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February 21, 2007

Featherston Peers Into The Bubbles

Tis the season for endless articles about who's in and who's out and what teams still need to do. I love it! If my article from Monday wasn't enough for you (and I'm sure it wasn't), read Al Featherston's lengthy piece at the DBR. Coincidently, Featherston uses the same power ratings I do, but he's obviously a much better writer.

One point that Featherston makes that I should have mentioned is the role of injuries. The NCAA Tournament Committee has always factored in the impact of key injuries. Lose an important player late in the season, and the committee will round your numbers down. Have an important player return late (like Derrick Whittenberg for that '83 Wolfpack team) and the committee will round your numbers up.

The two ACC teams that affects are Boston College and Florida State. BC will be seen as slightly worse than their record shows, because they no longer have Sean Williams. In fairness, he's been gone a while, but they did win a bunch of games with him. For Florida State, if they can get Toney Douglas back before the season's over, that could really help. In fact, he might be more valuable to them hurt than healthy, assuming he does return. At least this way, they can claim that they would have won another game or two without having to prove it.

Comments
 
(1) by Fats Durston (unregistered) on 02/21/2007 04:06 pm
I wish (hint, hint) someone would break down the imbalance in the conference schedules, how often each team has had to face the upper (UNC, VA, VT, BC), mid-high (D, MD), mid-low (C, GT, FSU) and low (NCSU, M, WF), to maybe get a "truer" picture of the standings. I've heard that Duke and Clemson had the roughest scheduling, but am of course not willing to do the research.

Stupid non-home-n-home-round-robin-because-of-football-money schedule. (Though I suppose at least it's not the Big East where conference members might not meet at all...)

 
(2) by Lee J. Cockrell (unregistered) on 02/21/2007 04:25 pm
Will I be banned for linking to the Sabre? :O

http://blogs.thesabre.com/?p=287#more-287

subscriber only:
http://subscr.thesabre.com/message_board/basketball/2007/February/20/829959.php

 
(3) by Dave on 02/21/2007 04:48 pm
Lee J. Cockrell wrote:
Will I be banned for linking to the Sabre? :O

http://blogs.thesabre.com/?p=287#more-287

subscriber only:
http://subscr.thesabre.com/message_board/basketball/2007/February/20/829959.php


No, no. I love The Sabre, I just rarely get there anymore.

That's a pretty solid post, even if it does sound more than a little defensive.

 
(4) by martin (unregistered) on 02/22/2007 10:20 am
Using the current (as of the games of Weds Feb 21) conference records, here is the composite winning percentages for each teams opponents over the full 16 game schedule. That is, I have counted UNC's 10-3 record twice for Duke, even though Duke has only played UNC once. It does not account for home/road games.
<code>
NCSU .540
VPI .523
DU .519
WF .517
MIA .510
CU .507
FSU .502
GT .493
UNC .474
UVA .469
BC .468
MD .460
</code>

Obviously, the better teams benefit from an easier schedule because they don't have to play themselves. What's surprising to me is how tough VaTech's schedule is....and they've made the most of it.

 
(5) by Dave on 02/22/2007 10:50 am
martin wrote:
Using the current (as of the games of Weds Feb 21) conference records, here is the composite winning percentages for each teams opponents over the full 16 game schedule. That is, I have counted UNC's 10-3 record twice for Duke, even though Duke has only played UNC once. It does not account for home/road games.
<code>
NCSU .540
VPI .523
DU .519
WF .517
MIA .510
CU .507
FSU .502
GT .493
UNC .474
UVA .469
BC .468
MD .460
</code>

Obviously, the better teams benefit from an easier schedule because they don't have to play themselves. What's surprising to me is how tough VaTech's schedule is....and they've made the most of it.


Nice. Interesting that Maryland came out with the easiest schedule. I haven't heard folks talk about that.

 
(6) by MooMoo (unregistered) on 02/22/2007 06:41 pm
To get it perfect, you have to remove the team itself from its calculation. That is, NCSU must be the records of its opponents MINUS their results against NCSU. Otherwise a bad team contributes to its opponents' higher winning percentage and a good team contributes to its opponents' lower winning percentage.

 
(7) by MooMoo (unregistered) on 02/22/2007 06:42 pm
To get it perfect, you have to remove the team itself from its calculation. That is, NCSU must be the records of its opponents MINUS their results against NCSU. Otherwise a bad team contributes to its opponents' higher winning percentage and a good team contributes to its opponents' lower winning percentage.

 
(8) by MooMoo (unregistered) on 02/22/2007 06:43 pm
Oops - got an error message the first time - apologies for the double-post.

 
(9) by Fats Durston (unregistered) on 02/22/2007 11:41 pm
Thanks for the work (i.e., math).

 
(10) by Fats Durston (unregistered) on 02/22/2007 11:47 pm
Another, from Duke's perspective...
http://www.news-record.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070222/NEWSREC0105/702220313/1022/GTCOM

Sorry if this breaks the formatting.

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