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AMDG

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    Dayton at St. Joseph's 02/25 on CBS Sports Network

    in Billikens.com Main Board

    Posted

    He is gone. That's a fact. I loved Majerus and he is and was the best NCAA coach that I ever saw. There was no disrespect intended. I was saying it's time to move on. I was there in SLC when Majerus made it all happen. Loved the guy and will always love his accomplishments and his ability to take mediocre teams to new heights. Stop beating on me. I certainly would never disrespect Majerus. It would be sacrilege to me.

    Now read my post outside of the commas and you will understand what was disrespectful.

    Dayton at St. Joseph's 02/25 on CBS Sports Network

    in Billikens.com Main Board

    Posted

    What, this yahoo tries to get me into a message board fiasco and you guys pile on? I've been respectful here and never name-called anyone. I guess I have to continue my ingore list. Sucks, but too many people talking with nothing to really say.

    I would argue that telling a poster of another team's board to change their screen name, because its been 14 months since the death of the namesake, is disrespectful.

    Are Kansas and Duke over-ranked?

    in Billikens.com Main Board

    Posted

    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...

    You aren't into the whole brevity thing, are you?

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