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tecumseh
01-21-2008, 07:37 PM
Looking at Memphis they have to play Tennessee at home and that is about it. The conference, conference USA, is not very good to put it mildly and I would not be surprised to see them to go undefeated until the NCAA tourney. The second place team in the conference (UCF) got spanked by Sam Houston State this year.

crote
01-21-2008, 08:01 PM
Outside of Tennessee (and what a great game that should be), the team with the best shot to beat the tigers is UAB, who have proven to be road bumps for Memphis in the past. They probably aren't as good now as they were in the Mike Anderson/Taylor twins glory days of a few years back, but they're not bad, either. With Vaden on their team, they've got a puncher's chance against anyone. And Memphis has to play them twice.

Lotus000
01-21-2008, 08:14 PM
Not only is Memphis's sked as soft as a brand-new pillow, but also Calimari had the stones to say that they've played 'the toughest non-conference schedule' this year.

I couldn't breathe for a few minutes after laughing about that one.

Buckeye Devil
01-21-2008, 08:29 PM
Memphis is talented but untested to this point, and one game with the Vols will not change this come tournament time. With a league like C-USA, those thugs should be playing a non-conference schedule similar to Duke's or maybe even like Ohio State's which was loaded.

Lotus000
01-21-2008, 08:47 PM
Memphis is talented but untested to this point, and one game with the Vols will not change this come tournament time. With a league like C-USA, those thugs should be playing a non-conference schedule similar to Duke's or maybe even like Ohio State's which was loaded.

Wow, OSU does play a decently rough schedule this year.

I don't have a great deal of respect for the Big 10, but that's a lot of low #'s by OSU's opponents' names.

crote
01-21-2008, 08:53 PM
Memphis is talented but untested to this point, and one game with the Vols will not change this come tournament time. With a league like C-USA, those thugs should be playing a non-conference schedule similar to Duke's or maybe even like Ohio State's which was loaded.

Tennessee, Georgetown, Arizona, USC, and a half step down, Oklahoma, Connecticut, and Gonzaga.

I don't know if that's enough to make up for Memphis's conference cakewalk, but it's ludicrous to suggested the guys at Tiger High are completely untested, and just as silly to suggest Duke's noncon schedule is considerably harder.

Wander
01-21-2008, 08:59 PM
Memphis is talented but untested to this point, and one game with the Vols will not change this come tournament time. With a league like C-USA, those thugs should be playing a non-conference schedule similar to Duke's or maybe even like Ohio State's which was loaded.

What? Memphis' non-conference schedule is better than Duke's.

Clipsfan
01-21-2008, 09:54 PM
According to kenpom.com, Duke's non-conference SOS is between 50 and 80+ depending on his methodology or the RPI formula. MEmphis is in the 20-25 range, suggesting that although it wasn't the toughest schedule, it was fairly tough. It was the toughest of any of the teams in the top 20 in Pomeroy's rankings. It's their conference schedule which is a cakewalk.

cspan37421
01-21-2008, 10:31 PM
that brings up the debate of a few years ago when the NCAA was going ga-ga for mid-majors and saying "no thanks" to teams from power conferences that posted mediocre (e.g., 8-8, 7-9) in-conference records. The argument there was that for the games they got to choose to schedule, they wanted to reward teams that went out and played tough nonconference opponents.

The trouble with that reasoning is that it ignores (or unfairly downplays) the conference schedule, in order to focus on voluntary opponents. So they don't look at the whole. It seems to me perfectly reasonable to tone down the out of conference schedule when the conference one is brutal.

So I don't blame Memphis if their conference is weak, and if they're going out and playing a good out of conference schedule, then I think it evens out.

gw67
01-22-2008, 09:24 AM
Another team that tries to make up for being in a weak conference is Gonzaga. The Zags get on the road early in the season and play a bunch of tough away games to improve their RPI. The way I read them, both RPI and Pomeroy consider their out-of-conference SOS higher than Memphis’. In addition, their overall SOS in Sagarin is much higher. This year, St. Mary’s has a good team and high RPI which should help when factored into Gonzaga’s conference SOS.

Oh, by the way, the Zags play another pretty good team this weekend. They are at No.1, Memphis! Few is trying to integrate a bunch of new players so the Zags have played poorly at times, but I’ve seen them play twice on the tube and they appear to be deeper and have more quality players than I can remember for any Gonzaga team. I expect them to be tougher as the year progresses and one of the best teams in the country next year.

gw67

Buckeye Devil
01-22-2008, 08:17 PM
I give them credit for playing 2 teams in the RPI top 12 (per to Ken Pom) in Arizona & G'town-both at home. They also have Tennessee (RPI #1 per Ken Pom) and Gonzaga (#34) remaining-both at home. Any other game against an RPI top 50 team has been at a neutral site. Their toughest road game will be against #87 Houston next week. One would doubt that it would be much of a road-test but who knows.

Their schedule also includes wins against #'s 264, 280, 164, 112, 157, 105, 167, 199, 159, 218, and 178. Games remain with #'s 141 (twice), 283 (twice)
and 178, just to mention a few of their other highly ranked opponents. I still think the schedule should be tougher given the conference and opponents. I know that they can't be blamed for their conference. Calipari said today that the conference is only a few wins away from having 3 teams in the top 25. Say what?

rthomas
01-22-2008, 08:30 PM
We''ll probably play them in the elite 8.

Troublemaker
01-22-2008, 10:50 PM
Interestingly, Pomeroy gives Memphis a slightly better than 50/50 shot at going undefeated (53.77% as of 1/22/08... scroll to bottom: http://www.kenpom.com/sked.php?team=Memphis&y=2008&t=p ).

That's a really, really high number (note: I don't question its accuracy [I don't necessarily think it's right, either] but I do find it an interestingly high percentage). With 14 opponents left, if each opponent had even just a 10% chance of knocking off Memphis, then Memphis' odds of going undefeated should be 0.9^14, which is 22.8%). So C-USA must really, really suck for Pomeroy's statistics to project a better than 50/50 shot of going undefeated, and, in fact, he does project most of their opponents to have much less than a 10% chance of winning).

With all that said, I think they'll lose to either Gonzaga or Tennessee.

CDu
01-23-2008, 07:59 AM
Interestingly, Pomeroy gives Memphis a slightly better than 50/50 shot at going undefeated (53.77% as of 1/22/08... scroll to bottom: http://www.kenpom.com/sked.php?team=Memphis&y=2008&t=p ).

That's a really, really high number (note: I don't question its accuracy [I don't necessarily think it's right, either] but I do find it an interestingly high percentage). With 14 opponents left, if each opponent had even just a 10% chance of knocking off Memphis, then Memphis' odds of going undefeated should be 0.9^14, which is 22.8%). So C-USA must really, really suck for Pomeroy's statistics to project a better than 50/50 shot of going undefeated, and, in fact, he does project most of their opponents to have much less than a 10% chance of winning).

With all that said, I think they'll lose to either Gonzaga or Tennessee.

If all the remaining games were assumed equal, then what Pomeroy is saying is that they'd have about a 5% chance of losing any single game (.95^14=48.8%). Those are not necessarily unrealistic odds for the teams in C-USA.

That said, you have to assume that Tennessee or even Gonzaga has a better than 5% chance of beating Memphis, which would mean that the odds of the other games must be even smaller. If he gives Tennessee and Gonzaga a 25% chance each at beating Memphis (or any combination of two games that results in the same total likelihood of a loss) then the C-USA teams would be given less than a 1% chance according to Pomeroy.

In other words, I agree that a better than 50/50 shot at going undefeated seems optimistic.

patentgeek
01-23-2008, 08:24 AM
If I read the Pomeroy ratings correctly, Pomeroy says that the only game in which Memphis isn't a 90+ percent winner is Tennessee, and Pomeroy has that game listed as 88 percent for Memphis. In fact, other than Tennessee, in only three other games (Gonzaga, at UAB, and at Houston) is Memphis less than 95+. Nevertheless, even though Pomeroy lists Memphis as having a 55% chance of going unbeaten in the regular season, Pomeroy still predicts a 30-1 record (I'm not quite sure about how that apparent discrepancy is resolved).

Nittany Devil
01-23-2008, 09:50 AM
Nevertheless, even though Pomeroy lists Memphis as having a 55% chance of going unbeaten in the regular season, Pomeroy still predicts a 30-1 record (I'm not quite sure about how that apparent discrepancy is resolved).

I don't know the details of the calculations, but I'm guessing that Pomeroy factors in a low probability that Memphis gets two or more losses. That will add some additional weight to the expected number of losses, even though the most likely outcome is zero losses.

tecumseh
01-23-2008, 02:11 PM
Here is an article on Conference USA and according to the RPI rankings the conference is pretty dismal. Since we are talking about Memphis opponents I wonder how the conference would rank without Memphis.
http://www.nola.com/sports/t-p/index.ssf?/base/sports-35/1201069345135380.xml&coll=1