Top 25 discussion

[ronk]

Also, I'm curious what you like about ONU's resume.

Upon revisiting Ohio Northern, I'd say:
* Road win over Ohio Wesleyan is nice
* Competitive road loss to Marietta impresses me more than a LOT of wins by other teams
* Looking actually at the scores, they did get blown out by a very good Trine team, and road loss to B-W wasn't close either.
* Narrow home loss to a very good John Carroll team

I'm absolutely ( sorting through / working out / changing my mind ) what I value most personally. But I value a close loss to a very good team, more than the vast majority of wins (e.g. Hope destroying Olivet, while impressive, really should count for nothing when ranking them relatively against other top teams). I may be totally off base there, winning and losing is binary, and maybe we I should care more about the binary win.


Happy to see Bowdoin and ETBU fall a bit. They both have 2+ "bad losses" (as defined by me!)

and I also think all these teams have at least 1 "bad loss" with no "very impressive win":
Puget Sound
Mary Washington
UT Dallas
Catholic
St. Lawrence
St. John Fisher

So putting ONU above those 8 teams would get them into at least ORV territory.

I would not call ONU a top 25 team by any stretch.

I really like debating these out in the open, and disclosing my priors/assumptions. Thanks for pushing me on ONU.

Might as well define "very impressive win" and " bad loss" so the parameters of discussion are clear.

[Royals85]

Agree with Bowdoin,Amherst  and some other teams they can lose and move little but some other teams lose two games and your out!Like I said to Ryan when Amherst lost to Bates-If you look at the landmark women you will see he made an in excusable statement regarding Amherst not having all players on hand which was false.I hope he is not a voter because you see the prejudice in that statement!

[scottiedawg]

So Catholics loss to Scranton is a bad loss lmao??Hope your joking bud

It's all relative.

Among the 35 teams I've tracked so far, there are only 12 home losses against teams ranked outside the Massey top 40.

Only 12.

And yes, Catholic's loss to Scranton is one of those 12.

It's not a "bad loss" in a vacuum. But when compared to the entire D3 slate, there are only a couple of handfuls "worse."

[scottiedawg]

Spent the evening flipping through a lot of games.

Roger Williams looked better than Endicott, but not significantly so.

Mary Washington didn't look that good against Swarthmore.

CNU looked good against Methodist.

John Carroll impressed me against B-W a good deal. Interesting because they did not impress me in the loss to Transylvania. I never seemed super impressed with anything B-W did, but they hung right with JCU so must've done a lot of things well.

Marietta impressed against Capital.

Hope looked good against St. Mary's

Trine took a while to get going against Albion but turned it on.

DePauw was not that impressive against Denison.

UW-Eau Claire did not impress me vs. UW-River Falls

ONU looked alright vs Heidelberg

Not sure what to make of Moravian vs Scranton. Scranton's D was very good, but the offense was a bit underpowered.

Took a very quick look at Gustavus Adolphus

Ranking the teams I watched (this is super rough):
Hope
JCU
CNU
Marietta / B-W
Trine
Albion
Scranton / Gustavus Adolphus
UW-Eau Claire
Capital / ONU / DePauw
Roger Williams / UW-River Falls / UMW
St. Mary's / Swarthmore / Heidelberg / Moravian
Endicott / Methodist / Denison


Biggest takeaways: John Carroll looked very very solid, and UW-Eau Claire did not.

[Royals85]

Have to agree on Hope they play both ends of the ball.You will get that playing 4 years together!They are A very very good team !!!

[Baldini]

Spent the evening flipping through a lot of games.

Roger Williams looked better than Endicott, but not significantly so.

Mary Washington didn't look that good against Swarthmore.

CNU looked good against Methodist.

John Carroll impressed me against B-W a good deal. Interesting because they did not impress me in the loss to Transylvania. I never seemed super impressed with anything B-W did, but they hung right with JCU so must've done a lot of things well.

Marietta impressed against Capital.

Hope looked good against St. Mary's

Trine took a while to get going against Albion but turned it on.

DePauw was not that impressive against Denison.

UW-Eau Claire did not impress me vs. UW-River Falls

ONU looked alright vs Heidelberg

Not sure what to make of Moravian vs Scranton. Scranton's D was very good, but the offense was a bit underpowered.

Took a very quick look at Gustavus Adolphus

Ranking the teams I watched (this is super rough):
Hope
JCU
CNU
Marietta / B-W
Trine
Albion
Scranton / Gustavus Adolphus
UW-Eau Claire
Capital / ONU / DePauw
Roger Williams / UW-River Falls / UMW
St. Mary's / Swarthmore / Heidelberg / Moravian
Endicott / Methodist / Denison


Biggest takeaways: John Carroll looked very very solid, and UW-Eau Claire did not.

This is so internet forum stuff. You are telling me you watched 23 different teams and were able to form opinions on those 23 teams concerning their play this evening? 

[scottiedawg]

This is so internet forum stuff.

This is a......checks notes....internet forum.

You are telling me you watched 23 different teams and were able to form opinions on those 23 teams concerning their play this evening? 

I've been crunching through largely non-eye-test data, and working on the very tough and subjective problem of, how do we know a team is good. Then I watch a significant of game minutes on one day (easy to pause livestreams and skip through TOs, quarter/half breaks), to get single-game eye-test snapshots on teams. I know that's extremely limited data. My opinions will be updated with future single-game snapshots.

Seems highly unproductive to crap on that.

If you watched any of those games and have a different opinion, would love to chat about it.

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

You might quibble with the order at the top, maybe, but do you really have major problems with that ranking? Seems incredibly defensible to me, especially given the limited sample size.

[CNU85]

Pretty sure that's how opinions work.

[Baldini]

This is so internet forum stuff.

This is a......checks notes....internet forum.

You are telling me you watched 23 different teams and were able to form opinions on those 23 teams concerning their play this evening? 

I've been crunching through largely non-eye-test data, and working on the very tough and subjective problem of, how do we know a team is good. Then I watch a significant of game minutes on one day (easy to pause livestreams and skip through TOs, quarter/half breaks), to get single-game eye-test snapshots on teams. I know that's extremely limited data. My opinions will be updated with future single-game snapshots.

Seems highly unproductive to crap on that.

If you watched any of those games and have a different opinion, would love to chat about it.

Internet stuff as in taking a small sample of something and forming a strong opinion about it. Which you have done here.

To quote you, 'never seemed super impressed with anything B-W did'. Baldwin Wallace has 3 loses on the season, all on the road to Hope, Trine and John Carroll last night by 3 points. They have beaten Marietta by 24 and your beloved Ohio Northern by 17, yet in a few minutes of watching a game last nights against a top 12 opponent you have formed this opinion. BW is going to be a tough out for anyone not named Hope.

'John Carroll impressed me against B-W a good deal. Interesting because they did not impress me in the loss to Transylvania'. Any chance that Transylvania might have had something to do with that? Transylvania defeated JC by 8 points and that game never was really close, it is a game I watched every minute of in person, not a few minutes online. No sane person who watched that game would come away thinking JC should be ranked ahead of Transylvania, yet that is exactly what you did a few posts back.

I'm glad to see you posting and trying to get some discussion going, but you shouldn't be surprised to see some pushback from outlandish, microwaved opinions either.   

[gordonmann]

Hey at least we're having discussions and Scottiedawg is putting himself out there. Be kind!

To be clear on one obvious thing that shapes the discussion (I like to state the obvious -- it makes me feel smart), the Top 25 voters only have 25 spots on their ballot. Some may have a handful of teams they are also considering or even have those teams ordered No. 26 through whatever. But we don't capture that through our process.

So, if you take someone like Ohio Northern, they don't have a resume that clearly calls out for Top 25 selection. All but one voter has made that determination. So whether they are the No. 26 on a couple people's list or nowhere on any list, it'll look exactly the same.

That's the reason we say (sometimes directly to schools) no one is ranked No. 26 in our poll, even if they are the highest team among "others receiving votes." 

I'll confess to being the Puget Sound voter. You're right that they don't have a signature win. I kept them on my ballot because I watched them play Whitman even (actually led the 7th-ranked Blues) until their top player got hurt. If she's out for any period of time, I'd drop them off my ballot.

Mary Washington's loss to Swarthmore will cause me to re-evaluate CNU's win over them. But I still like UMW dismantling Gettysburg who's first place in a solid conference and has beaten teams 2, 3 and 4 already there.

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

No sane person who watched that game would come away thinking JC should be ranked ahead of Transylvania, yet that is exactly what you did a few posts back.

Where?  I didn't see him mentioned Transy at all, except to say JCU didn't look very good against them.

[scottiedawg]

My top 8 would be:
Hope (but their resume is not as good as a few teams below)
Simpson
UW-Whitewater
Trine
John Carroll
UW-Eau Claire
Marietta
Transylvania (I've changed my tune, they've got a solid resume)

guessing here ;-)

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

My top 8 would be:
Hope (but their resume is not as good as a few teams below)
Simpson
UW-Whitewater
Trine
John Carroll
UW-Eau Claire
Marietta
Transylvania (I've changed my tune, they've got a solid resume)

guessing here ;-)

Ah.  I didn't scroll back enough.

[scottiedawg]

That's the reason we say (sometimes directly to schools) no one is ranked No. 26 in our poll, even if they are the highest team among "others receiving votes." 

Makes total sense. This is something I need to ruminate on for sure.

I guess one argument could be: "While I don't think ONU has a top 25 resume, there are a handful of teams that voters think DO, and I disagree with those opinions."

Would you think there are actual differences (beyond semantics) between "Ranked 26th" and "Received the 26th most 'Top 25' votes" ?