A c d g
There hasn't been too much to shake up the NET rankings this week beyond two major results: Kentucky's win over Kansas and Michigan State's upset loss to Purdue (I told you all it was coming, haha). Thus, instead of doing the NET breakdown like I've been doing over the past few weeks I figured it might be a good time to do a "blind resume" exercise to see if how we perceive the strength of the top teams corresponds with the data provided on the NCAA Team Sheets, which are primarily driven by the NET rankings instead of the RPI now.
Below, I've made a table with the resumes of the seven teams that I think the consensus is are reasonably in the running for No. 1 seeds (note that I'm moving to seven teams despite talking about a "top-6" recently... you may have an inkling as to why, but I won't spoil that to maintain the anonymity of the exercise!). All of the data is taken directly via the NET Rankings and the Team Sheets through games played on January 27, meaning that if the season ended today, these would be the primary data points provided to the committee. When I list wins/losses, I'll again keep things anonymous by listing them as something like "H19", which would be a home win (or loss) against the team ranked 19 in the NET. Obviously you may be able to suss out who is who, but try not to spoil it for everyone, haha.
Based off of this, I'm curious to see what people think about not only who the 4 No. 1 seeds should be, but also who the No. 1 overall seed should be. I'll put the later question as a "poll" (since there are 35 possible outcomes of 7 choose 4 for those mathematically inclined out there, haha), so keep your responses about the 4 No. 1 seeds to replies. Sometime later today I'll try to compile everyone's thoughts and reveal who is who and see if anything interesting has come about from looking at team resume's not through the lens of the big names, but instead through the NET data. Enjoy!
Team A B C D E F G Record 17-2 16-3 18-1 18-3 19-2 19-1 17-1 NET Rank 3 8 1 6 2 4 5 KPI Rank 2 10 1 3 4 5 6 "Q1" Record 6-1 5-2 4-1 8-3 3-2 5-1 4-1 "Q2" Record 3-1 2-1 6-0 4-0 2-0 5-0 4-0 Q1 Wins H1, N8, N18, A33, N26, A63 N9, A12, A26, H16, H27 H10, N13, A22, A59 H11, A25, A30, A36, A37, H22, H30, N43 N3, A47, A58 H9, H11, A21, A41, A56 N2, N12, N16, A36, A54 Losses N2, H48 N3, A44, N64 A3 A11, A12, N16 N5, A9 A13 N16 Non-Conference SOS 8 38 222 113 67 153 30 Overall SOS 6 33 67 24 58 64 39
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Trinity BS 2012; University of Michigan PhD 2018
Duke Chronicle, Sports Online Editor: 2010-2012
K-Ville Blue Tenting 2009-2012
Unofficial Brian Zoubek Biographer
If you have questions about Michigan Basketball/Football, I'm your man!
A c d g
April 1
A good example of why the blind resume should not always be the best way to go. A clear case may be made for D, with A as #2. The "D" losses coming on the road to 2 top 12 teams, and neutral to another top 20, doesn't look so bad against all of the quality wins. The out of conference SOS is pathetic, but overall 24 mitigates that some.
Not sure why you added the #10 Net team. You thought we could guess, but I for one can't guess why, other than it's a team we would NEVER think belongs that high,
Clear #1 seeds: A, D
#1 seeds (marginal): G, F
In the hunt: C, E
Not in contention: B
Overall #1: A, but D is very close.
Breakdown:
A & D have a ton of good Q1 wins, and the two best SOS.
G & F have fewer losses, but also fewer big wins and so are a tier lower but still #1 seeds.
C & E have only lost to really good teams, but don't have enough big wins to overtake G & F while having more losses.
B has two of the three worst losses and are thus disqualified.
Last edited by Acymetric; 01-28-2019 at 12:42 PM.
I think you got the NET and KPI mixed up, because the team I "added" is No. 8 in the NET and No. 10 in the KPI.
Also, I'm tempted to post who I'd choose, but that might make it a little more obvious who is who in the anonymous table. So I'll save that (with an explanation, of course, haha) for later
Scott Rich on the front page
Trinity BS 2012; University of Michigan PhD 2018
Duke Chronicle, Sports Online Editor: 2010-2012
K-Ville Blue Tenting 2009-2012
Unofficial Brian Zoubek Biographer
If you have questions about Michigan Basketball/Football, I'm your man!
Is anyone else only seeing four teams listed in the table?
Screen Shot 2019-01-28 at 1.39.10 PM.jpg
This is what I see... I hope I didn't make a mistake in creating the table! Are you perhaps viewing via the mobile browser?
Scott Rich on the front page
Trinity BS 2012; University of Michigan PhD 2018
Duke Chronicle, Sports Online Editor: 2010-2012
K-Ville Blue Tenting 2009-2012
Unofficial Brian Zoubek Biographer
If you have questions about Michigan Basketball/Football, I'm your man!
For me it's A C D F
For what it's worth, if I ran the numbers again in three hours I would probably come up with entirely different results.
See, I'm the opposite. Well, I mean I much prefer teams play better teams so that we have better games, I agree with you about December basketball. I don't really like making that part of seeding criteria though. To me, overall SOS is best used as a tiebreaker after considering quality of wins vs. quality of losses.
The discussion of SOS is interesting, and brings up one of the things that I'm sure will be hotly debated when it comes to seeding: with regards to non-conference scheduling what matters more, the overall SOS or the "top-tier" SOS (and corresponding ability to get top-tier victories)? One of the biggest flaws in the RPI was that your RPI could be artificially inflated if you chose to play a bunch of middling RPI teams that you were still definitely going to beat in your non-conference schedule while never playing any marquee, lose-able games... in contrast, a team could play a handful of solid opponents from power conferences, but have their RPI weighed down by a couple of games against teams with sub-300 RPIs. To me the NET has done a better job of correcting for this (it isn't by any means perfect, but it's an improvement) in its overall rankings, but the question itself still poses itself on the team sheet with how different committee members will weigh the overall NC SOS vs specific NC wins or losses.
Also, as a more specific sidebar... if the SOS turned you off from F, why wouldn't it also turn you off from C, which has a significantly worse NC SOS (in fact, it's the worst amongst the 7 teams listed here) as well as a slightly worse overall SOS? Just curious.
Scott Rich on the front page
Trinity BS 2012; University of Michigan PhD 2018
Duke Chronicle, Sports Online Editor: 2010-2012
K-Ville Blue Tenting 2009-2012
Unofficial Brian Zoubek Biographer
If you have questions about Michigan Basketball/Football, I'm your man!
I don't think historically that non-conference SOS (or SOS at all for that matter) has historically been a significant factor in seeding of the teams at the top of the bracket, other than the oddities of a Gonzaga or Nevada or Wichita St. outlier from a conference that doesn't provide opportunities against top teams.
When comparing, for instance, a 28-3 Virginia against a 27-4 Tennessee and a 26-5 Kansas, I don't recall their respective non-con SOSs weighing into the discussion much. I think the number of Q1/Q2 wins and the number of "bad" losses (plus conference championships) has really driven the decisions at the top of the bracket
Non-con SOS has typically been much more of a discussion point for the debate between the last few bubble teams -- and the Committee has often cited that as a factor for why a team gets left out. But, I'm hard put to recall any example of the Committee citing non-con SOS as a factor in choosing between major conference teams for #1 seeds.
Fun exercise. For me, ACGD in that order.
One thing that the committee is allowed to take into account (that is not on the table) is injuries, which I'm pretty sure played a role in Team A's most troublesome loss! Honestly, without knowing about that injury impact (or the head-to-head matchup, including injury), I'd probably make C the top seed, by a smidge.
To me, G and D raise the interesting comparative issue of relying too much on the tier-ing without looking at the quality of wins/loses within the tier. Of course, team D's eight Tier 1 wins seems really impressive at first until I notice that their best win was #11 and their second best win was #22. Whereas Team G has only four Tier 1 wins, but that includes wins against #2, #12, and #16. And in terms of the scheduling they can control, Team D played the 30th most difficult non-conference schedule.
I guess that if I could add any data category (other than injuries to significant players during games lost), some kind of mean victory margin against Tier 1 (or something like that) could be important for differentiation as well? Thanks for doing this!
159!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (hexi-decimally, that is)
Go Duke!!!!!! Go Blue Devils!!!!!!!!!!!! GTHCGTH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I think team G is missing a win...
Yeah, the the SOS to me is a phony issue. F played 11 Q1+2 games, G played 9. So the SOS different is made entirely of team G playing more Q3 vs team F playing more Q4 games. And so what, for a team vying for a #1 seed, there is essentially no difference between Q3 and Q4, as neither group poses a serious threat for a win. I don't consider playing more Q3 teams instead of Q4 to be "playing a tougher schdule" when evaluating the SOS for a #1 seed.