I should probably start a "human polls" thread but this AP voter is such a huge "dork" that maybe he belongs in this thread, at least temporarily.
Graham Couch, 1 of 65 AP voters, does not include Duke, Kansas, and Tennessee in his Top 25. Why? No true road games played by those schools yet.
Here's his column explaining his logic:
https://www.lansingstatejournal.com/...ke/2264942002/
You know, there's a way he could try to support his "logic." He could do a comparison of match-ups with comparable team rankings between neutral site and home/away games, and describe the statistical edge - if any exists - to home teams. He could compare the size of the effect to the edge implied by ranking differences, and the availability of relatively stronger opponents for neutral site versus home/away match-ups.Quote:
Originally Posted by Troublemaker
Funny that there wasn't such an analysis in that article.
Clearly a bitter Michigan State homer with an axe to grind....what an absurd column, and ballot.Quote:
Originally Posted by Troublemaker
So neutral court games have no value unless they are played in Ireland, apparently.Quote:
Originally Posted by Troublemaker
AND...besides that...Duke is given no credit for the fact that in every single ACC game on the road...they will be the Super Bowl for that team...it will be that teams' biggest crowd of the year, in some cases the biggest crowd ever...Duke plays an ACC road schedule that no one has ever played...and has (for the most part) since 1991-92.Quote:
Originally Posted by BandAlum83
Even in the Dean's Myth days when the Cheats were the dominant program, they faced nothing like the road environment Duke routinely does now.
I completely get what you are saying regarding capping the margin of victory in order to not reward running up the score. What I find really puzzling is why the NET caps the margin of victory, but (apparently) doesn't cap the net efficiency calculation, or adjust it by opponents strength.Quote:
Originally Posted by uh_no
In the end, unadjusted net efficiency is highly correlated with margin of victory. Take a look at the chart below which plots Duke's unadjusted net efficiency and margin of victory (or defeat) for all games between 2002 and 2018. You don't have to be a stats major to notice the strong correlation. If you are a stats major, you can comment what an R^2 value of 0.9867 means to you.
So the NCAA might say that they are capping margin of victory, but they aren't really doing so.
Attachment 8881
So, if the NCAA is really using unadjusted net efficiency without a cap, they are essentially using an uncapped margin of victory. I really hope that the NCAA is doing something in the "black box" portion of the NET calculation (the "Team Vaule Index") to counterbalances the inclusion of unadjusted net efficiency (and win percentage adjusted for home/neutral/away). Otherwise, Duke might as well stop scheduling neutral court games vs top teams in favor of running up the score in road games vs bottom dwellers from the Southland, SWAC, and MEAC.
This would be a good project for some MIDS students at Duke. Sagarin usually quantifies home advantage at 2-3.5 points in his model without getting into specifics for teams. How much is the home-away differential really for Duke? You've got the extra Superbowl/Maryland effect on the road to consider, and I've heard people casually speculate that Cameron + Coach K is worth 6-8 points. (I don't want to know the number for Wallace Wade.)Quote:
Originally Posted by BLPOG
If only we had played Stetson in DeLand, we could be adequately prepared. :(
Your mention of Cameron made me consider another point: since a lot of true road games involve a home-and-home scheduling over multiple seasons, if there an asymmetry there - such as Cameron being a proportionately tougher road game than most venues - then scheduling neutral-site games by the tough-venue team is going to make the schedule harder for them, on average, even before taking into account correlation between neutral sites and opponent rankings.Quote:
Originally Posted by duke2x
Graham Couch is really dumb. Does he realize that UVA's only away game so far was at Maryland? This was scheduled as part of the ACC/B1G challenge. So he lambastes Duke who got scheduled a home game in the challenge but has no issue with UVA who got scheduled an away game? It's not like UVA scheduled the away game themselves.Quote:
Originally Posted by Troublemaker
He also put ASU in his top 25, despite the fact ASU hasn't played a "true road game" yet.Quote:
Originally Posted by jhmoss1812
Which means he didn't start out with a criteria and eliminated teams based on it, he set out to exclude certain teams and came up with a fake justification that sounded good to him, and didn't bother to go back and verify that all the other teams he voted for would actually qualify.
“Journalism” gets more and more lazy...Quote:
Originally Posted by Ian
more agenda'd than lazy, but that tooQuote:
Originally Posted by AGDukesky
Well, looking a little closer it does appear ASU scheduled a game at San Francisco that was postponed. Technically, his gripe was not scheduling road games...
Technically, his gripe was not playing road games. Many of the teams he has ranked played road games but did not schedule them. UVA and VT have only played one true road game each but both were part of the ACC/B1G challenge. That is not scheduling a road game.Quote:
Originally Posted by AGDukesky
Of the top 10 teams in Pomeroy's rankings, UVA has played far and away the easiest schedule (295th toughest according to Pom, Michigan at #145 is the next easiest). But, Mr. Arbitrary Couch has no problem with that. All he cares about is road games.
Silly, self-important, and meaningless... those are the three descriptors that come to mind first when talking about this dude. No reason to waste another microsecond of thought on him.
Bennett should honestly be ashamed with this year's NCSOS. It's been downright pathetic so far. Granted, the Battle 4 Atlantis turned out to be weaker than expected when originally scheduled. Secondly, we should have played Michigan in the ACC/B1G challenge but got stuck with Maryland instead. On the other hand, no one gives a crap about UVA's regular season performance. We could go undefeated against the #1 schedule in the country and everyone would be saying/thinking "Who cares? Wait until the NCAA tourney!"Quote:
Originally Posted by JasonEvans
I read this drivel yesterday. too. I guess the only good thing I can say is that he's allegedly drawing a bright line in that he will put each of the teams he left off his bracket back in their proper spot the moment they play a true road game. It's a stupid hill to die on, but at least it's a clear position (assuming he's truthful about returning teams to the polls).Quote:
Originally Posted by Troublemaker
Also, I'm glad to see someone has since thoroughly corrected the idiot commenter on that story who said that Duke has played only three road games in the history of the ACC/B1G Challenge. I would have done it, but I don't have the Facebook to do so.
Some more criticism of NET, by the Washington Post's stats guy. I'm not a big fan of Greenberg's analysis and I don't see much new in this article:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sport...=.17bba19ec01a
There's not much new...except that another four weeks in, the NET is still screwed up compared to just about every other system. Is the NCAA NET right and everyone else wrong? Methinks not.Quote:
Originally Posted by MChambers
KenPom alert: The difference between #1 Duke and #2 Virginia in the rankings (31.36 vs 26.24 adjusted efficiency margin*) is greater than the difference between #2 Virginia and #13 Wisconsin (26.24 vs 21.73). Still some noise from preseason ratings but still- wow...
*Essentially, the expected margin of victory over an average D1 team if the game had 100 possessions: https://kenpom.com/blog/ratings-methodology-update/