The Bills over Ark-PB by 31

[The Wiz]

No...the spread is not an error or an early April Fool's joke....It shows that we are about to play one of the worst team's we have played in a few years.  Ark -PB is rated at F-...8th worst team in D1.  While the Bills numbers are on the rise  for now, we remain at B+.  It is unlikely this game will help us much in our overall grade.  Around the A-10 , Richmond has moved up to A-. 

As far as the report card below.  A few notes....while the overall team grades above are good ....the report card grades below are still a bit skewed. This is because even though we are a week into the season over 1/4 of the teams (26%) have  yet to play a game.  As noted before , at this point it is more important to focus on the trends.  Nice to see we have an A+ on FTs....I know the naysayers will say , French hasn't played yet but an A+ is still an A+ ....the team is making shots. ....On the report card under rebounds, remember  that Defense rebounds means total rebounds we are allowing the other team....so we are allowing the 10th fewest in the nation. Off Reb are the total we grab /game....and finally, a positive on the injury report , is that Bell is no longer on it.

.............................SLU..........................Ar-PB..........................................................SLU................................Ar-PB

.............................................OFF.....................................................................................................DEF...............

PPG.........................A-...........................F-...............................................................B-.....................................F-

FG%.........................A-...........................F-................................................................F.......................................F-

3Pt%........................A............................F-................................................................C........................................F-

FT%.........................A+... ......................C-.. .......................................................................................................

Reb.........................D............................D-................................................................A+........................................F

 OFF Rebs  = total rebs...DEF rebs = opp reb

Top 100 ITN (In The Nation)

Assts...Y Collins....37th....up

Rebs...Goodwin....25th...up

PPG.....Perkins......6th...up

FT%.....Perkins....1st.....100 way tie....but you still have to qualify with enough shots.

 

Injury report...

French....11/30....Concussion...Questionable.....Remains to be seen whether he will pass the protocol before the game.

Thatch....11/30....Knee...............Questionable....He worked out on the side line on Dec 1.  Thatch said...."I will be back soon"  Uncertain if he will play the next game.

 

Bottom line.....No analysis....Just win

[SLU_Nick]

There was an instagram post that said French was "back" - I am hoping that was the indicator that he now cleared.  

Great write up as always Wiz.

[Old guy]

We really should not need French to win this coming game. As a matter of fact, this game can be problematic for our ranking if we do not, at the very least, make the spread.

[Littlebill]

1 hour ago, The Wiz said:

No...the spread is not an error or an early April Fool's joke....It shows that we are about to play one of the worst team's we have played in a few years.  Ark -PB is rated at F-...8th worst team in D1.  While the Bills numbers are on the rise  for now, we remain at B+.  It is unlikely this game will help us much in our overall grade.  Around the A-10 , Richmond has moved up to A-. 

As far as the report card below.  A few notes....while the overall team grades above are good ....the report card grades below are still a bit skewed. This is because even though we are a week into the season over 1/4 of the teams (26%) have  yet to play a game.  As noted before , at this point it is more important to focus on the trends.  Nice to see we have an A+ on FTs....I know the naysayers will say , French hasn't played yet but an A+ is still an A+ ....the team is making shots. ....On the report card under rebounds, remember  that Defense rebounds means total rebounds we are allowing the other team....so we are allowing the 10th fewest in the nation. Off Reb are the total we grab /game....and finally, a positive on the injury report , is that Bell is no longer on it.

.............................SLU..........................Ar-PB..........................................................SLU................................Ar-PB

.............................................OFF.....................................................................................................DEF...............

PPG.........................A-...........................F-...............................................................B-.....................................F-

FG%.........................A-...........................F-................................................................F.......................................F-

3Pt%........................A............................F-................................................................C........................................F-

FT%.........................A+... ......................C-.. .......................................................................................................

Reb.........................D............................D-................................................................A+........................................F

 OFF Rebs  = total rebs...DEF rebs = opp reb

Top 100 ITN (In The Nation)

Assts...Y Collins....37th....up

Rebs...Goodwin....25th...up

PPG.....Perkins......6th...up

FT%.....Perkins....1st.....100 way tie....but you still have to qualify with enough shots.

 

Injury report...

French....11/30....Concussion...Questionable.....Remains to be seen whether he will pass the protocol before the game.

Thatch....11/30....Knee...............Questionable....He worked out on the side line on Dec 1.  Thatch said...."I will be back soon"  Uncertain if he will play the next game.

 

Bottom line.....No analysis....Just win

Is this the biggest spread you’ve posted on here before?

[wgstl]

41 minutes ago, Old guy said:

We really should not need French to win this coming game. As a matter of fact, this game can be problematic for our ranking if we do not, at the very least, make the spread.

So then we do need french?

[NH]

49 minutes ago, Old guy said:

We really should not need French to win this coming game. As a matter of fact, this game can be problematic for our ranking if we do not, at the very least, make the spread.

Every game can be problematic for your ranking if you do not make the spread. That's the point of the spread. 

[CenHudDude]

48 minutes ago, NH said:

Every game can be problematic for your ranking if you do not make the spread. That's the point of the spread. 

Maybe I’m wrong, but I thought the Wiz said that wins over 20 points don’t matter.  So does it matter if we win by 21 or 32?

[Old guy]

17 minutes ago, CenHudDude said:

Maybe I’m wrong, but I thought the Wiz said that wins over 20 points don’t matter.  So does it matter if we win by 21 or 32?

This is where things get dicey. It really does not matter statistically, but if we are expected to blow off a team with an over 30 spread and we win by 12 or 15 pts we are almost certainly going to go down in many of the rankings. It is more image than reality oftentimes. Follow someone's rankings like kenpom or anyone you like and follow them to see what happens after each gain or loss we have.

[Slu let the dogs out?]

I just want to remind everyone that we are still in the middle of a pandemic so there is no guarantee this game, or any other game, gets played.

--OG

 

 

[slufanskip]

2 hours ago, Littlebill said:

Is this the biggest spread you’ve posted on here before?

Does this spread also have anything to do with Grandy Glaze? 

I now can't hear the word spread without thinking of Grandy. Lol

[The Wiz]

1 hour ago, CenHudDude said:

Maybe I’m wrong, but I thought the Wiz said that wins over 20 points don’t matter.  So does it matter if we win by 21 or 32?

I did say that.  Past 20 pts,  it affects the numbers very little.  ...21 pts or 41pts  won't matter much.  Below 20 would start to affect the numbers.  Remember, it is not just what we do,  but what everybody we play does. We want teams like LSU and SIU-e to win as many games as possible.  It would be great if LSU beat Ky and Tenn.  LSU wins over those teams  would be a bigger boost than a 31 pt win over Ark-PB .

But,  we still need to take care of biz and make sure we Ark-PB by at least 20.

[juniorbill76]

Good opportunity for Has to shake the rust off for 15 minutes.

[Reinert310]

1 minute ago, juniorbill76 said:

Good opportunity for Has to shake the rust off for 15 minutes.

After missing 2 games, including probably 1 of our biggest wins of the season, I’m just hoping the werewolf doesn’t kill somebody. Has anybody checked the moon cycle? If he doesn’t have 30 rebounds this weekend, I’ll be disappointed (Slight hyperbole).

[The Wiz]

3 hours ago, Littlebill said:

Is this the biggest spread you’ve posted on here before?

This may be it....I remember a game against Alabama St. during the RM years (think it was the 11-12 season)...I had us beating them by 29 pts.  

[Old guy]

1 hour ago, The Wiz said:

I did say that.  Past 20 pts,  it affects the numbers very little.  ...21 pts or 41pts  won't matter much.  Below 20 would start to affect the numbers.  Remember, it is not just what we do,  but what everybody we play does. We want teams like LSU and SIU-e to win as many games as possible.  It would be great if LSU beat Ky and Tenn.  LSU wins over those teams  would be a bigger boost than a 31 pt win over Ark-PB .

But,  we still need to take care of biz and make sure we Ark-PB by at least 20.

From a statistical point of view you are correct, rankings (particularly rankings dependent on voting by coaches or whoever) have or may have a number of non statistical factors introduced in the process. Ergo, missing a spread (not Glaze's, the point kind) by a dozen points and still winning the game may have a negative effect in the way our ranking is determined by any number of systems.

[brianstl]

16 hours ago, The Wiz said:

I did say that.  Past 20 pts,  it affects the numbers very little.  ...21 pts or 41pts  won't matter much.  Below 20 would start to affect the numbers.  Remember, it is not just what we do,  but what everybody we play does. We want teams like LSU and SIU-e to win as many games as possible.  It would be great if LSU beat Ky and Tenn.  LSU wins over those teams  would be a bigger boost than a 31 pt win over Ark-PB .

But,  we still need to take care of biz and make sure we Ark-PB by at least 20.

While many systems have a diminishing return with margin of victory after a certain number, they don't have diminishing returns for the efficiency numbers on offense and defense that lead to a 50 point victory.  I am not sure what all goes into your system Wiz, but in a system like the NCAA's NET and Pomeroy's rankings you are still rewarded by keeping your top players in the game late no matter how much you are winning by.  It helps you much more to win by 50 because you played all out for 38 minutes than at the 10 minutes to go mark to start to putting in players that will hurt your efficiency numbers and winning by 30.

[RUBillsFan]

Something odd I noticed in doing a little research on AR-PB.  According to www.sports-reference.com, they had 22 different players appear in a game last season.  That would be 13 scholarship players and 9 different walk-ons which seems crazy.  16 of those guys appeared in 10 or more games and that doesn't include 2 guys who started game at least 1 game, but appeared in less than 3 total.    DId they just have a crazy amount of injuries last year or what the heck was going on?  I can't really find any info on that.

[The Wiz]

51 minutes ago, brianstl said:

While many systems have a diminishing return with margin of victory after a certain number, they don't have diminishing returns for the efficiency numbers on offense and defense that lead to a 50 point victory.  I am not sure what all goes into your system Wiz, but in a system like the NCAA's NET and Pomeroy's rankings you are still rewarded by keeping your top players in the game late no matter how much you are winning by.  It helps you much more to win by 50 because you played all out for 38 minutes than at the 10 minutes to go mark to start to putting in players that will hurt your efficiency numbers and winning by 30.

 

In March of 2019 The Sporting News did a detailed analysis of the NET ranking tool that the NCAA uses to select the the teams for March Madness. .  Most of the report focused on the 5 factors that lead to a team being selected to be in the tournament.  One of the factors is scoring margin.  Here is the section copied from that report.

 

Scoring margin

Scoring margin is a team’s total points minus its opponent’s points. The winning margin was capped at 10 points per game “to prevent rankings from encouraging unsportsmanlike play,” according to the NCAA.

 

Spread charts were originally used for the purpose of determining who would win a basketball game. For instance if you were projected to win a game by 12 points....that had a correlation of about 96%. That means you had a 96% chance of winning the game....pretty much a sure thing.  Whether the exact spread was correct wasn't really that important.  It  was only later on with the advent of  sports betting that the exact spread took on added importance. With the arrival of data analysis and sports computer models "the spread " has become a science.

As for my model,  it starts to move up sharply at  about 3 pts  and then starts to slow around 8pts and  then levels off around 10 pts . It takes another small step up between 10 and 15 pts and is pretty much done at 20 pts.

The NET ranking tool that the NCAA adopted in 2018 has helped my model. It looks like they have used the same data that I have been using for years to adopt the 10 point rule. With some of the high end spreads toning down a bit ...the NCAA model dove tails nicely with my model.

One last thing on spreads....winning is still more important than the spread ...at least as far as being able to make forecasts.  If a team is picked to win by 1 and they win by 6...that teams numbers go up.  However, if that team lose by 1 it is much more damaging  to that team's future numbers even though the spread was only off by 2 pts .

[Cowboy]

18 minutes ago, The Wiz said:

 

In March of 2019 The Sporting News did a detailed analysis of the NET ranking tool that the NCAA uses to select the the teams for March Madness. .  Most of the report focused on the 5 factors that lead to a team being selected to be in the tournament.  One of the factors is scoring margin.  Here is the section copied from that report.

 

Scoring margin

Scoring margin is a team’s total points minus its opponent’s points. The winning margin was capped at 10 points per game “to prevent rankings from encouraging unsportsmanlike play,” according to the NCAA.

 

Spread charts were originally used for the purpose of determining who would win a basketball game. For instance if you were projected to win a game by 12 points....that had a correlation of about 96%. That means you had a 96% chance of winning the game....pretty much a sure thing.  Whether the exact spread was correct wasn't really that important.  It  was only later on with the advent of  sports betting that the exact spread took on added importance. With the arrival of data analysis and sports computer models "the spread " has become a science.

As for my model,  it starts to move up sharply at  about 3 pts  and then starts to slow around 8pts and  then levels off around 10 pts . It takes another small step up between 10 and 15 pts and is pretty much done at 20 pts.

The NET ranking tool that the NCAA adopted in 2018 has helped my model. It looks like they have used the same data that I have been using for years to adopt the 10 point rule. With some of the high end spreads toning down a bit ...the NCAA model dove tails nicely with my model.

One last thing on spreads....winning is still more important than the spread ...at least as far as being able to make forecasts.  If a team is picked to win by 1 and they win by 6...that teams numbers go up.  However, if that team lose by 1 it is much more damaging  to that team's future numbers even though the spread was only off by 2 pts .

-I like this part, win games

[SLU_Nick]

1 hour ago, brianstl said:

While many systems have a diminishing return with margin of victory after a certain number, they don't have diminishing returns for the efficiency numbers on offense and defense that lead to a 50 point victory.  I am not sure what all goes into your system Wiz, but in a system like the NCAA's NET and Pomeroy's rankings you are still rewarded by keeping your top players in the game late no matter how much you are winning by.  It helps you much more to win by 50 because you played all out for 38 minutes than at the 10 minutes to go mark to start to putting in players that will hurt your efficiency numbers and winning by 30.

This is an angle I have never considered before.  I find it highly doubtful that these systems would be smart enough to only count efficiency numbers during non garbage time.  When a team has the walk-ons in there jacking shots when we are up 25-30, those efficiency numbers without a doubt cause suffering to the overall efficiency, in turn hurting rankings.

Just one more reason to make sure that our 8-13 roster slots are populated with studs like Markhi Stickland.    

 

[Old guy]

The Vegas spread for the coming game tomorrow is 33 pts favoring SLU.

[HoosierPal]

About Pine Bluff: The Golden Lions have played four road games, losing by an average of 35 points. … SLU expects to face a lot of zone defense by A-PB, which has allowed opponents an average of 11.5 3-pointers.

[The Wiz]

On 12/3/2020 at 1:16 PM, Littlebill said:

Is this the biggest spread you’ve posted on here before?

While this game is the biggest Bills spread I have posted....there are bigger spreads else where.....I have Northwestern  over Chicago St. (the worst team in D1) tonight  by 35.

[The Wiz]

And now you know what an F- team looks like. 

There were some pretty amazing numbers tonight....65pts in a half....within 3pts of the all time record......25 FGM in a half...within 1 of the all time record.  I can think of many full games where we have scored less than 65pts and less than 25 FGs .......Let's look at the slash ....First a very unusual slash....something I haven't seen before. A slash where all the numbers are within 2% of one another.....65.6 / 64.7 / 66.7...While the FT shooting was nothing to write home about ( great compared to last year....how quickly we forget) the first 2 numbers were nothing short of amazing.  Another strange quirk was that the entire team had either points or rebounds. Everyone scored points except Lorentsson and Courtney and they both had a rebound. 15 players with points or rebounds in 1 game.....shoot...it has been years since we have had 15 players available to play in a game much less score and rebound.....Can you spell deep?....Speaking of deep....44 pts off the bench.

Other great numbers...TO's...9 ...Pts off TOs 32...Pts in the paint....52

And finally for the naysayers....who reply ...Look who you beat....I say... These are strong numbers and while it is still a small sample size it is showing a powerful trend.

Stay tuned for Monday's spread thread against C  Ark where I will have some good news.

[Old guy]

Hi Wiz, yes AKPB was an F- team. Yes, we did have an extraordinary night playing every person in the team. Of course we could have gone much higher if we had kept our main players in action, but really what for.

I had mentioned in a prior post the fact that the rankings  kept by various systems are not the same. I also mentioned that if we won the game by less than the expected spread, we might be hurt in the rankings, simply because the rankings are not based solely on statistics, there is a lot that is not numbers crunching in keeping a ranking system. Here is the proof:

1. Before the game Team rankings had us at 41. They expected us to win by a spread of 33 points.

2. We won by 54 points and in the process played everyone in the roster as you detailed

3. This morning, team rankings has SLU at 28 which is quite a jump.

4. We are playing Bradley today at 2:00 P at Chaifetz, this is very nice. Bradley is 94 as per team rankings and has a record this season of 3-2 (the losses were against Xavier 50-51, currently 49 at team rankings; and S. Dakota St 84-88, currently 70 at team rankings). Bradley may well be underrated by team rankings. This may be an exciting game today.

We are clearly going places this year. I think the only barrier I can see possibly messing this up for us is the damn virus which is totally unpredictable. However it may work to our benefit if we can get additional games against decent opponents, and win them.

Now, and this may be something of a seat of the  pants guess that I  am asking you to provide, do you have any thoughts about this SLU vs Bradley game today?