BCS teams. That's the second hardest schedule in the country? Come on now.

Austin Peay, overall rank 183, SOS 12. Notables are Tennessee, Memphis, Cal, and Belmont. Better than Ohio State, Kansas, Michigan, Michigan State, Tennessee, and Belmont? How?

Two things: First, use the Overall SOS, not the Non-Conference SOS. Duke is still 13th, but things are a bit more reasonable because it includes all the games, including the conference games which weaker conferences have already started playing (one or two).

EDIT: In the case of Green Bay, two its "cushy" home games have been CONFERENCE games, so won't be counted by non-conference SOS.

Second, as others have pointed this out, but the key is ROAD/HOME games. And that's a huge thing for those weak teams, who have had 50% or more road games due to the fact that they are paid to go on the road. Remember road games are really tough - Duke's played ONE road game...and lost by 20. Kind of big there.

Third, remember that Pomeroy SOS is using Pomeroy rankings. So Wisconsin is #1. Marquette is #12. These things matter (For Duke's purposes, we've gotten one top 10 win and one top 10 loss, but then apart from #13 MSU, we've basically played no one in the top 50. Belmont is #32, but they're due to collapse honestly, I think pre-season ratings, though given very little weight at this point, are still buoying them considerably)

Kedsy
12-28-2011, 12:07 AM
Agree with you in general, but I'm not so sure about this specific sentence. I don't think it is unreasonable to give a lot of weight* to Kenpom's general rankings, while having less respect for the SOS metric itself. I'd say the SOS metric incorporates a lot of judgments that are, let's say, less-than-mathematical:


How much are home, away, and neutral site games each worth?

I'm pretty sure Pomeroy adjusts his ratings based on where the game was played, so wouldn't this same factor go into his general rankings as much or more as it does his SOS metric? If so, and if you want to discount the SOS metric for use of subjective factors, why wouldn't your feeling extend to the general rankings?


Where do we draw the line between a dominant team, a tough team, a mediocre team, a weak team, and a cupcake? Is a game against a cupcake and a dominant team equal to two games against mediocre teams?

I don't believe Pomeroy's SOS takes either of these into account. Or is that your point, that he should?

I suppose that by staying away from these subjective assessments, and therefore not giving extra weight to "dominance" or "cupcakeness" ("cupcakacity"?), one could argue that he's making some de facto judgments. Not sure if I buy that or not. Seems to me he lets the numbers do the talking, just like he does for the general ranking.


To determine the "strength" of a schedule, questions like these need to be answered -- and for Pomeroy, they need to be answered quantitatively. But these are really just judgment calls, and it is very easy to disagree on the right answer. To me, it seems perfectly plausible to disagree with Pomeroy's methodology in this instance while agreeing with him elsewhere.

Ultimately, I can understand the discounting of the SOS metric, but for an entirely different reason than you espouse here. My issue with SOS is that it has already been taken into account in the calculation of the general rating. By citing the SOS as an independent metric, apart from the general ranking, we're sort of double counting.

This is even more true with the RPI (since schedule strength is already more heavily used than any other factor in the creation of the RPI ranking), but it seems to me every ranking system has this issue if you talk about schedule strength independently from the overall ranking.

Wander
12-28-2011, 12:22 AM
I suppose that by staying away from these subjective assessments, and therefore not giving extra weight to "dominance" or "cupcakeness" ("cupcakacity"?), one could argue that he's making some de facto judgments. Not sure if I buy that or not. Seems to me he lets the numbers do the talking, just like he does for the general ranking.


Though all of Pomeroy's methods are quantitative and well reasoned, there's still subjectivity involved. For example, I'm fairly certain that in his system, the difference between a 30 point win and a 40 point win is much less than the difference between a 5 point win and a 15 point win. He explained once in a blog post or something that this was a subjective judgment he felt was necessary to make.

I think I tend to agree with you - in the particular case you cite, there shouldn't be any extra weight. But I think there's some art to it.

uh_no
12-28-2011, 12:47 AM
Ultimately, I can understand the discounting of the SOS metric, but for an entirely different reason than you espouse here. My issue with SOS is that it has already been taken into account in the calculation of the general rating. By citing the SOS as an independent metric, apart from the general ranking, we're sort of double counting.


Spot on.

So, if one were to say that "No team higher than duke in KenPom had a better SOS" it would mean that had duke played the same schedule as the teams rated more highly, they STILL would have performed worse than those teams....so citing SOS here is relatively pointless, as kedsy says.

Bob Green
12-28-2011, 08:51 AM
Based upon the fact they have the weakest SOS of all ACC teams, I believe it best to take a wait and see approach to Virginia.

I'm not backing off my wait and see approach with Virginia; however, I watched the first 30 minutes of their game against Maryland Eastern Shore and I was impressed with what I saw. It seemed pointless to keep watching when the Cavaliers expanded the lead to 20+ points with 10 minutes to go in the game.

First off, I must point out Mike Scott is an amazing talent even though this is something we all already know. He scored points effortlessly. Virginia had great ball movement on offense and played aggressive defense. Assane Sene played under control. Joe Harris demonstrated a very nice 3-point stroke. Forwards Mitchell and Atkins were impressive off the bench. The Cavaliers out rebounded MD-ES, a team with good size, 35-27 (per ESPN box score). Virginia looks like a team which will make some noise in the ACC this season.

Olympic Fan
12-28-2011, 10:25 AM
I'm not backing off my wait and see approach with Virginia; however, I watched the first 30 minutes of their game against Maryland Eastern Shore and I was impressed with what I saw. It seemed pointless to keep watching when the Cavaliers expanded the lead to 20+ points with 10 minutes to go in the game.

First off, I must point out Mike Scott is an amazing talent even though this is something we all already know. He scored points effortlessly. Virginia had great ball movement on offense and played aggressive defense. Assane Sene played under control. Joe Harris demonstrated a very nice 3-point stroke. Forwards Mitchell and Atkins were impressive off the bench. The Cavaliers out rebounded MD-ES, a team with good size, 35-27 (per ESPN box score). Virginia looks like a team which will make some noise in the ACC this season.

A lot of debate on this thread about Kenpom's rankings ... look, I think they vare better than anything else, but we have to recognize that in the big scheme of things -- meaning the NCAA selection committee's process -- Kenpom is not nearly as important as RPI.

And as of thiis morning, Duke is No. 2 in the RPI with a No. 9 SOS.

Bob Green
12-28-2011, 11:03 AM
...but we have to recognize that in the big scheme of things -- meaning the NCAA selection committee's process -- Kenpom is not nearly as important as RPI.

Here are the RPI rankings for ACC teams with SOS in brackets:

http://realtimerpi.com/rpi_Men.html

2) Duke [4]
11) North Carolina [38]
29) Virginia [109]
50) Florida State [19]
56) Virginia Tech [64]
61) N.C. State [21]
62) Miami [31]
100) Wake Forest [140]
108) Maryland [145]
127) Georgia Tech [148]
226) Clemson [285]
237) Boston College [165]

Virginia is consistently showing up as the third best team in the ACC in all the different polls - AP, Coaches, Ken Pomeroy and RPI. The game in Cameron on January 12 is one to look forward to watching.

CDu
12-28-2011, 11:53 AM
Here are the RPI rankings for ACC teams with SOS in brackets:

http://realtimerpi.com/rpi_Men.html

2) Duke [4]
11) North Carolina [38]
29) Virginia [109]
50) Florida State [19]
56) Virginia Tech [64]
61) N.C. State [21]
62) Miami [31]
100) Wake Forest [140]
108) Maryland [145]
127) Georgia Tech [148]
226) Clemson [285]
237) Boston College [165]

Virginia is consistently showing up as the third best team in the ACC in all the different polls - AP, Coaches, Ken Pomeroy and RPI. The game in Cameron on January 12 is one to look forward to watching.

Very hard to take the RPI too seriously at this point in the season (or in general really, but especially this early), considering that Southern Miss (with losses @St Mary's and vs Ohio) is #3 and Northern Iowa (with losses @Denver and vs Murray State) is #5.

That said, UVa will be interesting to watch. They've played one of the absolute easiest schedules in the country so far. They've done very well against said soft schedule, but it remains to be seen what they do when the road gets (at least a bit) tougher in conference.

-jk
12-31-2011, 11:25 AM
One blowout game popped us up 4 spots to #7 in KenPom.

-jk

loran16
12-31-2011, 01:25 PM
One blowout game popped us up 4 spots to #7 in KenPom.

-jk

Just as importantly, IU and UF lost in the last few days, and Mizzou was supposed to have an easier time with ODU. However, we're a decent length away from #6 Kansas (Though their ranking is a bit overblown due to their win over OSU being a bit less relevant than the computer knows)

tommy
12-31-2011, 02:40 PM
Not to pick on them, cuz what I really am having trouble with is Kenpom, not Green Bay, but in this week's numbers, Green Bay has maintained the #2 SOS in the country. One of their signature tough road games that apparently propelled them to this ranking was their loss to Marquette. Yet Marquette got waxed this week by Vanderbilt. GB's schedule rating doesn't drop at all? I don't get it.

I know none of this matters a whit, but I just wonder how this can be.

Wander
12-31-2011, 03:46 PM
Not to pick on them, cuz what I really am having trouble with is Kenpom, not Green Bay, but in this week's numbers, Green Bay has maintained the #2 SOS in the country. One of their signature tough road games that apparently propelled them to this ranking was their loss to Marquette. Yet Marquette got waxed this week by Vanderbilt. GB's schedule rating doesn't drop at all? I don't get it.

I know none of this matters a whit, but I just wonder how this can be.

Green Bay has played 13 opponents. Say each of those 13 opponents have played 13 games each. That makes the Vanderbilt/Marquette game 1 out of 169 games played by opponents of UW-Green Bay. You're just putting too much emphasis on one result.

CDu
12-31-2011, 04:10 PM
Not to pick on them, cuz what I really am having trouble with is Kenpom, not Green Bay, but in this week's numbers, Green Bay has maintained the #2 SOS in the country. One of their signature tough road games that apparently propelled them to this ranking was their loss to Marquette. Yet Marquette got waxed this week by Vanderbilt. GB's schedule rating doesn't drop at all? I don't get it.

I know none of this matters a whit, but I just wonder how this can be.

As Wander said, because that's just one game of many that make up Green Bay's SOS. And despite the loss, Marquette still ranks in Pomeroy's top-20. So while their loss hurts, it doesn't hurt enough to drop Green Bay's SOS yet.

Pomeroy's formula weights road games more relative to home games or neutral site games. Green Bay has played 7 road games, including 3 against Pomeroy's top-30 (one against Pomeroy's top-rated team), another against a top-100, and 2 more against the top-125. It appears that you disagree with the amount that Pomeroy adjusts for road vs. home games.