Compiled Rankings and the Weather

General NCS Basketball3

Earlier this week, we discussed Massey’s compiled rankings and what they meant. A suggestion was made to look at the compiled rankings just like we do the weather …where a percentage is attached to any given forecast. I’ve been thinking about Nate’s suggestion and think that it might be a good way to turn the compiled rankings into a projected seeding.

If you remember, I complained about losing two rankings from one week to the next in the compilation. Well, the two missing rankings are there today….so they were either added after I originally looked or I am losing my mind. 😉

If you are familiar with distribution (or frequency) plots, then here’s one for you. If not, here is the data in tabular format, with each team’s most likely seeding…based on games through last Sunday.

Seeding

NC State

UNC

BC

3

9%

—

—

4

45%

—

9%

5

27%

27%

36%

6

12%

45%

24%

7

—

9%

15%

There’s a lot of basketball left to be played…and there is a lot to play for. One of the things to watch for is if one of these three teams can pull away from the other two. Much like we can watch the middle third of the ACC and see if one of those teams can scrape together enough wins to make the tourney. One possibility for both groups is that no one team steps up and they all sort of go down together…..one group down through the seedings and the other group down to the NIT.

Here are the remaining regular season schedules for the three teams fighting for second place.

 

REMAINING SCHEDULES

 

 

NC State

 

UNC

 

Boston College

 

(115) Va Tech

A

(103) W Forest

A

——

 

(22) UNC

H

(18) NC State

A

(64) Virginia

A

(36) BC

H

(44) Maryland

H

(18) NC State

A

——

 

(64) Virginia

H

(103) W. Forest

H

(103) W. Forest

A

(1) Duke

A

(115) Va Tech

H

About VaWolf82

Engineer living in Central Va. and senior curmudgeon amongst SFN authors One wife, two kids, one dog, four vehicles on insurance, and four phones on cell plan...looking forward to empty nest status. Graduated 1982

General NCS Basketball

3 Responses to Compiled Rankings and the Weather

  1. BJD95 02/17/2006 at 9:28 AM #

    Very informative – love the percentage likelihood for various seedings.

  2. Nate Johnson 02/17/2006 at 2:10 PM #

    Fascinating. It will be interesting to watch these numbers over the next couple of weeks, especially if there’s an upset somewhere.

    Ditto the interestingness to perhaps look back once the tournament is set and see how much skill this composite shows in picking seeds at different points during the season. In theory, it should be better, sooner than any one index alone — as well as being a more stable index from week to week.

    Thanks for the compilation!

  3. VaWolf82 02/17/2006 at 2:43 PM #

    One of the problems is that we will know the seedings before we get the last compiled rankings. However, we should be able to project up, down, or sideways based on the ACCT performance.

    Another problem is that every “computer” ranking that I’ve taken a look at (which is not that many) uses the entire season to develop the rankings….a win or loss in November is worth exactly the same as the ACCT. However, from past experience, we know that the Selection Committee is highly swayed by how the team finishes the regular season and conference tournament.

    This is one of the few advantages of using polls to project seedings…..because they are also swayed by what a team has done lately…except in a case like GW. I’m not sure that anyone outside the Selection Committee has any idea what will happen to team like GW that is feasting on a super-light schedule. If I remember, I will include something on GW next time.

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