Efficiency Snapshots

posted by DavidH on 2/22/2007 - -

Recently I posted some game-by-game adjusted efficiency ratings for Kansas, derived from Ken Pomeroy’s Game Plan and season efficiency ratings. The Hawks’ numbers looked good, but Jeremy asked for some context on how the numbers were changing as the season progressed, and how this compared to other top teams. So I ran the game-by-game numbers for Pomeroy’s top 11 teams. (Why top 11? I’ll explain Michigan State’s case later on.) Just showing you a mess o’ single game numbers doesn’t do a whole lot of good - there’s a lot of game to game variation. To smooth that noise out and get a better idea of a team’s general trend, we can look at a moving 10-game snapshot.

Graphs after the jump… (more…)

RPI Watch

posted by Jeremy Chrysler on 2/14/2006 - -

Ken Pomeroy’s latest RPI projection has KU at 38th, which is important since we’ve now passed that mythical 40th parallel.

We’re up to 9th overall in his season-long ratings and nestled comfortably at 5th in his last 5 games rating (oddly enough, UNC is number 1 in that rating - good job Roy). By the way, KP’s now predicting 13-3 in conference, with a lone loss at UT.

Dunkel has us at 4th in the country in his latest index, behind Duke, UT and UConn (before last night’s game).

We’re up to 19th overall and 6th in the pure points rating over at Jeff Sagarin’s place (the pure points is more important to Vegas).

Dolphin hasn’t updated yet, but I’ll try to remember to update that later.

You might be interested to know that the composite of bracket projections has us at a #6 seed. Most of the latter day brackets have us as a #5, but some of the less frequently updated brackets have us as an #8 or #9, so we’re averaged up a little. I think if we win out while losing impressively at UT, we have a very good shot at a #4. If we beat UT, I think a #2 is still *possible, but very very unlikely. A 4-6 is most likely at this point. I would almost prefer a #6 at this point to avoid a possible run-in with UConn, Duke or Villanova.

Thoughts?

Yet Another College Basketball Rankings Update

posted by Jeremy Chrysler on 2/9/2006 - -

Regular Phog Blog readers know that I try to follow the power ratings pretty closely, as they can often reveal things about teams that a straight up win-loss record does not. Here’s how we stack in the various predictive ratings around the country.

Pomeroy still has us at 14th, although we’ve moved up to 4th in his Last 5 games rating. In his efficiency and pythagorean ratings, we’re 4th in the country, behind Texas, Duke and UConn, respectively. That’s mighty nice company.

Dolphin still has us at 5th in the nation, behind the above three and Villanova.

Jeff Sagarin has us as 7th in his Pure Points rating, the predictions of which are always eerily similar to Vegas lines.

And finally, the Dunkel index, which last week had us at 6th best team in the country, now has us as the 4th best team in the country (doesn’t include Nebraska win).

Last year, we had the best RPI in the nation, and yet we lagged in these predictive ratings. We all know what happened last year. This year, though our RPI has improved to 45 after last night’s win, we’re excelling at the ratings that the casinos use to predict games.

My bet? Go with the casinos.

Official College Basketball RPI Released by NCAA

posted by Jeremy Chrysler on 2/1/2006 - -

No curtain.  No wizard.  Just numbers.  KU debuts at number #58.

That number will keep going up for a while.