JasonEvans
11-13-2014, 09:28 AM
Barry... I love ya man, you are a wonderful writer and collector of fascinating statistics, but your latest DBR column (http://www.dukebasketballreport.com/2014/11/13/7213385/acc-teams-and-big-five-conference-opponents) is really, really flawed.
It would appear you are trying to identify challenging non-conference schedules among ACC teams by seeing which ACC teams are playing major conference opponents. But, by only including the Big 10, Big 12, Pac 12, and SEC as major conferences you are creating an artificial standard that is not reflective of the real power of the college basketball landscape. Is there any question that the Big East (with GTown, Marquette, Villanova, Creighton, and others) and the AAC (UConn, Memphis, SMU, Tulsa, Cincy) are pretty close to on par with the SEC? They may not match Kentucky or maybe Florida at the top, but the next tier of those conferences are fairly even. Heck, aside from Arizona and UCLA at the top, the Pac 12 looks like it largely on par with the Big East and AAC (the AAC is somewhat notable for a few pretty weak teams at the bottom like Houston, Tulane, and Central Florida).
Also missing from your analysis is a discussion of the type of teams from the major conferences being player. You would essentially give equal weight to playing one game against Kentucky or Wisconsin to playing a game against Auburn or Rutgers. You laud Clemson for playing 4 games against major-conference opponents, but those opponents are Rutgers, Auburn, Arkansas, and South Carolina -- only one of whom is a top 50 opponent according to Ken Pomeroy.
A more useful analysis, in my mind, would have been to look at the top 50 or top 100 teams in Ken Pomeroy or Jeff Sagarin's preseason rankings and seeing how many games ACC teams played against those. That would tell a far more compelling story than merely collecting a list of BCS conference opponents for each ACC team.
-Jason "Just my $.02... I am usually a huge, huge fan of your articles so I urge you to keep up the good work!" Evans
It would appear you are trying to identify challenging non-conference schedules among ACC teams by seeing which ACC teams are playing major conference opponents. But, by only including the Big 10, Big 12, Pac 12, and SEC as major conferences you are creating an artificial standard that is not reflective of the real power of the college basketball landscape. Is there any question that the Big East (with GTown, Marquette, Villanova, Creighton, and others) and the AAC (UConn, Memphis, SMU, Tulsa, Cincy) are pretty close to on par with the SEC? They may not match Kentucky or maybe Florida at the top, but the next tier of those conferences are fairly even. Heck, aside from Arizona and UCLA at the top, the Pac 12 looks like it largely on par with the Big East and AAC (the AAC is somewhat notable for a few pretty weak teams at the bottom like Houston, Tulane, and Central Florida).
Also missing from your analysis is a discussion of the type of teams from the major conferences being player. You would essentially give equal weight to playing one game against Kentucky or Wisconsin to playing a game against Auburn or Rutgers. You laud Clemson for playing 4 games against major-conference opponents, but those opponents are Rutgers, Auburn, Arkansas, and South Carolina -- only one of whom is a top 50 opponent according to Ken Pomeroy.
A more useful analysis, in my mind, would have been to look at the top 50 or top 100 teams in Ken Pomeroy or Jeff Sagarin's preseason rankings and seeing how many games ACC teams played against those. That would tell a far more compelling story than merely collecting a list of BCS conference opponents for each ACC team.
-Jason "Just my $.02... I am usually a huge, huge fan of your articles so I urge you to keep up the good work!" Evans