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For those that hang on the too-frequently released brackets, I’s clear to me that the bracketologists DO NOT start each bracket with a blank sheet of paper. They are caught between defending their last predication and making a new one.
That’s why I prefer the Dance Card when evaluating the bubble. Math makes no predictions, nor has any memory. The results simply reflect all of the information available at that particular moment.
Maybe the best way to think of the media-driven brackets is that they are sort of like a moving average. When a team is falling or rising, it takes a little time for the actual story to show up.
Is this post in poor taste? Yes
But I’m going to do what the referees have done too many times over Carolina fouls…look the other way.
Does this mean we don’t have to bother with anymore of those long analytical “bubble=watch” posts ?
You should be so lucky.
From wufpup’s linked Jerry Palm article:
Conference records/standings. Neither appears. Teams are being judged on their entire seasons, not their conference seasons. The only conference-specific data that appears is the strength of schedule within the conference.
If this is true, then it is certainly new. There are a number of past instances where losing conference records are the only thing that stands out. One season in particular stands out to me, when a bubbly UMD (with GW) beat Duke twice but didn’t make the NCAAT.
I went to high school at Gastonia Ashbrook,
I didn’t know this. Is this the school that Worthy went to?
I went to Hickory High and we were in the same conference with a Gastonia school. Being the smallest school in the conference led to some sad seasons.
Key game for Pitt w/r/t the bubble. It’d be nice to overtake Syracuse in the ACC standings, but I have to go for ‘Cuse here since Pitt is sharing some bubble space w/ us.
I’m pulling for Pitt so that it will give State another Top50 win. Plus it is hard for me to pull for SYR and Boehim (for no really good reason),
seems too subjective in my opinion. Almost like its better to have a friend on the committee or something. There dont seem to be any set rules and objectives.
I have a funny feeling State is going to get screwed this year based on our recent luck with the selection process. I hope I am wrong
While having friends is never a bad thing, the Selection Committee is surprisingly consistent from year to year. The authors of the Dance Card discuss this because without consistency they could never have developed an algorithm to predict what the Selection Committee will do. The accuracy of the Dance Card algorithm proves to me that the Selection Committee is pretty consistent.
However, I do not want State to be in the last-four-in/first-four-out discussion. Since the final decision is made by people, there might be some that feel that State got a gift last year and someone else should get one this year. Remember…just because you’re not paranoid doesn’t mean that they aren’t out to get you.
I’m not sure why the Cheaters are #15.
#15 in what? If you’re talking about the polls, there is no reason to even waste time wondering.
They’re 12th in RPI rankings with the 3rd rated SOS. That high SOS counts for a lot; just like it does for State.
Mike Gminski’s Fiance Passes Away
http://www.dukebasketballreport.com/2015/2/16/8044315/mike-gminskis-fiance-passes-away
One other point is that the Selection Committee is fairly consistent from year to year. This conclusion is supported by the stats behind the Dance Card. So even if you don’t like the process, you ignore it at your own risk.
That’s an interesting distinction between “good” and “deserving”. MoV vs W/L record is also interesting.
First of all, let’s dismiss SMU from our discussion. Based on a number of cases going back to the Herbble, SMU was penalized by the Selection Committee for their OOC schedule, not just their wins or losses. If their OOC SOS was 200 instead of 300+, they would have received an at-large bid with the exact same record. If they had done better in their conference tourney, they would have been in (See the Herbble years for proof.) Of course that is a conclusion and not a fact…but when it predictably happens year after year it is close enough to a fact for me.
Quoting the Selection Committee doesn’t prove much because they so often contradict themselves when you pile up comments from different years. For me, what they do is more important than what they say.
I’m not convinced that MoV should be used to evaluate the 2nd or 3rd place team in a low or mid-major versus a team in the middle of a large, power conference. And to my mind this is the key issue that the Selection Committee has to wrestle with.
The bottom 150-200 teams are quite easy to eliminate. The conference champs and the top 20 or so at-large bids are easy. It’s the last 10 or so at-large bids that cause all of the hand-wringing…both on the committee and the bracketologists.
It’s clear that the Selection Committee has decided that it is going to pick “deserving” teams based on actual victories over good teams. The Selection Committee also has decided that it is going to penalize marginal teams that try to rack up a large number of wins against a weak schedule…and that penalty has been used on both mid-majors and teams from the power conferences. I see nothing wrong with this process; though I may be biased because State has fallen on the right side of the bubble so many times.
The selection process is fairly well understood by people like Lunardi and Palm and I think that we do a pretty good job around here. IF we can figure out, then the coaches and athletic directors pretty well know what is expected as well. So when they schedule like Greenburg, Herb, and SMU last year…then they know the risks they are taking and will have to live with the results.
Side Note:
The main issue with the process that I use is the assumption that a fixed measuring stick can be used year after year to evaluate the ACC. I use that simplistic assumption because I’m not going to go analyze 100+ teams until I’m getting paid (make that very-well paid) to do it.Sorry, but it sounds like you are arguing in circles or maybe I’m just not following you.
You claim that SMU’s schedule than the NCAAT gave them credit for. Your proof is a ranking in a different computer algorithm…with no specific explanation of why that algorithm is better. Which pretty much goes for your claims of using MoV instead of W/L records. I don’t know of any ranking system in any sport that uses anything other than W/L record.
(PS…determining who the good teams are is not the same thing as predicting who will win the games between those teams.)
Maybe there is a better algorithm than RPI. (But if SMU is your shining proof, then I’m not impressed.) I haven’t studied any of them because they aren’t used for anything real. I have spent my time trying to figure out how the Selection Committee reaches their decisions. If you want to tilt at windmills, then let me get out of your way,
Also, why doesn’t SMU get credit for a close loss to Virginia at a neutral site
Missed this earlier.
How close do you have to be to be considered a close loss?
Is a two-point loss worth half of a one-pt loss?
Is a 3-pt loss worth one-third as much?
Does a bad loss offset a close loss?To me, a loss is a loss. I’m not into supporting moral victories…that show up as losses in the record book.
If you don’t see a problem with a rating system that is arbitrarily weighted, has little predictive value, and doesn’t incorporate margin of victory, then I guess we’re done here.
The RPI formula has been adjusted several times over the years, so “arbitrary” isn’t really accurate. You’ve mentioned several other formulas that you claim are better. While it’s obvious that they’re different, it’s not obvious that they are in fact better.
I don’t want a “formula” that claims to be predictive. The job of the Selection Committee is to evaluate what has already happened, not predict the future.
Using margin of victory is a double-edged sword as discovered during the BCS era. Plus there are many games where the final margin is not indicative of how close the game was for 39 minutes…then the fouling and missed 3-pt shots skew the final margin.
So an individual win or loss for you has more effect than an individual win or loss by an opponent’s opponent (because there are so many more games that go into that 25%), but in cumulative, the record of your opponents’ opponents is given the same weight as your record.
That is true, but is not as significant as you are making it because that same factor figures into every team’s RPI. So what matters is the delta from one team to the next. So what generates a delta?
– Better winning percentage
– Playing in a better conference (affects both opp’s WP and opp/opp WP)
– Playing better OOC opponentsWhen you are comparing teams from the power conferences, your team’s winning percentage will produce a bigger delta than the SOS. When you get similar winning percentages, then obviously SOS is generating the difference (Thus explaining the relatively large difference between State and Clemson.)
It has always appeared to me that the Selection Committee asks teams to prove that they are good by beating other good teams. Mid-majors like Gonzaga get that and schedule appropriately. Teams like SMU, and coaches like Herb and Seth Greenburg don’t and sometimes pay the consequences.
So the RPI and the Selection Committee reward teams for playing and beating good teams and penalizes those that don’t. Personally, I’m OK with that philosophy.
More on SMU from last year
According to Wellman, scheduling was the deciding factor between State as the last team in at 21-13 and SMU as the last team out at 23-9.
“In SMU’s case, their downfall, their weakness, was their schedule,” Wellman said. “Their non-conference strength of schedule was ranked 302nd. It was one of the worst non-conference strength of schedules. Their overall strength of schedule ranked 129. That would have been, by far, the worst at-large strength of schedule going into the tournament. The next worst at large strength of schedule was 91.”
Bottom line….pumping up your record by beating weak teams might impress the AP voters, but not the NCAAT Selection Committee.
The way RPI is calculated, the games you win and lose are exactly as important as the games your opponents’ opponents win and lose.
Not true at all. I’ve torn apart the RPI calks in the past. I may have to try and find that or do a new one.
but just last year SMU clearly should’ve been in.
SMU fell into the same pit that has swallowed many teams and coaches that insist on scheduling an OOC schedule that was an absolute joke. It happened to VT and Seth Greenburg several times, got Herb at ASU once, and got Penn State several years ago. It’s a repeatable phenomen that has been discussed here as well as by Jerry Palm (now at CBS Sports).
You can argue whether this is fair or not, but that is a different argument. Combine a poor OOC schedule with middle of conference regular season results and poor conference tourney performance and you will quite often end up in the NIT.
absolutely bonkers it is that we’re still using RPI to talk about which teams deserve tourney berths. It’s such a terrible, meaningless statistic, and it boggles my mind that it wasn’t phased out years ago.
If RPI was blindly used to fill the NCAAT, I would agree. But the Selection Committee has an entire process that it goes through to fill and seed the tournament. RPI is clearly a part of that process, but still only one part.
If the process were terrible, then it would be easy to point out teams that were unfairly left out of the NCAAT. It’s always possible to argue Team A vs B, but I can’t really think of any recent teams that clearly deserved to be in, but were left out.
I never expected UNLV to win the NCAAT….but then they had Stacey Augmon and Larry Johnson along with Greg Anthony at the same time.
Is my memory correct? Didn’t you say the bubble was weak last year?
Don’t really remember. But it has been a while since I’ve seen a team left out of the NCAAT with a truly compelling resume. Unless you want to argue for the teams punitively left out because of an embarrassingly easy OOC schedule.
Maybe it’s always going to be weak.
Since it doesn’t matter who we pull for, I try not to get too wrapped up in the fine details.
But in general, you want any team that you play twice to win against a team that you only play once. The two games against UNC, Clemson, WF, and UVA go into the calculations twice. So the better that these four do, the better State’s SOS.
However, you want any bubble team that you beat to win and move into the RPI Top-50 so that they become another important victory. So I have no problem pulling for Pitt over UVA.
A further complication….right now, State is in the 8-9 game and the winner would likely face UVA on Thurs. Which means that we would want the other Wed teams to lose.
Bottom line…too complicated for me to weigh all of the various conflicts to use the RPI argument to sway my emotional choices.
The statistics presented compare ratings of the champions. But to be fair, is it not possible that the non-champions had coaches that also stressed efficient offense and defense? In other words, there are some intangibles that cannot be measured (Cinderellas excluded). Sometimes one team is just luckier than the opposition (Again, Cinderellas excluded).
If you’re consistently winning, luck has nothing to do with it.
