Rating Teams and the Three Factors

To develop my own customized team ratings for seeding, I wanted to get away from the RPI.  The RPI is a fair litmus test to validate “how real” a team’s record is, but does little to evaluate “how good” a team is.  RPI ratings can be manipulated by clever scheduling, and can also be sabotaged by things outside of a team’s control.  I also did not want to just cut and paste Pomeroy or Sagarin ratings and say “Hey, look what I did…” Not cool, and honestly, not much fun. 

The best way I felt to display these figures was to take a page from the immortal Dr. Emmett Brown’s playbook when he converted the DeLorean into a Time Machine.  The internal display gave the operator 3 readings: where you are, where you were, and where you are going (in some order).  This led me to create three different rankings: Basic, Strength, and Normalized.

As you can see from the graphic, each ranking values the teams differently, as it takes into different factors that rate performance.  While we know West Virginia can blow the door off any team any given night, it doesn’t tell us if they can achieve consistent results, or if they can sustain those results going forward.

The Basic Rating tells us Who You Are.  Weighted primarily off Pomeroy efficiency and Sagarin Ratings, normalized for a minimal level of performance, it gives a fair indicator of how well you score, how well you prevent scoring, and how good the overall quality of opponent has been.  This is great in a vacuum for theorizing which team is over/underrated, but does little to get us to a bracket.

The Strength Rating tells us Who/Where You Were.  In order to actually incorporate a tool the NCAA uses, I have used the teams’ RPI numbers to determine Top 50 W/L, Top 100 W/L, and bad losses.  It answers the question: When I have stepped on the court with my peers, what results have I delivered.  Some teams, like Iowa State and Georgia Tech, benefit immensely here.  The mid-majors, due to down years in the gut of many of their conferences, defections, and just bad scheduling luck, are getting crushed in this aspect.  Few teams got many opportunities, and many of them blew those.  And you just can’t help the fact that you may have put BC, Washington, and Texas on your Big Boy schedule and those teams are Butt.  This does give a fairly reliable rating of who is tourney caliber, and I used it for a few published brackets… but as I said before, opportunity and schedule can be manipulated here to mask what a team will do come NCAA time.

So… the Normalized ratings attempt to tell us Where you are Going, particularly in March.  Here, we reduce those opportunities to percentages, while giving additional weight to road neutral win % and win % in the last 12 games.  This puts mid majors on a level playing field with majors. Syracuse can buoy their record with wins at the Carrier Dome, but the NCAA Tourney isn’t at the Carrier Dome.  While Iowa State bangs around the Big 12, their quality numbers get a boost by doing it consistently and occasionally stealing one on the road.  Belmont and Vermont, lacking the quality opportunities, can be fairly rated by taking on all their challengers without slip up.

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While not perfect, these numbers output consistent values that don’t have teams jumping all over the grid.

2017 Predictions: The BCS teams

Despite my bias toward the Big East, Atlantic 10, Mountain West, and powers in the Missouri Valley and West Coast, I feel that it would be ignorant to state that these conferences are in the same class as the 5 BCS Conferences.  The Big East clearly has the talent to compete with any of these affiliations, and top to bottom, the A-10, MWC, and AAC have the horses to run with the PAC-12 and SEC this year.  It really comes down to resources, exposure, and the “self-licking ice cream cone.”

The resource gradient does not drive basketball as much as football, but at the end of the day, even your middling BCS program (say, Washington?) is spending so much more per student athlete.  It makes everything easier, from recruiting, training, and actually going to and playing the games.  Richmond and Saint Bonaventure just are not going to have those selling points.

Exposure has changed dramatically the last 15 years.  Back in the days of yore, dish was the only way to get out of region games, let alone mid-major and small conference games.  Now I can choose from any of about 6 to 20 games on any evening or weekend through FiOS (no, I am not trying to sell their service… it sucks, but is still better than cable).  This at least gives casual fans the opportunity to observe that Old Dominion may be legit.  However, when CBS advertises its game of the week, they never try to dig outside the BCS sandbox.  The Big East makes it difficult to ignore, but you are more likely going to be pimped Tennessee/Georgia or Oklahoma State/Oklahoma.

These first two discriminators do not necessarily give a school an advantage reaching the tournament through conference affiliation.  But the self-licking ice cream will do exactly that, giving mediocre teams more credit for getting their asses handed to them through mandatory conference games than rewarding excellence winning the games you should win.  I think the SEC is a prime example.  Outside Kentucky, there isn’t a true dominating national contender.  It is really them, 9 bubble teams, and 4 doormats.  Pretty much all 9 of those teams are going to log 17-22 wins of varying caliber.  The advantage is that they not only get the strength of schedule bump from playing Kentucky, but also all of their other conference opponents who have played Kentucky, even the doormats. 

So once upon a time, the commissioners in several of the “mid-major” conferences realized that they were never going to get the cherry home-and-home opportunities against the big schools, so they gamed the RPI formula.  First off, avoid games against the lower third of teams except for the ones you have to play in conference.  BCS conference teams were more than happy to buy those games anyways to drive toward 20 wins.  Second, find neutral site games and “preseason” tournaments to add additional games to the schedule that have the road/neutral bonus.  Finally, the “Bracket Buster” series was established to give these teams additional Top 50/Top 100 games to both their contenders, as well as the mid and lower conference teams.  The result has been frustration and consternation, and arguably the end of the RPI used as the basis for selection and seeding. 

Virginia Tech under Seth Greenberg was the example of how the system was being worked and how NOT to schedule.  It seemed every season, they would take advantage of their natural home court advantage and spoil a Duke, Maryland, or UNC, chalk up a few other Top 50 wins on their way to 23-9, lose early in the ACC tourney, then find themselves in the NIT because their schedule was fat on Campbell, Longwood, and VMI.  Now it is possible for a team to get screwed because after putting together a fair schedule, those opponents all just had a bad year, but Tech played some good teams… it’s just that the bad teams were always really bad.  Now the book out is that if you anticipate being in the bubble discussion, avoid those games and on the weak BCS teams, weak mid majors, or the best small conference schools.  This has made scheduling harder for the non-BCS conferences because they cannot offer their opponent the same resources or exposure.  Hence, the rich get richer through association, and the middle class fights the fight.

On to the predictions!

The ACC is a true dog fight.  5 elite teams, 7 legitimate bubble teams, 2 doormats, and 1 Clemson.  UVA and Miami have huge upside and downside, but I can’t see either falling below .500, even in this loaded conference.  Notre Dame and Florida State will likely get high seeds based on strength of schedule, and this conference will probably never get 12 teams in, but 10 is not out of the question.

The Big Ten is also loaded the same way with 3 legit final four players, the enigma that is Michigan State every year, 4 other teams that will have to play their way out at this point, four other bubble teams, and then the 2 doormats.  When I finished my predictions, I was surprised how low I had Michigan.  They seem safe, yet bottom half of the conference.  While there is much to like about the progress being made at Northwestern and Nebraska, it just seems that there is a chasm of talent between them and the next tier.  The other teams are all rebuilding, not reloading.

One through five in the PAC 12 are fairly interchangeable based on schedule, injuries, suspensions.  Utah has great upside, and USC is sneaky good this year and a fun Sweet 16 dark horse.  I’m betting on Cal and Washington stumbling this year before making moves next year, though Lorenzo Romar may not make it around if the Huskies are tanking winnable games.  People have shown that is possible to win in Pullman, but not this year… not sure that is the case in Tempe or Corvallis, as those teams never seem to play up to potential.

Texas returning to respectability ups the profile of this conference.  I don’t see a true front-runner, even if Kansas has the talent to do so.  Bob Huggins will beat and bruise and win 75% of his games.  The question is: “where is the fall off?”  There are strong teams here, but Oklahoma was a Buddy Hield force, but will show growing pains.  Brad Underwood has Oklahoma State trending the right way, but inherited a mess.  Baylor has talent, but man, that athletic program is a ticking time bomb.  Can Jamie Dixon turn TCU around, or was that Pitt program really Ben Howland and a house of cards that nobody knocked down?  This smells of a 4 bid league, but will probably get 6.

My thoughts on the SEC were pretty clear.  It is Kentucky and a bunch of 8-9 seed fodder.  I like South Carolina, but Frank Martin started with nothing there and is coaching up a bunch of 2 and 3 stars.  There are lots of good coaches down here, but the football drain on these programs seems to keep many dormant until after bowl games.  Texas A&M was a good story last year, but they are fringy at best.  Florida is not taking a step forward.  I am still not sure why Arkansas is getting so much love, but Mike Anderson at least plays exciting basketball.  The real wild card and potential west division anchor going forward could be Auburn and Bruce Pearl.  His ethics will always be questioned, but he does what Mike Anderson does, and he has typically had more success and consistency.

Now that this is complete, I should have a bracket out Wednesday.