Top 25 talk

[WUPHF]

No.

[Smitty Oom]

Been busy and I just caught up on all the top 25 talk. Titan Q nailed it when he said he is surprised Loras is so low in ORV. I would probably put them in the tail end of my personal top 25. Many of you know that I am a MIAC guy, love seeing success for all teams, even the team in St. Paul that wears purple, so believe me when saying St. Thomas does not deserve their 23 poll points compared to Loras' 17. Now, UST has had two straight amazing recruiting classes (or so I have been told) but I need to see it on the court first before they enter the top 25. They lose their only consistently good player last year in Ryan Boll, makes for a lot of question marks for Johnny Tauer's team as they enter the season.

[AndOne]

Been busy and I just caught up on all the top 25 talk. Titan Q nailed it when he said he is surprised Loras is so low in ORV. I would probably put them in the tail end of my personal top 25. Many of you know that I am a MIAC guy, love seeing success for all teams, even the team in St. Paul that wears purple, so believe me when saying St. Thomas does not deserve their 23 poll points compared to Loras' 17. Now, UST has had two straight amazing recruiting classes (or so I have been told) but I need to see it on the court first before they enter the top 25. They lose their only consistently good player last year in Ryan Boll, makes for a lot of question marks for Johnny Tauer's team as they enter the season.

Absolutely, Smitty. And we've all seen recruits with very lofty HS stats not amount to much at the college level no matter how much hype they've received prior to matriculation. Often these guys have compiled those stats against less than sterling competition at the HS level. But now, at the college level, they're going up against guys that were their HS team's best player almost every night. Big difference.
Conversely, we've all seen kids from larger schools that generally face tougher competition fall flat in college while many small school kids excel. It becomes a question of don't tell me what you've got, show me what you've got. 

[Dave 'd-mac' McHugh]

My final blog is out with the final five spots on my preseason ballot: http://bit.ly/2P2qiDl

I may or may not have quoted Titan Q .

[Greek Tragedy]

My final blog is out with the final five spots on my preseason ballot: http://bit.ly/2P2qiDl

I may or may not have quoted Titan Q .

Is everything a trilogy nowadays? 

[Gregory Sager]

I'm puzzled by this comment in your blog, Dave:

The MIAA certainly had an off year last season. Hope and Olivet tied atop the standings with four in-conference losses and Adrian and Trine finished third with six losses. Calvin was fifth with eight! You can't expect the conference to stay down for long.

I'm not following your reasoning here. How do conference W-L results indicate a league that had an "off year" or is "down"? Those games are strictly internal, and thus provide no basis for comparison to the league's previous seasons so that one could gauge whether the league was better or worse than the year before. That's what non-conference W-L results determine. After all, without fail* the MIAA finishes .500 every season in conference play.

All we know about last season, unless a veteran observer eyeballed the games himself and made comparative judgments that way, was that the MIAA wasn't its traditional top-heavy self. It's not Hope and Calvin and the Six Dwarves anymore, or at least it hasn't been so in two of the past three seasons. But internal parity doesn't make a league better or worse in and of itself. In this case, it simply makes the league different from its historical norm.

* Kalamazoo's recent vacated wins due to sanctions notwithstanding.

[Dave 'd-mac' McHugh]

My final blog is out with the final five spots on my preseason ballot: http://bit.ly/2P2qiDl

I may or may not have quoted Titan Q .

Is everything a trilogy nowadays? 

Just the preseason ballot. Otherwise that as one blog would have been epically long. As I said in the first one, won't do that during the season. I don't have that kind of time (don't really have that time nowadays, either).

[Dave 'd-mac' McHugh]

I'm puzzled by this comment in your blog, Dave:

The MIAA certainly had an off year last season. Hope and Olivet tied atop the standings with four in-conference losses and Adrian and Trine finished third with six losses. Calvin was fifth with eight! You can't expect the conference to stay down for long.

I'm not following your reasoning here. How do conference W-L results indicate a league that had an "off year" or is "down"? Those games are strictly internal, and thus provide no basis for comparison to the league's previous seasons so that one could gauge whether the league was better or worse than the year before. That's what non-conference W-L results determine. After all, without fail* the MIAA finishes .500 every season in conference play.

All we know about last season, unless a veteran observer eyeballed the games himself and made comparative judgments that way, was that the MIAA wasn't its traditional top-heavy self. It's not Hope and Calvin and the Six Dwarves anymore, or at least it hasn't been so in two of the past three seasons. But internal parity doesn't make a league better or worse in and of itself. In this case, it simply makes the league different from its historical norm.

* Kalamazoo's recent vacated wins due to sanctions notwithstanding.

You are overthinking it, Greg. I don't have five pages to go into why I thought the MIAA was down last year... so I used one example we don't normally see in that conference. The top teams taking a lot of losses in conference. Yeah, I could have used external results as well ... I just didn't choose to this time around.

[Gregory Sager]

I'm not overthinking it at all, Dave. Your statement doesn't add up. The fact that the internal results of the league were anomalous by MIAA standards doesn't mean that the league was down, for the reasons that I explained. You're citing something that isn't a valid barometer. A league can be just as strong -- or even stronger -- if it's more internally competitive, with a plethora of decent-but-not-great teams, than it would be if it had two great teams steamrolling over a large cast of subpar also-rans twice per week.

It wouldn't have taken you five pages to cite that the league didn't have two tournament teams the way that it had the year before, when both Hope and Calvin got to dance (Hope was the only MIAA team in last season's tourney), or that Hope got bounced last March in the second round after having reached the Sweet Sixteen in 2016-17, since tourney performance is a common way of gauging league strength from year to year. Of course, non-conference W-L results as a whole, which is generally considered to be the best way to gauge an entire league's performance (because the strength of a league is best measured all the way from top to bottom), wouldn't have helped your thesis; last season the MIAA went 44-53 after having gone 43-54 the year before, which meant that (at least in terms of raw numbers) it was slightly better against other leagues last season than it had been the year previous.

[Dave 'd-mac' McHugh]

Sager - I know full well what I am writing, what I am thinking, and how I want to present things.

Seriously ... I took one example of why I wanted to indicate the MIAA was down last year. A lot more losses at the top of the conference.

If you read any of the rest of my blogs, you will notice I made a comment about the ODAC not being as good at the top and thus maybe falling out of the Top 5 conferences conversation, BUT added that the depth of the conference from top to bottom could arguably keep the conference in that top five. Hint, hint ... I try not to use the same reasoning for every team or every situation. I try and keep it a bit mixed up. If that was my plan for the ODAC, it wasn't going to be my plan for the MIAA - furthermore, I don't think the MIAA was a better conference because there were more losses in the conference.

I am FULLY aware of how a conference can be deep and thus the conference can be very good. I am also fully aware that the top can come down while the bottom doesn't really improve much. That last example is where I was going with with the MIAA ... I (and MANY others) felt the top came down a bit last year and I do not feel the bottom of the conference improved itself. Thus, while you can try and make arguments for depth, I don't feel it was there for the MIAA.

That was the direction I chose. Not having two tournament teams I don't think is worth mentioning because there are a number of good (better than the MIAA) conferences who didn't have two tournament teams ... and we can start with the ODAC!

I chose one out of about half a dozen ideas for why I wanted to present the point of view. You would have chosen something else. I don't honestly care as it was my blog and I felt the shorter reason and the one that jumped out to me more than any was more conference losses for the top of the conference. Feel free to write your own blog and your own Top 25 ballot, Greg.

[Pat Coleman]

Over on the football site, we'd generally define a conference being up or down by their non-conference results (including the postseason), but we'd also consider in-conference results a positive for a conference in the event that the conference results include a new team at the top. That seems to be a sign that the lower teams in a conference are competitive, if one of them comes up and wins the thing. Intra-conference cannibalization isn't really something that helps us determine whether a conference is up or down -- that has to be something we look at on a case-by-case basis.

[Gregory Sager]

Sager - I know full well what I am writing, what I am thinking, and how I want to present things.

Seriously ... I took one example of why I wanted to indicate the MIAA was down last year. A lot more losses at the top of the conference.

Yes, and my point is that your example is invalid. To be specific, it's a non causa pro causa, also known as a false-cause fallacy. In other words, in a season in which the top finishers in the MIAA took more losses in conference play than is usually the case for MIAA top finishers, it's entirely possible that the league was down as a whole -- but you can't prove it that way, because internal results remain constant from one year to the next. In 2016-17 the MIAA as a whole went 56-56 in league play. In 2017-18 the MIAA as a whole went 56-56 in league play. And, if Vegas was taking odds on how the MIAA would fare internally this coming season, I'd empty my savings account and let it all ride on the MIAA going 56-56 in league play this upcoming season.

If you read any of the rest of my blogs, you will notice I made a comment about the ODAC not being as good at the top and thus maybe falling out of the Top 5 conferences conversation, BUT added that the depth of the conference from top to bottom could arguably keep the conference in that top five. Hint, hint ... I try not to use the same reasoning for every team or every situation. I try and keep it a bit mixed up. If that was my plan for the ODAC, it wasn't going to be my plan for the MIAA

I fully understood and applaud your reasoning for mixing it up from league to league. But that's not really the issue. The issue is whether your case for each league is valid. It is for the ODAC, because you're citing the accepted standard that league strength is measured from top to bottom. But your case isn't valid for the MIAA, because you based it upon internally-produced W-L numbers.

- furthermore, I don't think the MIAA was a better conference because there were more losses in the conference.

Again, there weren't more losses in the conference. The MIAA went .500 in league play last season, just like the season before and just like it will this coming season -- and just like it always did back in the day when Hope and Calvin were gutting the rest of the league like they were lake trout on a good day of fishing.

I am FULLY aware of how a conference can be deep and thus the conference can be very good. I am also fully aware that the top can come down while the bottom doesn't really improve much. That last example is where I was going with with the MIAA

... and that's a very valid thesis. But you didn't choose the proper supporting evidence for it. Your supporting evidence should've been external; in other words, you should've demonstrated that the bottom didn't improve much by proving it via non-conference W-L results.

... I (and MANY others) felt the top came down a bit last year and I do not feel the bottom of the conference improved itself. Thus, while you can try and make arguments for depth, I don't feel it was there for the MIAA.

I'm not making arguments for depth. I'm not making any arguments at all, pro or con, about the performance of the MIAA last season. I'm simply saying that any arguments made about how the 2017-18 MIAA compared to the league's previous seasons has to be made using valid criteria. In other words, my criticism is about your methodology, not about your analysis of the league's collective basketball prowess.

That was the direction I chose. Not having two tournament teams I don't think is worth mentioning because there are a number of good (better than the MIAA) conferences who didn't have two tournament teams ... and we can start with the ODAC!

Agreed. I have always maintained that a league's tournament performance, while better than nothing (or better than an internal indicator), is not nearly as valid a proof of a league's strength as is overall non-conference W-L results. I'm not ready to promote the ARC to power-conference status on the basis of Nebraska Wesleyan's national championship, and I think that any serious and objective fan of an ARC men's basketball program would agree with me about that -- although the league is certainly better in this sport than it was before NWU was admitted into membership a few years ago.

I chose one out of about half a dozen ideas for why I wanted to present the point of view. You would have chosen something else. I don't honestly care as it was my blog and I felt the shorter reason and the one that jumped out to me more than any was more conference losses for the top of the conference. Feel free to write your own blog and your own Top 25 ballot, Greg.

No need to get snippy. I do appreciate your blog and (generally) your reasoning on such matters, and I likewise appreciate that you're the one d3hoops.com Top 25 pollster who regularly displays public transparency with his ballot. I simply take issue with the validity of your "shorter reason," that's all.

[Dave 'd-mac' McHugh]

Greg - I am going to get snippy when you tell me that my argument is invalid... it's my argument, thank you. I will make it as I see fit.

And you can nitpick all you want, but the more losses I kept describing were at the top of the conference. I stated ... TOP of the conference. If you want to forget those facts and keep looking elsewhere, fine... but I'm done here.

[Gregory Sager]

Over on the football site, we'd generally define a conference being up or down by their non-conference results (including the postseason), but we'd also consider in-conference results a positive for a conference in the event that the conference results include a new team at the top. That seems to be a sign that the lower teams in a conference are competitive, if one of them comes up and wins the thing. Intra-conference cannibalization isn't really something that helps us determine whether a conference is up or down -- that has to be something we look at on a case-by-case basis.

Yep. A new team at the top constitutes what I refer to on CCIW Chat as "churn" -- the phenomenon in which there is regular turnover in terms of which teams are atop the standings, rather than the decades-long hegemony of the two Rivalry schools that characterized the MIAA for so long (and the NCAC as well throughout the long stretch of seasons when it was Wittenberg-Wooster-and-a-pantry-full-of-cupcakes).

I remember a few years ago when Bob Quillman said something to the effect of how, when it appeared that Matt Nadelhoffer was finally starting to build something at Millikin, it was a great thing for the CCIW because it meant that every program in the league was really "getting after it," in his words, and was fully doing everything it could possibly do to be as successful as possible. That's the kind of thing that typically shows up in non-conference play, as the teams that end up at the bottom of the standings in a given season will still win more often in November and December outside of the circuit. That was another way of stating that churn was in effect. Of course, churn's not always possible for everybody; institutional factors, for example, can keep a program from ever being competitive enough to rise to the top of the league (Caltech in the SCIAC is the obvious example in men's basketball). But, yeah, churn has a lot to do with identifying a league getting stronger, too, in my opinion.

[Gregory Sager]

Greg - I am going to get snippy when you tell me that my argument is invalid... it's my argument, thank you. I will make it as I see fit.

And you can nitpick all you want, but the more losses I kept describing were at the top of the conference. I stated ... TOP of the conference. If you want to forget those facts and keep looking elsewhere, fine... but I'm done here.

I'm not forgetting anything, Dave. I'm simply saying that extra conference losses among the top teams in the league doesn't indicate anything at all, absent any other evidence.