The Wiz

The competition is at least getting better. SIU-C is a C rated team. An interesting fact is they are not only C rated but the exact center of the D-1 college bball universe. The same number of teams that are better and worse then them. So if you are casting around looking for "the average" team....this is it. (at least for now) So what does this mean. This won't be a cake walk but we should win. We need to step it up a little.

I eat crap.... Christina Ricci American actress

Lol...It would be like a power play in hockey..... Glaze ..2 min penalty for roughing

SIU-E = Bad team They could put 6 men and the Cougar on the floor and we would still beat them.

I had Mizz (A) by 16 over SIU-C ( C ). So this game was pretty much on target. The interesting thing about this matchup is it mirrors our game with SIU-C on Sat.....A vs C. Our game will be closer than the Mizzou game because we will be at their place but it should be a win for the Bills.

Wisc (A+) is a great team. This could be our toughest game of the year.

Time for a small rant... One of my pet peeves is when a sports source (in this case ESPN) calls an average game an upset. It is interesting to note that no where in the article does the author mention the word upset. So it may be an over zealous headline writer trying to hype the game....trying to make something from nothing. (haven't I heard that phrase somewhere before). I guess if the headline had read... Favorite Richmond wins by 8.....it wouldn't have created any excitement. ...Reader beware...take what you read with a grain of salt. Rant over

Richmd & Belmt are even teams. The only reason I picked Richmd was they were the home team. Had Belmont been at home I would have picked them. Rich= Belmt So no upset

An interesting side note... This game marks the reunion of Christian Salecich. In the first regular season at Ark (B+) he scored 7 pts in 23 min against a good team as Ark blew out SIU-E 99-65 in Fayetteville. ....2-6 from 3pt...1 FT..2 reb..2 ast..1 steal.

FWIW....After 15 points the spread is marginalized...ie law of diminishing returns. By the time you get to 20+ it has little or no effect on future ratings. I don't think this is something only computers know. I think coaches know this too when they bring in the subs.

I wanted to wait a few days after our last game to give the other teams a chance to play at least 1 game before I made the next prognostication. Only one thing to say about SIU-E.......F.....They are an F rated team....This is a bad team. This will be our easiest D-1 opponent of the year. For the nervous Nellies who say don't take them lightly....When you are playing an F team and have a bad game you can still whup them. The SEMO game didn't affect us much....we did what we were supposed to do and remain an A team.

Of course a team can improve (or get worse) over the years . The "not wandering too far" referred to within the same year. It is an observation I have made over the years watching the system. Generally, a team may move 2 steps in either direction....eg.. B+ to B- ...B to A-...D+ to C etc.... and those moves become more difficult by the time conference play starts because there are a lot of data points by then. I think some of the biggest moves I have seen over the years have been 2 full letters ...eg..A- to C- but it is rare ...usually the result of a team decimated by injuries or players disappearing for various reasons. At the A levels it is easier to get knocked down quicker. Based on past results and assuming no catastrophic events, I would expect the Bills to finish in a range of A+ to B with the most likely being A or A-.

The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits. Albert Einstein

The above posters are correct....I am a technician...my background is probability and statistics. In the real world, I mix technical and fundamental. But in the world of college basketball,... technical (stats) trumps fundamental (see the kids play) There are just too many teams and too many kids to follow.....350 Div I teams alone. As I said in the original post, teams don't wander much from their starting grade. By the time conference play begins most teams are pretty much locked into their grade. It has always been amazing to me with injuries, new players that surprise, old players that are better or worse than expected ...how it all tends to even out. Reversion to the mean...the numbers always come back. One of the things I liked about Majerus was he was a numbers guy. Whether he was recruiting or setting up a game plan he was always checking the numbers. I remember a talk he gave where he said one of the most important things he would focus on was 3 point defense. He wanted to hold the opposing teams to 30% less 3 pointers made than their average. So I started tracking that stat and sure enough the Bills rarely lost a game when they held the opponent. below their average even if the other team was not a 3 point team. Of all the different prognosticators, I seem to track Pomeroy the closest...though sometimes he (or I) diverges. "When you have mastered numbers, you will in fact no longer be reading numbers, any more that you read words when reading books. You will be reading meanings." W. E B. DuBois

Lol

32-5

First of all, I have tweaked my grading system slightly this season, to be more in sync with March Madness. In past years under my system mostly all teams A- and above plus some B+ teams went to the tourney. This year I have expanded the A+ through A- categories to take in those few B+ stragglers. This year if you finish at A- or above, you should be Dancing.....B+ probably not. This obviously has nothing to do with auto qualifiers. If you come from a stinky conference and have a C- rating and finish 1st, you will be in. This is best used to determine non auto bid teams...ie an A-10 4th place team...maybe in or out. Also these rankings are PREseason and in no way predict a finish....but in general, teams don't wander too far from their preseason ratings. I will put out another ranking in Jan before the season starts after the Yale game when we have some real numbers to work with. So here we go........ SLU......A VCU.....A LaS.......B+ UMass...B+ St. J.......B+ Day........B+ Rich.......B+ G. Mas...B GW.........C+ RI............C+ St. B........C+ Duq.........C- Ford.........C- Some general observations....Duq and Ford have improved significantly. Are they good teams? No.... But they will no longer be a drag on the conference like in previous years when they were D- and F. Also RI has made a nice jump. SLU and VCU should make the Dance plus 1 or 2 others who can move up from B+ to A- A lot of parity in the conference. G Mason was a good addition ....not great but good. Overall, I think this year's conference is stronger even with the loss of X and But as a result of the bottom of the A-10 improving. Speaking of X and But....they both come in as B+...So they are nice additions to the new BE but not as nice as if they had added the Bills One last thing in regards to our schedule ... We only have 3 weak teams to play...Wofford (D), SIU-E (F) and NC A&T (F)...Does Rockhurst even count as a Div II foe? This is a much better schedule than last year when the Dec games were littered with all D's and F's....And with the reg conf stronger it should be a good season. Go Bills

Santa Clara was a Nov game so point spread was not that significant. It was a game we should have won but was not an upset And while SEMO is not a bad team a loss to them would be an upset as they are not as good as SC was

I use a Bayesian network program...Probablistic directed acyclic graphical model...in other words a forecasting model when no data is available.... As games are played the model is gradually phased out after about 6 games...Think 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon....where all the data points connect.

Good question. The answer is we need some significant wins. A win over Wisc (an A+team) might be enough. A win over Wisc and Wich St (A rated) would definitely do it. Of course this assumes we have no other losses in November.

Santa Clara was a much better team than SEMO....so NO

I will have that tonight (11/4)

Bills start the season as an A rated team. SEMO comes in as a C- team so they are not a cream puff team but we should win without too much trouble. As we start another season, I will remind those who follow my prognostications that there is a great deal of variability in the month of November until enough data points have accrued. By the time we get to Dec (Wich St) I will feel more comfortable with the numbers.

I am here....Got caught up in college football. I start gearing up for BB (my bad....BasketBall ...no initials) once my Bills tix arrive. So I am cranking up the old foo foo as we speak. I am tweaking my ranking system a bit so I should be ready to go in a couple of days. I am trying to align my system so it can also be used as a forecasting tool throughout the season for selection Sunday particularly on teams that are not auto bids. This has the possibility of being the Bills best year yet. That statement should smoke out MB.

Foo foo computer says wait till next week