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SFA V BUFFALO


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9 hours ago, Bay Area Billiken said:

In terms of computer rankings.

Let me disagree with you, I do not think this is a matter or raw probabilities, I think it is a matter of sentiment and expectations. I agree this was not an upset, though.

The problem for Buffalo in getting defeated by SFA was loss of confidence in Buffalo by Vegas. Look at TR which works on the Vegas sentiment. Before the game Buffalo was 74 overall, the expectations for the game were not great, they were supposed to win against SFA but only by 5 pts (Vegas line) and only with a 2 stars of confidence level. That means that SFA was considered a probable threat to Buffalo. Prior to the game SFA was ranked 202 by TR.

The game was won by SFA by a single point, which is all you need to win. This was not an upset, the level of confidence prior to the game and the low Vegas line implies that a win by SFA was not totally unexpected. However the win by SFA meant that a re-evaluation of Buffalo and SFA by Vegas was required. As a result Buffalo went down in the rankings from 74 to 84, a loss of 10 reflecting a loss of confidence in the team. SFA went up from 202 to 178, a gain of 26 pts  acknolwledging that Vegas was wrong in its expectations about SFA. As you can see, Buffalo is expected to do less than they were before, and SFA is expected to do a lot more than they  were before.

What is Vegas expectation based upon? It is based upon what the betting public thinks of the teams involved in a game. It goes up and down like a yo yo with gains and losses, but primarily reflects how the betting public feels about every team. This is not something that is easily translated into a numerical expression, and TR does a great job in this regard. If you think about  it, this concept of using Vegas sentiment as a probabilistic predictor for future action in the sports arena is not very different from using sentiment indicators to trade in the market. This interplay is quite interesting, at least to me it is.

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