D3 vs. D1/D2/NAIA/NCCAA

[Hugenerd]

Army  (NCAA-D1)  62,  Mount St. Vincent  56     Closest score to D1 this season

Army beat Harvard by 3 (at Army) this year.  MIT plays Harvard in a week.  Maybe they have a shot?

[Mr. Ypsi]

Army  (NCAA-D1)  62,  Mount St. Vincent  56     Closest score to D1 this season

Army beat Harvard by 3 (at Army) this year.  MIT plays Harvard in a week.  Maybe they have a shot?

Assuming MIT is at least 4 points better than Mount St. Vincent, they've got a shot!

[Hugenerd]

Army  (NCAA-D1)  62,  Mount St. Vincent  56     Closest score to D1 this season

Army beat Harvard by 3 (at Army) this year.  MIT plays Harvard in a week.  Maybe they have a shot?

Assuming MIT is at least 4 points better than Mount St. Vincent, they've got a shot!

And Harvard plays equally well on the road as at home.

I'm not trying to say they are the favorites, I'm just saying there's a chance.

[KnightSlappy]

Army  (NCAA-D1)  62,  Mount St. Vincent  56     Closest score to D1 this season

Army beat Harvard by 3 (at Army) this year.  MIT plays Harvard in a week.  Maybe they have a shot?

Assuming MIT is at least 4 points better than Mount St. Vincent, they've got a shot!

And Harvard plays equally well on the road as at home.

I'm not trying to say they are the favorites, I'm just saying there's a chance.

Any Dumb & Dumber fans in the house?


hugenerd: Hit me with it! Just give it to me straight! We came a long way just to play you, Harvard. The least you can do is level with me. What are our chances?

Harvard: Not good.

hugenerd: You mean, not good like one out of a hundred?

Harvard: I'd say more like one out of a million.

[pause]

hugenerd: So you're tellin' me there's a chance... *YEAH!*

[Hugenerd]

Army  (NCAA-D1)  62,  Mount St. Vincent  56     Closest score to D1 this season

Army beat Harvard by 3 (at Army) this year.  MIT plays Harvard in a week.  Maybe they have a shot?

Assuming MIT is at least 4 points better than Mount St. Vincent, they've got a shot!

And Harvard plays equally well on the road as at home.

I'm not trying to say they are the favorites, I'm just saying there's a chance.

Any Dumb & Dumber fans in the house?


hugenerd: Hit me with it! Just give it to me straight! We came a long way just to play you, Harvard. The least you can do is level with me. What are our chances?

Harvard: Not good.

hugenerd: You mean, not good like one out of a hundred?

Harvard: I'd say more like one out of a million.

[pause]

hugenerd: So you're tellin' me there's a chance... *YEAH!*

I was thinking the same thing when I wrote it. Honest.

But I think their chances are better than one in a million.

[oldchap]

Let me interject here and put in my 2 cents...

Since we're talking about MIT, I'm sure there are plenty of really smart (and academically well educated) people reading this forum. Therefore, I will call on an interesting, if not well known method for determining the outcome of a specific game. I'm talking about the "Massey Ratings" (http://www.masseyratings.com/).

I'm not going to go in the fine details of how this mathematical model works, however I will point you to one of the elements of their model that you can find here: http://www.masseyratings.com/theory/sched.htm

In there, written in laymens terms, you can find assumptions of probability for team A to beat team B. As you can see a "Great" team has 100% chance to beat a "Pathetic" team, but only 97% to beat a "Bad" team.

Of course the naming convention (great, good, average, etc.) used to rank teams is purely arbritrary because being classified as a "Great" team or a "Pathetic" team is not a judgment call. It will depend on your game history, in other words your record and who you played against.

I will let you guys debate this more objective way of looking at it.... 

[Hugenerd]

Let me interject here and put in my 2 cents...

Since we're talking about MIT, I'm sure there are plenty of really smart (and academically well educated) people reading this forum. Therefore, I will call on an interesting, if not well known method for determining the outcome of a specific game. I'm talking about the "Massey Ratings" (http://www.masseyratings.com/).

I'm not going to go in the fine details of how this mathematical model works, however I will point you to one of the elements of their model that you can find here: http://www.masseyratings.com/theory/sched.htm

In there, written in laymens terms, you can find assumptions of probability for team A to beat team B. As you can see a "Great" team has 100% chance to beat a "Pathetic" team, but only 97% to beat a "Bad" team.

Of course the naming convention (great, good, average, etc.) used to rank teams is purely arbritrary because being classified as a "Great" team or a "Pathetic" team is not a judgment call. It will depend on your game history, in other words your record and who you played against.

I will let you guys debate this more objective way of looking at it....  

I am pretty sure everyone who reads these boards is pretty well versed in the Massey ratings, because they are the only ratings that provide a mathematical comparison between divisions (that includes d3 teams).  However, there are a few flaws in your attempt to start a quantitative, or objective, analysis on this game.  1) Most importantly, the Massey ratings are not published until 2010 so there are no ratings for either team yet.  Therefore, even if you wanted to assign a number to the probability of MIT upsetting Harvard, you would be unable to at this point. 2)  Without a doubt Harvard will be the favorite in this game and I dont think it makes a big difference whether an algorithm says it is 2 to 1 or 30 to 1.  3) Anything can happen on any given day.  Massey publishes a list of the most "improbable" victories each year.  If the numbers always held, that list would not exist.  4) The reason Massey does not publish the ratings this early in the season is because there is still a relatively small sample size of games.  The way the rankings work are by solving an optimization function.  Meaning that every game is taken into account in the rankings (unlike human polls where people mainly just look at the prior week).  So the final rankings are based on minimizing some cost function (based on whatever criteria Massey is using) so that, in effect, every team is ranked in their most probable position in the rankings.  If there were never upsets, the rankings would be flawless, but because of these upsets you have to find the most likely ranking for each team.  Without going into more unnecessary details, like any rating system, the more games you have the more precise the rankings become and therefore providing ratings at this point in the season is rather arbitrary and even a few "unlikely" results can have a large impact on rankings.

My Final Conclusion: MIT has chance to win.

[sac]

Any Dumb & Dumber fans in the house?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qULSszbA-Ek&feature=related

you just can't have that one without this one

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDLoT5sWOmE&feature=related

[hopefan]

Games of 12/20/09

Augsburg  68,  Sagrado Corazon  (Other)  65
Linfield  78,  Simpson (Cal.)  (NAIA-D2)  71
Nova Southeastern  (NCAA-D2)  68,  Goucher  58
St. Mary's (Md.)  71,  Universidad Metropolitana  (Other)  70

[Hugenerd]

Good news, the Massey Ratings are out.  Bad news, they are only available for D1 currently.

But I can tell you this according to oldchap's requested analysis:

Harvard is ranked 46th without MOV and 53 with MOV and have a raw score of 11.79, putting them in the "Good" team category.  Therefore, here is the probability of MIT beating them, depending on how you rate MIT:

MIT is a(n) _______ team (compared to all teams in the country):
"Great" - MIT has 75% chance of winning
"Good" - MIT has 50% chance of winning
"Average" - MIT has 25% chance of winning
"Bad" - MIT has 10% chance of winning
"Pathetic" - MIT has 3% chance of winning

Some examples of current "average" teams that are listed for d1: Princeton, UC-Riverside, Columbia
Some examples of current "bad" teams that are listed for d1: Bethune Cookman, Monmouth, Navy, High Point, American
Some examples of current "pathetic" teams that are listed for d1: Alcorn State, Houston Baptist, Bryant, Mississippi Valley State

Since American already lost to a d3 team this preseason, I am going to use unsubstantiated logic and say that MIT has about a 10% chance of winning the game, plus or minus 10%.

[hopefan]

Games of 12/21/09

St. Martin's (NCAA-D2)  79,  Pacific Lutheran  58
Susquehanna  96, Sagrado Corazon  (other)  87
UW-Oshkosh  85,  Silver Lake  (USCAA)  55

[oldchap]

Since American already lost to a d3 team this preseason, I am going to use unsubstantiated logic and say that MIT has about a 10% chance of winning the game, plus or minus 10%.

Lloyd would have been happy with these odds!!! 

[Ralph Turner]

Alcorn State 63, Mississippi College 61  (November 2nd exhibition)

http://www.d3hoops.com/school/MISS/mens/2010

[hopefan]

Revise W_L  with UMPI now considered NAIA-D2

D3 record vs:
                    W         L           
NCAA D1       0          38
NCAA D2      10         39
NAIA D1        8          20
NAIA D2        91        86             
NCCAA          31        14
USCAA          58        17
Other            36         2

[Gregory Sager]

Moving UMPI from D3 to NAIA-2 is what's known in nautical terms as "jettisoning the ballast."