RebKell's Junkie Boards

[GlennMacGrady]

[ArtBest23]

Duke @ NCSt is on the ACC Network at 8pm on Thursday, 12/29.

Louisville @ Duke is listed by Warren Nolan as ACCNX, which denotes streaming on ESPN.

[readyAIMfire53]

[ArtBest23]

And UConn will now begin its inevitable rise up the rankings and the seedings as it cakewalks over its conference and faces only one potential remaining loss while everyone else faces the most challenging parts of their schedules.

[linkster]

[singinerd54]

[Fighting Artichoke]

[Conway Gamecock]

[ArtBest23]

Well all of you did a fine job of racing off on some tangent unrelated to my post or point, but none of you identified or explained anything I said with which you disagree.

Do you disagree that UConn realistically has only one potential loss on its entire remaining schedule?

Do you disagree that all of the teams above UConn today face more potential losses? Indeed in many cases some of them have to lose. (Somebody has to lose in IU vs OhSt, ND vs NCSt, VT vs NCSt, plus IU and OhSt each must play a MD team that already beat UConn as well as ND)?

Do you disagree that UConn will inevitably rise up the rankings as it cakewalks over BE teams while teams above it today inevitably lose to serious conference opponents? Indeed, UConn would rise if it just sat home and watched other teams lose a game or two.

Nobody is questioning UConn's current ranking or schedule prior to today. Based on their performance and SOS, they are #8 as of last Monday. (And they're 2-2 against their serious highly ranked opponents - not bad but not awe-inspiring or SCar-like). That's already built in to my post which was only about the reality going forward from today. But the reality is that their performance to date is considered as meriting #8, not # 4 or 3 or 2, just 8.

And just as they only have one serious risk of losing, they only have one serious opportunity to improve on that 2-2 against top teams (and are more likely to end up 2-3), while teams above them have multiple opportunities to win and risk to lose, vs genuine top opponents. So if they don't beat SCar, what is it that warrants being higher than the 8 they already are now based on all of that Nov-Dec schedule on which you're relying?

UConn is considered #8 today based on all they have done until now. Yet without really accomplishing anything for the rest of the season, they will almost certainly move up. Simply because the teams considered deserving of higher rankings today play each other and other challenging opponents, and somebody has to lose. UConn is considered #8 today, and won't have done anything to deserve a higher ranking. They'll just back into it by default.

I guess I should have expected that when confronted with the obvious reality, the last resort would be Massey's voodoo (the master of self-promotional mathematical complexity as a substitute for meaning). How his black box nonsense has anything to do with how the polls and the selection committee will deal with the reality I've laid out escapes me..

[myrtle]

totally subjective eyeball test, UConn at full strength (minus Bueckers who is out for the year) is IMO probably #2 or #3. I actually think they could beat SoCaro. The weird thing is just that its been a long time since we've seen them at full strength. I can understand how difficult that makes it for the pollsters.

[singinerd54]

[singinerd54]

[ArtBest23]

Va Tech got upset on the road tonight too, and ND nearly joined them.

All of Massey's "I'm a math professor, trust me" bullshit formulas ignore the reality that there is a HUUUUUUGE difference, as manifested tonight, between playing in a P5 conference and playing in a mid major. To start, the talent differences are immense. The reality as shown every year is that in the big conferences elite teams can lose, especially on the road, to just about any conference foe, or certainly at least the top half, in the the ACC, Big10, PAC, and SEC.

So no, I don't buy that just racking up wins against overmatched opponents counts any more in the spring than it should count for LSU in the fall, and gaudy W-L records against cupcakes shouldn't be enough by itself to rise to the top. Massey admits he ignores conferences and in vs out of conf play, and just relies on wins, losses and point margins. So his voodoo will always inflate the standing of a team like UConn beating up its conference weak sisters by 30 pt margins. And penalize P5 teams playing close games and losing a couple of them.

There are good reasons the BCS dropped his projections 10 years ago after a brief experiment and the selection committees ignore him. And there are good reasons UConn WBB fans adore him.

[pilight]

The conference difference is more pronounced in the women's game than the men's. Massey's formula was developed for the men's game, so it's not surprising it is less accurate for the women.

_________________
I'm a lonely frog
I ain't got a home

[readyAIMfire53]

Gonna be a shake up in the T10, with #4 (Indiana), #6 (NC State) and #7 (Va Tech) all going down. Also losing #13 North Carolina. #5 Notre Dame barely got by unranked Miami, but they won, so expect them to be the new #4.

With tonight's win over #6 NC State, expect Duke to enter the T25, after lingering just outside for several weeks.

_________________
Follow your passion and your life will be true down to your core.

~rAf

[singinerd54]

[ArtBest23]

You yourself have acknowledged that UConn has already played its tough games (except 1) while other teams have yet to play theirs. (You wrote "Their schedule is front loaded while other teams have schedules that are back loaded.") So if you believe SOS is important ( as we evidently both do) why in the world should UConn's ranking rise while their SOS tanks? The opposite should be true. What's happened 'till now is already built into the current rankings. If SOS matters, then as the teams around UConn play the most difficult parts of their schedules while UConn plays patsies, logic dictates that those other teams should rise relative to UConn and UConn should drop. "But they played X in November" doesn't help; that's already built into their #8, which is the starting point for my post. What happened before can't excuse what happens going forward.

Also "mathematical" does not equal "objective," and it certainly doesn't mean meaningful. Massey is just a bunch of formulas that make Massey money but produce no meaningful information. The RPI is pure math too and is universally accepted as producing phony conclusions. So does Massey. Just as no one uses the RPI any more, no one uses Massey, because both produce an "answer" which has no meaning or connection to the reality they purport to represent.

You confuse precision with validity. If you carry a random or meaningless number out to 15 significant digits, it doesn't give it any more meaning than it started with, it simply makes it a more precise random or meaningless number.

By the way, LSU is the polar opposite of UConn. UConn is the poster child for front loaded, while LSU is the ultimate inverse. I don't understand why you continue to lump them together.

[Phil]

> Do you disagree that UConn realistically has only one potential loss on its entire remaining schedule?

As with many online disagreements, disagreements sometimes go away if care is taken defining terms. Arguably every unplayed game can be viewed as a potential loss, but it seems likely you mean something stronger than theoretically possible. Willing to specify a probability of loss for a specific game which would constitute a "realistic potential loss".

> Do you disagree that all of the teams above UConn today face more potential losses?

Yes, I disagree.

> How his black box nonsense has anything to do with how the polls and the selection committee will deal with the reality I've laid out escapes me.

I believe you. I'll give you credit for recognizing that Massey data conflicts with your thesis, and it may be smart to try to take it off the table. But simply declaring that it "escapes" you does not constitute proof it is wrong.

[Phil]

> So if you believe SOS is important ( as we evidently both do) why in the world should UConn's ranking rise while their SOS tanks?


Can you explain what you mean by "tanks"?
The SOS of UConn's remaining schedule is ranked number three in the nation

The strength of schedule of the seven teams currently ahead of UConn is as follows:

South Carolina 6
Stanford 5
Ohio State 8
Indiana 18
Notre Dame 12
NC State 2
Virginia Tech 17

This means that UConn's remaining strength of schedule is stronger than six of the seven teams ahead of them. I wonder if can you characterize this as tanking

[GlennMacGrady]

[singinerd54]

[Howee]

I must say, I enjoy the *energy* you folks invest in stats 'n hypotheticals. It's mostly beyond me, but I'm glad I have access to the conversations here.

I kinda agree with Myrtlicious (I hate doing that! ), but really, I must agree - the eyeball metric is my favorite, too. Given UConn's hurdles thus far (injuries, CD's & Geno's maladies, having to rely on a transfer and a half-blind kid....) they remain a top tier team. I'll be kinda shocked if they DON'T secure a #1 seed.

The obvious problem with The Eyeball Metric is that not so many of the writers get to actually SEE a team's performances on a consistent basis, hence relying on stats that can be deceptive.

_________________
Oregon: Go Ducks!
"Inévitablement, les canards voleront"

[singinerd54]

[ArtBest23]

[Phil]