Valpo 35th in preseason KenPom

[wh]

http://kenpom.com/index.php?y=2016

[chef]

5 of his top 35 teams are from Indiana. That really defy's the numbers.

[govalpogo]

Pomeroy has always been a little too in depth statistically for me to really understand well.  35 sounds like a nice place to start though!  Interesting rankings for the Horizon teams:
35 - Valpo
127 - Wright St.
141 - Green Bay
160 - Oakland
170 - Detroit
177 - Milwaukee
222 - Cleveland St.
271 - N. Kentucky
287 - Youngstown St.
292 - UIC

With rankings like this, it would be hard to even accept 1 fluke loss in league play.  Hard to really be okay with more than 3...maybe 4 losses on the season.  I'm prepared to be disappointed, but that's only because expectations are so high for this team.   

[Pgmado]

Oakland will be significantly higher a month into the season. While KenPom is a great site, even he has come out and said that his preseason rankings don't adjust for transfers. Why? I have no clue.

[vu72]

Only one team (Oregon at 26th) from our non-conference schedule is ranked higher then us.  If these ranking hold true we will need to win most if not all of those games. As for not adjusting for transfers, that might make Valpo a little higher as well!

[valporun]

In terms of "adjusting for transfers", does this mean the college basketball equivalent of 'WAR', the MLB stat that irritates me most?

[covufan]

Massey has us starting the season at #87 (what up with that??), and losing road conference games at GB and CSU.  He also has us losing to RI, the Oregon teams, at Belmont and at Indiana State. 

http://www.masseyratings.com/team.php?t=8361&s=284067

The Massey comparison ranking (only 7 at this time) has us at #62, which is right where we finished last spring. 

http://www.masseyratings.com/cb/compare.htm

[justducky]

With rankings like this, it would be hard to even accept 1 fluke loss in league play.

Oakland will be significantly higher a month into the season.

Oakland and UWM look to be far too low so if WSU, GB, and Detroit can hang in their projected ranges the HL shouldn't be quite the millstone it has been in the recent past. I have trouble imagining us getting through the HL with less than 2 losses but with our talent level it certainly could happen.

[justducky]

5 of his top 35 teams are from Indiana. That really defy's the numbers.

Yes and it goes a long way towards explaining why none are on the schedule. While cowardly it is a rational display of risk avoidance. We could have had a much better chance of playing the other 4 had they started with preseason rankings in the 90-100 area because the risk- reward analysis might have skewed their decisions in the opposite direction.

By the above thought processes you could imagine that Northwestern might have been approachable for a real game but that would be to forget how much the big conference scheduling guidelines discourage such individual behavior. Something needs to change.

[a3uge]

Oakland will be significantly higher a month into the season. While KenPom is a great site, even he has come out and said that his preseason rankings don't adjust for transfers. Why? I have no clue.

I doubt including transfers that had a statistically low impact would improve Oakland's ranking anyways. KPom preseason rankings use performance from the past 9 years... good programs tend to stay good (like Duke and Valpo [emoji16] ). Oakland has had 3 consecutive losing seasons, and lost 2 of the top 3 scorers, so that's why they're rated so low.

[usc4valpo]

I am looking forward to seeing how they play Oregon and Oregon St. If Valpo is the team we all hope they are, they need to be successful in their performance. They need wins over Power 5 teams.