Top 25 talk

[iwumichigander]

You can't be an effective Marietta booster, or even a halfway-decent gadfly, if your attitude alienates people into skipping right past your posts or abandoning this particular board altogether. And sac is right: If you have a personal issue with someone, take it to PMs. Don't air your dirty laundry here.

Seriously? After this post?

Physician, heal thyself.

I don't have a personal issue with you. I do find it annoying that you've hijacked the board with a wearying repetition of the same argument on behalf of Marietta, but annoyance with someone's posts isn't a personal issue.

I'm simply trying to explain to you how you're coming across, and how it's negatively affecting the very thing that you're trying to do here, which is to persuade everyone that you're right about Marietta being undervalued in the poll. But it appears that my effort was wasted, so I'll cease and desist.

Why is it that if I repeat something, it's a problem; but when someone else repeats something to me, it's not and somehow I'm the hijacker?

Curious, that.

Scrolling, scrolling,scrolling,boring

[HOPEful]

"The equation works out that you know roughly as much after 12 NFL games (75% of the season) as you do after 14 NBA games (17%), 36 NHL games (44%), and 69 MLB games (43%)." For PL soccer, it's even higher, 47% of games. Point: basketball is by far the least random.

Hmmmm... 30 NHL teams, 30 NBA teams, 32 NFL teams, 20 EPL teams and...

424 D3 Basketball teams. Totally the same thing though... 

[Flying Dutch Fan]

"The equation works out that you know roughly as much after 12 NFL games (75% of the season) as you do after 14 NBA games (17%), 36 NHL games (44%), and 69 MLB games (43%)." For PL soccer, it's even higher, 47% of games. Point: basketball is by far the least random.

Hmmmm... 30 NHL teams, 30 NBA teams, 32 NFL teams, 20 EPL teams and...

424 D3 Basketball teams. Totally the same thing though... 

My thought exactly - add the 241 games against non D3 teams thus far this season and that's 665 total teams.

[ElRetornodelEspencio]

"The equation works out that you know roughly as much after 12 NFL games (75% of the season) as you do after 14 NBA games (17%), 36 NHL games (44%), and 69 MLB games (43%)." For PL soccer, it's even higher, 47% of games. Point: basketball is by far the least random.

Hmmmm... 30 NHL teams, 30 NBA teams, 32 NFL teams, 20 EPL teams and...

424 D3 Basketball teams. Totally the same thing though... 

It's not about the number of teams. It's about the randomness of results inherent in the game and league. I will admit being surprised by the NFL calculation, but I guess maybe I shouldn't have been given the presence and nature of their salary cap, and overall parity in the league. I think in general football is more robust to randomness, but it's the way the NFL is set up that sets up susceptibility to it.

The PL is the opposite. There couldn't be fewer safeguards to ensure parity if you tried, so the randomness is pretty much all a result of the game play itself.

[smedindy]

Well,

A. Metrics and analytics are a big part of my job.
B. I've been a analytics guy since I first read a Bill James Baseball Abstract in the early 80's. Before then, I had a Baseball Encyclopedia in grade school and loved to digest basketball stats.
C. I've followed Sagarin since it was published in USA Today, and Massey when I learned about it for D-3.
D. I've followed KenPom since mid-2006 or so.
E. I used to do my own damn rankings but stopped because I have a job and two writing gigs, a stat gig here at CWU, a new wife, meals to cook, dogs to walk, and books to read.
F. So, when I vote in the posters poll, I'll look at Massey, look at the Top 25, dive in to teams that are highly ranked in both, and come up with my opinion.

My observation is this, and it is supported by Sagarin and Massey. It takes a while for all of the teams to connect to each other, especially in D-3 when some teams spend a lot of their pre-conference playing non D-3 teams. I suspect now Massey is all connected, but in my opinion, until conference play gets going, we don't really know where teams are within a 10-15 place ranking.

Mind you, thinking Marietta is 4th or 5th versus 1st, when you have 400+ teams, is in the realm of error or "damn, close".

Plus, the NBA is NOT college basketball. The level between the worst NBA team and the best is very small, compared to the worst D-3 team and the best.

And yet, we have results like Delaware State beating St. John's, Finlandia beating Alma, Wisconsin-Superior beating Hamline who beat St. Thomas (think about that)!

Right now, Whitman is #1 in Massey. They may be the best team, they may not be. After 1/4 of the season, it's still to early to really tell.

[sac]

EPL, NHL and NBA are closed leagues in which all of the teams play each other at least once.   NFL and college basketball are not like that at all.  In D3 the 420 teams makes the randomness of goofy results (or more random) much more likely to occur vs the other sports.   The lack of fully intertwined schedules  (relatively) and the still mostly regional aspects of the sport makes ranking teams with high degrees of accuracy very difficult.


With that said, Massey is much more accurate even in early December than most people are willing to give it credit for.  The error range or variability is simply wider this time of year.

[ElRetornodelEspencio]

F. So, when I vote in the posters poll, I'll look at Massey, look at the Top 25, dive in to teams that are highly ranked in both, and come up with my opinion.

My observation is this, and it is supported by Sagarin and Massey. It takes a while for all of the teams to connect to each other, especially in D-3 when some teams spend a lot of their pre-conference playing non D-3 teams. I suspect now Massey is all connected, but in my opinion, until conference play gets going, we don't really know where teams are within a 10-15 place ranking.

Mind you, thinking Marietta is 4th or 5th versus 1st, when you have 400+ teams, is in the realm of error or "damn, close".

Plus, the NBA is NOT college basketball. The level between the worst NBA team and the best is very small, compared to the worst D-3 team and the best.

And yet, we have results like Delaware State beating St. John's, Finlandia beating Alma, Wisconsin-Superior beating Hamline who beat St. Thomas (think about that)!

Right now, Whitman is #1 in Massey. They may be the best team, they may not be. After 1/4 of the season, it's still to early to really tell.

Obviously we know transitivity doesn't really work in sports, for the most part. I would say that where there's little separation, we never really know "true" ranking. Like what's the difference between a team with a .78 rating and .76? But that's not the situation with the top 2 teams right now. They're pretty significantly extended from even the top chase pack. Real world results often obscure who the best team is as well -- the best team in a game doesn't always win.

I would further argue that the difference you're talking about in level between NBA teams and D3 only decreases the effect of randomness and allows more knowledge gain earlier. I don't really think the total number of teams in D3 is all that relevant because a large number of those teams are not competitive with the ones that are on topic for this thread -- just like in D1 there are 300+ plus teams but only a small fraction of those are serious top 25 contenders.

Sagarin used to have a little bit in the narrative on his page for a ranking that said whether the teams in it were connected or not. I don't think it's there anymore. He probably got too many emails asking what it meant

[HOPEful]

Obviously we know transitivity doesn't really work in sports, for the most part. I would say that where there's little separation, we never really know "true" ranking. Like what's the difference between a team with a .78 rating and .76? But that's not the situation with the top 2 teams right now. They're pretty significantly extended from even the top chase pack...

Are you really arguing that Whitman is far and away the best team in the country? They have 1 win against a team with a winning record. And that's Whitworth, who has 0 wins against teams with winning records. Massey is one measuring tool and a very good one at that. But it's just one tool.

The point of a human poll is to look at more than just computer rankings. Compare the play of Howell vs. McCarthy vs. Edwards vs. Flannery... Compare the teams TO margains, effeciency, etc. Massey tells me Whitman is #1, but it also tells me they have the #125 defense so far this season vs. Marietta's #37, Amherst's #26, and Babson's #76. Personally, f I were a D3 voter, I'd still have Whitman behind Amherst, Babson, and Marietta, playing a little wait and see until they go against Wooster and Marietta. I'd also be totally fine with voters who think they're #1... 

[ElRetornodelEspencio]

Obviously we know transitivity doesn't really work in sports, for the most part. I would say that where there's little separation, we never really know "true" ranking. Like what's the difference between a team with a .78 rating and .76? But that's not the situation with the top 2 teams right now. They're pretty significantly extended from even the top chase pack...

Are you really arguing that Whitman is far and away the best team in the country? They have 1 win against a team with a winning record. And that's Whitworth, who has 0 wins against teams with winning records. Massey is one measuring tool and a very good one at that. But it's just one tool.

The point of a human poll is to look at more than just computer rankings. Compare the play of Howell vs. McCarthy vs. Edwards vs. Flannery... Compare the teams TO margains, effeciency, etc. Massey tells me Whitman is #1, but it also tells me they have the #125 defense so far this season vs. Marietta's #37, Amherst's #26, and Babson's #76. Personally, f I were a D3 voter, I'd still have Whitman behind Amherst, Babson, and Marietta, playing a little wait and see until they go against Wooster and Marietta. I'd also be totally fine with voters who think they're #1...

Basically, Whitman has soundly beaten pretty good teams with challenging schedules and Whitworth has beaten several of the same teams.

Massey's offensive and defensive ratings are not tempo-neutral.

Playing the wait and see game only sets a team to not be rewarded as it should be for what it has already done.

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

New poll out. http://www.d3hoops.com/top25/men/2016-17/week3

[smedindy]

Whitman's claim to a high Massey is running all over St. Olaf and beating Whitworth at home by 14, though they only beat a gack-worthy Willamette on the road by 15.

St. Olaf seems to be down this year, and it looks like that Whitman game got away from them in the second half thanks to Whitman's pressure. Using a pressure defense can cause the points to pile up against you if you have issues. But with only 6-7 games, that one game is going to be muted a bit.

[ElRetornodelEspencio]

Whitman's claim to a high Massey is running all over St. Olaf and beating Whitworth at home by 14, though they only beat a gack-worthy Willamette on the road by 15.

St. Olaf seems to be down this year, and it looks like that Whitman game got away from them in the second half thanks to Whitman's pressure. Using a pressure defense can cause the points to pile up against you if you have issues. But with only 6-7 games, that one game is going to be muted a bit.

St. Olaf has played one of the toughest schedules in the country so far, and plays in a tough conference too. Massey has them top 50 but because of their schedule projected to only go 14-11 or so. Their pure power rating rank is 34, showing how tough their schedule has been and how competitive they've been against it in most games.

Similar to John Carroll, whose pure power rating rank is 38.

[mailsy]

I'm curious how much closer Neumann will get to the top 25 this week.

mea culpa 

[HOPEful]

How does Babson get 3 first place votes after losing to Amherst?!

[KnightSlappy]

How does Babson get 3 first place votes after losing to Amherst?!

Two point loss in double overtime on the road? Based on that result alone one would probably pick Babson to win on a neutral court, no?