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  1. Kansas is ranked 5th and duke 6th and each have 6 losses. Kansas RPI and strength of schedule is #1, Duke's RPI is 6 with sos of 5. Both teams are very good no doubt, but 5th and 6th? The next highest ranked team with 6 or more losses is Michigan at 16th. I'm aware that both teams played strong schedules and have good wins. I believe two factors are at play here- name recognition and over emphasis on rpi/sos. If SLU played the same schedule and had the same record as either of these two teams would SLU be ranked 5th or 6th? Even within their specific conferences- if TCU played Kansas's schedule or virgina tech played Duke's schedule and had 6 losses would they be ranked this high? I say probably not. Having an elite name with a given record seems to have a positive effect upon one's ranking... The defense of the high ranking will probably come down to RPI and SOS- they deserve the ranking it will be claimed, even with 6 losses, based upon the quality of the schedule. I don't think anyone would argue that a team playing a stronger schedule doesn't deserve some loss leeway, but how far does that go? One interesting thing to compare would be how would SLU fair playing Kansas/Duke's schedule and vice versa. To be ranked 10th like SLU, Kansas or Duke would need to have 7 (or more??) losses. Would SLU only have 7 losses with a Kansas/Duke schedule? Who knows, but it would be interesting to see us have that type of opportunity though... What if they played our schedule? Being ranked 5/6 is probably where SLU would be if they had suffered only 1 loss. So the question is could they play our schedule and have only 1 loss? I say probably not. Playing Wisconsin and wichita state, I would expect either of them to go 1 and 1, on average. There is their one loss. They now have to play the rest of the schedule perfect and undefeated- no bad shooting nights, no hot shooting teams, everything has to fall right. Again, it probably doesn't happen....they probably play our schedule and net 2 or 3 losses on average. OK, their schedule is tough, fine. Let's do a hypothetical to maximize the tough schedule idea and see what happens. They are each 22-6, so have played 28 games. Let's say that instead of their "tough schedule" they instead play the toughest one possible( without playing an opponent multiple times)- the 28 games they play will be against the top 29 teams in the country. Now, let's suppose that somehow they manage to have the same 22-6 record playing the top 29. Where would they be ranked in this 29 team field? Let's say that all you have to determine rankings is the result of each of the top 29 vs Kansas/Duke- no other information but this outcome is available. I assume most would rank the teams in a logical order of the 6 teams that beat them being ranked 1-6 with probably #1 being the team with the largest victory margin and team #6 being the one with the smallest victory margin. You would then rank Kansas/Duke 7th. Teams 8 through 29 would be those who lost the game, again ranked according to loss margin. Sound about right? Well notice that even with schedule maximization they would STILL BE OVER- RANKED!! Schedule maximization yields a rank of 7 and they are ranked 5 and 6. Obviously, the schedules they have played, while strong, pale in comparison to schedule maximization... But still, you may say, disregarding the schedule, their rpi's justify their rank. Heck they may be under-ranked according to rpi since Kansas is #1 rpi with duke at 6. My opinion is RPI is fundamentally flawed and the main usefulness of it is simply that its a tool that the selection committee uses. RPI has 2 issues. One it does not consider victory margin- whether you win or lose by 50 or 1 is not important- the result is all that matters. Secondly, it vastly over-emphasizes your schedule versus your results. Only 25% of the RPI calculation is based on your performance- 75% is based on who you have played (50% being your opponents record and 25% being opponents opponents record). Let's do a hypothetical again. Let's say I grab 5 random people off the street and form a basketball team out of them. I then take this "team" and play Syracuse 28 times last week when they were still undefeated. The outcome is as expected zero wins 28 losses- heck they don't even score a single point they are so overmatched. This is the worst team in history, but what is their RPI rank? Well, let's see. 25% is the result of performance so with zero wins they receive 0 points. 50% is the result of opponents record and since Syracuse at the time is undefeated they receive a full 50 RPI points. 25% is the result of opponents opponents record and since its an ACC team I'll guestimate a 60% win/loss record collectively so that gives another 15 RPI points for a total of 65 RPI points. As of today 65 RPI would be ranked #7 in the country!! SOS would be #1. I suppose this winless hapless team should expect a tournament invite and a high seed with those strong numbers... (just kidding of course but the point remains that a ranking system that could rank the worst possible team #7 is flawed to the point of uselessness... Oh and if the above example used Wichita state to be more current it would yield a rpi of about 62.5 (figuring the opponents oppontents at 50% win/loss) which would be ranked #17 today and sos still #1...). Since we do not have the ability to produce a Kansas/duke type schedule and thus reap the above rewards, I'm wondering if the way to go may be a complete crap schedule. For instance, let's say SLU instead of playing Wisconsin and Wichita state and losing instead threw in 2 extra cupcakes and are now undefeated. Granted our schedule strength takes a hit, but an undefeated SLU would certainly be ranked higher than a 2 loss SLU- probably along the lines of Wichita state maybe even #1 since the A10 is much stronger than the valley. So perhaps the way to go is either play a weak schedule where you have a chance of being undefeated (and thus remain a mystery and be given the benefit of the doubt...) or play a strong Kansas/duke type schedule where you can lose a lot, allowing a high margin for error, and still be ranked high. Anything else in the middle appears not to be the ideal.... Oh well, there's nothing we can do about it. I just wanted to complain and I feel better now. Whether anyone agrees or disagrees I will have no follow up posts. Thanks for reading...
  2. Reading comprehension... Big fonts... Ok then... My quote was "B.Hayes states that SLU will lose to Syracuse by 30+. You follow up by adding a possible spread of 15". Notice that I specifically define B.Hayes spread as a statement because he, well, stated it. Your 15 points spread I gave the qualifier "possible". It appears your big on reading comprehension but I won't quote the dictionary on what "possible" means. 15 points was thrown into your post, where oddly you felt the need to defend someone offering the 30+ point spread. Until you are more specific, it is hard to say if you derived 15 points from a dartboard, it's your expected spread, or for no purpose whatsoever (we discover it to be the latter...) which I why I called it "possible". There is an incredibly simple solution to resolving this mystery for everyone which, strangely enough, you chose not to exercise. It's kind of outside the box but give it a shot- actually state what you expect the spread to be. To demonstrate how easy this is I'll start. My thinking is along the wiz's lines- Syracuse, although undefeated, hasn't dominated its competition in victory margins and we do not lose big. Syracuse with 3 to 5 points sounds about right. Now, if you do choose to offer your own spread, please respond to the following. 1) If your spread is also within the 3 to 5 point range, even up to let's say 9 then why would this matchup be so problematic as that is a challenge, but still a winnable spread. 2) If your spread is over 10, explain why this is not "fearing the matchup". I'm a simple guy. To me fearing a matchup means that I, well, you know expect my team to lose big by like over 10. Perhaps you have a different definition or the word "fear" is simply not palatable. 3) You mention MB's 10* lock of the year but the implication is vague (forgive my reading comprehension). Let's not beat around the bush- own your statements. If the line on this game comes out and it is Syracuse by 3.5 which is what the wiz has is this or is this not the equivalent of an MB 10* lock of the year to bet against SLU?
  3. Speaking for myself, one of the joys of being a fan is to forecast matchups. Now, granted, if we observed SLU's practice today and they are working on how to break down Syracuse's zone under the slim chance they will ever face them- then yeah, that's a serious problem. Fortunately, as fans, we don't have to keep a one game at a time narrow focus like the team does.
  4. B.Hayes states that SLU will lose to Syracuse by 30+. You follow up by adding a possible spread of 15. The wiz's line is Syracuse by 3.5, Espn's bpi gives 5.5, vegas is probably less than 8. I labeled these under-expectations versus the lines as "fearing the matchup". Apparently that has been found to be inaccurate and offensive. You guys do not "fear" this matchup- they are simply on your "short list of squads you would prefer not to play" because you expect SLU to vastly underperform against them versus what the statisticians and oddsmakers believe. I apologize for the mislabeling.
  5. Wiz, I always enjoy and appreciate your work. Unfortunately, I do have to question how you apply overtime results. I believe that an overtime game should be considered to be a tie, ending at regulation. Ideally, two sets of numbers could be produced one with and one without overtime. This way expected results could be produced based on a standard 40 minute game and another set based on what would be expected if the game goes to overtime. You are citing how our defense dropped to 8th based on the high scoring overtime result. Let's consider an extreme overtime result to demonstrate how an unrealistic anomaly can be produced. Suppose that yesterday's game wound up not just going to a single overtime but ended sometime today going to the 200th overtime with a final result of SLU winning by 6.... 2006 points to 2000 points. Would you seriously come on today and state "well folks, really bad news... our #1 ranked defense dropped a little yesterday. Actually, we went from #1 to being the worst team in the country, not just this year but the worst in all time as we are giving up an average of over 150 points a game. My line for the St. Joes game is St. Joes by 100. It's just the way the numbers are- if you don't like it utilize divine intervention...." You state that you "don't make the rules" but actually, you do. You can choose how to apply or not apply overtime results- it is very much in your control. In my opinion, a stat such as opponent's points per possession is the most meaningful defensive stat as it avoids anomaly's such as the one described above, while also factoring out the pace of the game- it is pure defensive efficiency. SLU was #1 in that category (don't know if they still are or not). Regards.
  6. I agree that SLU's best draw would be WSU. But, frankly, Syracuse may not be that far behind... Even expecting a 15 point loss is "an exaggeration", so why go there at all? Per Espn's BPI, the expected margin is 5.6 points for Syracuse. I would expect Wiz's line to be somewhere along these lines. Wiz's last top 25 did not have Syracuse at #1 or even #2. What was his ranking? #16... Why so low? Well, as we have been observing, Syracuse really DOES NOT consistently blow out opponents, even when they should. Who is our matchup nightmare? Arizona who wiz did have at #1 (probably still does even with the loss). Using the 30+ point victory benchmark, they actually have 4 to their credit. They even have a 50 point victory where they doubled up their opponent and another 30+ point doubling up where they held an above average Washington state team to 25 points. In other words, even against Arizona we would not expect to lose by 30+ (or even 15 for that matter...), but they are the team which has the best chance of pulling that off and the team to avoid... Really, I don't want to call out your's or B.Hayes fandom by any means- I'm sure you both follow the team more than I do. I just believe we should be at a point with this team where we don't fear any matchup.
  7. I feel the need to address this. Syracuse is obviously a great team. With Arizona's loss tonight, they will probably be ranked #1 on Monday. Sure, if they were to play SLU they would be favored in the game. But a "30+" point loss??? Even as great as Syracuse is, do you realize that their highest margin of victory on the season was 28 points at home versus the basketball power Binghamton (4W- 18L)? Next come 22 point victories against cornell and east michigan, a 21 point victory against high point and then a 20 point victory against Virginia tech. For comparison purposes, SLU's highest margin of victory is 27 points with a total of eight 20+ point victory margin games. The most impressive of any of these blowouts belongs to SLU vs Richmond. The only common opponent the two teams share is both played fordham at home- SLU won by 22, Syracuse won by 15. Am I saying SLU is the better team? No, but I am hopefully making it clear that expecting a 30+ point loss to Syracuse is terribly disrespectful to our team. Duke takes Syracuse to overtime at Syracuse. Duke is ranked #17 and SLU is ranked #19. So a team ranked 2 slots higher can go on the road and make a game of it, but SLU at a neutral site (you are implying a potential tournament matchup) is just going to crap its pants and lose by 30+? What kind of defeatist mentality is this? My personal expectation for this team is that they can compete with any other college team anytime anywhere and make a game of it. I would guess that the wiz's line on this game would be Syracuse by less than 10 points at a neutral site. For SLU to have an expected loss of 30+ would require a matchup versus a professional team. We are not some bottom feeder- we are the damn 19th (and rising) ranked team in the country!!
  8. Watching SLU defeat LaSalle to win A10 regular season title- $50 Watching SLU win A10 tournament- $1000 Price of gas to get from A10 tournament to selection show at best buy- $1 Ability to surf billikens.com 24/7 around the world? .... PRICELESS!!
  9. Perhaps "Rammer stop" is what the howitzer was saying... makes sense now...
  10. Are you sure this component is not mislabeled? These specs are for the "Loader Rammer". I'm not an artillery expert, but comparing the blow up to anatomically similar bodily... "components"... it appears to still be bearing its "load" as per its name. Instead of a "Rammer stop" it looks more like a "Rammer- I'm just getting started...". Nothing stops the Rammer...
  11. GW

    HC

    I agree with most of this. Their 3 point shooting was not due to our poor defense. Our defense could have been off the floor entirely leaving them completely uncontested and on a normal day they probably shoot less than 50% from 3. So, by defending them, we somehow improved their percentage from what it would be completely uncontested at less than 50% up to the 72% they shot at? How exactly does that work? Free throws are uncontested and closer in than 3's. Oregon shot 62.5% on free throws. Would they have been able to shoot at 85% had we been allowed to defend the free throws (sadly, last night they probably would....)? When a team shoots better than they are expected to even if they were completely uncontested there is no other choice but to attribute the result to "being hot" or luck. If I flip a coin 11 times and get 8 heads, that doesn't make me a great coin flipper....
  12. Good catch- apparently my unscientific "eyeballing it" method missed that... I guess the important part of that statement is "had"- after yesterday's "performance" against FGCU which probably would recieve about a 26.8 bpi rating, that drops their post Jan 20 rating from 94.6 to 90.6. The Georgetown vs. FGCU result is interesting on many levels. Forecasting the spread using bpi prior to the game would have given Georgetown by 10 using their full season value and Georgetown by 20 given the high 94.6 post Jan 20 grade. Either way obviously a huge miss. So does that make Bpi, or any predictive method for that matter, worthless? Here is my (limited) understanding of what a spread number means. Figure that going into any game there are a very large number of potential outcomes. These outcomes when plotted will form a bell shaped curve. The given spread number is the one predicted to be at the center of the curve- as many results are expected to fall at or below the spread as at or above it. So if the spread number is "georgetown by 10" then if they played theoretically 1000 times say, then 500 results would be expected georgetown +10 and under and 500 results would be expected georgetown +10 and over. With 1000 results their will be some extreme values in the "tails" of the curve- both teams would be expected to have some results where they each won by 30+ points (georgetown would have a far greater number of these). So basically the spread number tells you 1) what is the most likely outcome, on average and 2) what your chances are of winning the game (the higher the number, the greater the chance of winning). It does not tell you what will happen, only what is most likely to happen. Given this, no matter what a spread says we will always have a chance. I'm only attempting to quantify what those chances may be, not saying what will happen. I was of course actually quite pleased to see the Georgetown result. I'm not some undercover espn operative trying to covertly promote bpi... as long as SLU wins I could care less if it was chicken entrails that called it. All of the big east results (losing 5 or 8 games, marquette barely surviving a 14 seed, while A10 was undefeated until today) thus far bode very well for us in a potential matchup vs louisville. If big east teams in general were overrated and Georgetown can win the big east (reg season) and had a bpi number similar to Louisville and got taken out by FGCU, perhaps Louisville isn't that much of a goliath after all... (either that or maybe as 05 puts it bpi is just garbage).
  13. A10 one of only two multi bid conferences to be undefeated- the other being 2 team MVC. The fact that SLU was the undisputed leader of our conference, all of whom are showing up big bodes very, very well for us....
  14. I just couldn't handle the wiz's underestimated spreads any more. Rather than using the eastsidejoe method of just adding 9 points to the wiz's spread, I thought I'd try to do something more accurate. SLU could have played a preschool squad and the Wiz would say "SLU by 1" and then when they win by 1000 points would just shrug it off- "I told you they would win, what are you complaining about...." (j/k wiz)
  15. I was interested in quantifying SLU's 2nd half results. The 2nd half team is a seemingly far different entity from the first half team, through no fault of their own (Majerus, injuries). My belief is that SLU put the first half season behind them and perhaps even used it as a motivation device to become the elite team they were meant to be all along. I had requested of the wiz to see if he could isolate second half SLU numbers to give us a clearer picture of this developement. Unfortunately, it would require too much tweaking of the program he uses to provide these stats. I decided to see what I could produce on my own. Disclaimer- understand that I am not anywhere in the league of the wiz, nor claim to be a stats guru of any sort or intend to become one. Just doing what I can to fill in the gap for informational purposes only.... I decided to use epsn's bpi rankings. These are similar to the wiz's in the sense that they incorporate margin of victory into their calculations- it doesn't just matter that the game was won or lost, but by how much you won or lost is critically important. Are you winning by getting by with the skin of your teeth in overtime or are you destroying your opponent by 30 points in regulation? Bpi incorporates other things into their calculations as well (I don't know if they really advertise everything they put into it...) but it serves my purpose in the sense that a ranking is given for every specific game and thus whatever time frame someone desires can be calculated. SLU's Bpi number at the end of the season was 80.9 ranked #19. Calculating the Bpi based on SLU results post duquesne produced a value of 93.3 which would be ranked #1 on a full season basis (Louisville is #1 with a 91.3 value). The early season Bpi based on SLU results from duquesne and earlier produced a value of 71.6 and ranking of #56 which is about where Temple is. So according to Bpi, in the first half of the season we were playing Temple quality basketball and in the second half we have been playing to a level exceeding that of Louisville (full season). I was suprised by these numbers- its readily apparent that the team has been reborn if you will this second half but that is a vast increase. Just imagine if the whole season could have been played at this level... Another interesting thing is that when comparing the pre and post duq teams against each other, bpi projects post duq SLU beats pre duq SLU by about 14 points- which actually seems about right considering.... Another interesting calculation I made was SLU's Bpi post duq in "games that mattered most". For these I included vs top 25 teams, playing for conference reg season title (lasalle), playing for conference tournament (charlotte, butler, vcu), and against New mexico state. SLU is 8-0 in those games with a Bpi value of about 96.8. This is very good to see as it says that SLU is rising to the occasion in the biggest games- bodes well going forward.... That 96.8 value against Louisville's full season value of 91.3 would give you a projection of SLU by about 5 points. While this is a good result to see- if we are going to make adjustments for SLU we need to be fair to Louisville as well. Louisville has been playing lights out starting around the same time frame that our surge began. Louisville had a 3 game losing streak mid season but since then, they like us have a single overtime loss on the road. From the Pitt game forward, Louisville's Bpi value is 95.7. That then gives a result of SLU by 1 if we play at ultra high "games that matter" level, Louisville by about 2 if we play at average second half standards. To find that SLU may be realistically considered to be about even with Louisville is very encouraging... When just eyeballing all the other top seeds, no other team has Bpi values anywhere close to where SLU and Louisville's are (2nd half). So if SLU does get there that game becomes key as whoever wins will be favored by at least a few points in all games to follow... (granted we are viewing SLU in the most favorable light possible, disregarding the first half results, but given the circumstances I dont think it's unrealistic to do so....). Concerning the SLU vs. Oregon matchup, Oregon has a full season bpi value of 76.9 ranked #33. Bpi has a method for adjusting when teams are missing a top player so I'm disregarding the 5-4 results when they were missing Artis. This adjusts their Bpi up to 79.5 which is ranked #23. The post duq SLU bpi value of 93.3 vs Oregon at 79.5 gives you a projection of SLU by 10 points. Using the ultra high SLU ranking for "games that matter" gives a projection of SLU by 13 points. It is important to note though that the last 3 games Oregon has played about its best of the season. For the last 3 games Oregon has a Bpi of about 97.1 If that high level Oregon team is the one that shows up its about even with our "games that matter" team. I don't know if 3 games is enough to identify a trend but its worth mentioning. I think its important for us to make Oregon aware as early as we can in the game that they are actually the #23 overall team and not the ultra high level team they are now playing at- expose the last 3 games as an anomaly rather than a trend. I'm hopeful that all of their righteous indignation at their admittedly poor seeding was discharged at the expense of oklahoma state. If they got too emotional about it they may have "spent their wad" so to speak... I estimated SLU's Bpi value against New mexico state to be a 98. I know the game looked easy at times but that is a testament to how good SLU is playing right now. New mexico State is decent- has a bpi value of 66.4 which ranks #74. They are just below Xavier (#72) and just above Umass (#79). So it was like beating Xavier or Umass by 20 at a neutral site... One final thing- I know that Louisvile taking down NC A&T may have appeared more impressive than our win as it was by a much larger margin (31 points vs 20). NC A&T has a bpi value of 39.8 ranked 236. They had to win the play in game 2 nights earlier and it was a de facto home game for Louisville. Applying only 2 points for home court advantage (rather than a standard 3 or 4), and not considering the effect of the extra game, Louisville's bpi for that game is about 98 as well. So basically, they were about equal performances by the two teams who are currently playing at the highest level. NOTES: I performed one individual tweak on the Bpi calculations in regard to how they account for overtime games. Looking at the numbers, they base their calculations on what the final score was as opposed to viewing it as a tie since the two teams played to even through regulation. This is important because if you lose by 50 points in overtime Bpi calculates the result as if you had lost by 50 points during regulation- no difference. My belief is that this unnecessarily "penalizes" you for getting to overtime- you could have lost by 49 during regulation and Bpi would give you a slightly better grade for this. Had you lost by just a point during regulation you would have a night to day vastly better grade. So my view is that overtime results should not be considered in the basic calculation- it should be looked at as a "tie". This is important for SLU because the 11 point overtime loss against Xavier is viewed as an 11 point loss as opposed to a tie. The Bpi value for that game considering it to be is 11 point loss is 43.6 which is the the grade just below CS northridge. Considering it a tie gives a value of 75.2 which is the season grade between butler and stanford. In other words, my adjustment views it that we played a butler quality game that night (was just a slightly off night, which fits with what happened...) instead of saying we played a CS northridge quality game (ouch...). Now if you wish to argue that the overtime results should still be counted then I say worst case the basic numbers should include an asterisk- that they are only based on results through regulation. Now if the game were to go to overtime, ya maybe if 4 of our guys will foul out like at xavier we'll then get smoked. But until overtime happens dont worry about it.... Anyway that one simple tweak raised our post duquesne results by about 2 bpi points and I believe it to be justifiable- and to be fair I adjusted Louisville's OT loss vs notre dame number upward as well.
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