2016-17 Rankings

[talksalot]

OK, we didn't make the Coaches poll either... anything interesting jump out???

The USA TODAY Sports Board of Coaches is made up of 32 head coaches at Division I institutions. All are members of the National Association of Basketball Coaches. The board for the 2015-16 season: Randy Bennett, Saint Mary's; Jim Boeheim, Syracuse; Todd Bozeman, Morgan State; Glenn Braica, St. Francis Brooklyn; Scott Cherry, High Point; Tim Cluess, Iona; Ed Conroy, Tulane; Keith Dambrot, Akron; Cameron Dollar, Seattle; Scott Drew, Baylor; Matt Driscoll, North Florida; Steve Fisher, San Diego State; Bruiser Flint, Drexel; Mark Fox, Georgia; John Gallagher, Hartford; Matthew Graves, South Alabama; Ray Harper, Western Kentucky; George Ivory, Arkansas-Pine Bluff; Ben Jacobson, Northern Iowa; Rob Jeter, Wisconsin-Milwaukee; James Jones, Yale; Mike McConathy, Northwestern State; Greg McDermott, Creighton; Chris Mooney, Richmond; Matt Painter, Purdue; Randy Rahe, Weber State; Heath Schroyer, Tennessee-Martin; Joe Scott, Denver; Zach Spiker, Army; Wayne Tinkle, Oregon State; Bob Williams, UC-Santa Barbara; Mike Young, Wofford.

[agibson]

Weird. Is that last year's list? Kampe's a voter this year - probably more or less replacing Jeter for the Horizon League. A few weeks ago the list, probably from ESPN, reflected that. I can't trivially find such a list, at the moment.

[talksalot]

probably from ESPN,

I copied the list from the espn site.

[agibson]

probably from ESPN,

I copied the list from the espn site.

Right. They definitely have your list at the moment, and for previous weeks in this season.

I suspect some kind of data management error on their side. Obviously Jeter's not voting this year.

Here's USA Today's version of the list, from earlier this season

http://sportspolls.usatoday.com/ncaa/basketball-men/polls/coaches-poll/2016/1/

The USA TODAY Sports Board of Coaches is made up of 32 head coaches at Division I institutions. All are members of the National Association of Basketball Coaches. The board for the 2016-17 season: Randy Bennett, Saint Mary's; Jim Boeheim, Syracuse; Tad Boyle, Colorado; Todd Bozeman, Morgan State; Glenn Braica, St. Francis Brooklyn; Scott Cherry, High Point; Tim Cluess, Iona; Jon Coffman, IP-Fort Wayne; Mick Cronin, Cincinnati; Keith Dambrot, Akron; Cameron Dollar, Seattle; Scott Drew, Baylor; Matt Driscoll, North Florida; Bill Evans, Idaho State; Steve Fisher, San Diego State; Mark Fox, Georgia; John Gallagher, Hartford; Matthew Graves, South Alabama; Mike Rhoades, Rice; George Ivory, Arkansas-Pine Bluff; Ben Jacobson, Northern Iowa; James Jones, Yale; Greg Kampe, Oakland; Dave Loos, Austin Peay; Mike McConathy, Northwestern State; Greg McDermott, Creighton; Chris Mooney, Richmond; Matt Painter, Purdue; Brett Reed, Lehigh; Zach Spiker, Drexel; Bob Williams, UC-Santa Barbara; Mike Young, Wofford.

[agibson]

OK, we didn't make the Coaches poll either... anything interesting jump out???

The USA TODAY Sports Board of Coaches is made up of 32 head coaches at Division I institutions. All are members of the National Association of Basketball Coaches. The board for the 2015-16 season: Randy Bennett, Saint Mary's; Jim Boeheim, Syracuse; Todd Bozeman, Morgan State; Glenn Braica, St. Francis Brooklyn; Scott Cherry, High Point; Tim Cluess, Iona; Ed Conroy, Tulane; Keith Dambrot, Akron; Cameron Dollar, Seattle; Scott Drew, Baylor; Matt Driscoll, North Florida; Steve Fisher, San Diego State; Bruiser Flint, Drexel; Mark Fox, Georgia; John Gallagher, Hartford; Matthew Graves, South Alabama; Ray Harper, Western Kentucky; George Ivory, Arkansas-Pine Bluff; Ben Jacobson, Northern Iowa; Rob Jeter, Wisconsin-Milwaukee; ...

Ah, there it is. I'd not noticed the date in your quote. Maybe ESPN simply never updated their list this year.

[talksalot]

so, I looked at who's voting for the Mid-Major Top 25...interesting

VOTING PANEL: Casey Alexander (Lipscomb), Roman Banks (Southern), Randy Bennett (St. Mary's), Will Brown (Albany), Jamion Christian (Mount St. Mary's), Jon Coffman (IPFW), Jim Engles (Columbia), James Fox (Appalachian State), Tyler Geving (Portland State), Derrin Hansen (Nebraska-Omaha), Steve Hawkins (Western Michigan), Jason Hooten (Sam Houston State), Brian Jones (North Dakota), James Jones (Yale), Mike Jones (Radford), Robert Jones (Norfolk State), Greg Kampe (Oakland), Danny Kaspar (Texas State), Tod Kowalczyk (Toledo), Greg Lansing (Indiana State), Jim Les (UC Davis), Dan Majerle (Grand Canyon), Gregg Marshall (Wichita State), Bob Marlin (UL-Lafayette), Ritchie McKay (Liberty), Niko Medved (Furman), Rob O'Driscoll (Drexel), Jimmy Patsos (Siena), G.G. Smith (Loyola), Damon Stoudamire (Pacific), Jay Spoonhour (Eastern Illinois).

[agibson]

Yep. He said het put us #1 on the midmajor poll before the Oregon trip.

And that he hadn't voted for us in the national poll, but that (at one time, e.g before he beat us) we were close.

[ml2]

I think on another thread someone mentioned Valpo's poor performance in ESPN's BPI ranking, where we place well above 100. Looking at it a little closer is very interesting, and I thought this would be a good spot to drop what I found.

The BPI is supposed to be a "forward-looking" system designed to predict the outcome of future games - similar to Jeff Sagarin's ratings. However, ESPN also now has a "backwards-looking" system (which they call Strength of Record or SOR) designed solely to quantify how impressive a team's resume is, but not necessarily make a prediction about future performance - basically a more sophisticated RPI, which was not created for prediction but only to better rank past results. These two measures sometimes disagree significantly about a team, and Valpo has one of the widest gaps of any team in Division 1. The BPI places us at 117, while our SOR sits at 42 - 75 places better.

http://www.espn.com/mens-college-basketball/bpi/_/season/2017/page/2/view/resume
http://www.espn.com/mens-college-basketball/bpi/_/page/5/view/bpi

It's basically like ESPN's computers are saying our team is a fraud. Our past results may look great, they say, but don't expect us to live up to them going forward. Of course I, and I assume most people on this board, wouldn't accept that conclusion, but it does seem to be what the computers at ESPN think. It also seems to jive with Ken Pomeroy's ratings where we now sit (at 84th) significantly behind, Alabama (75th), BYU (66th) and Rhode Island (46th) who we of course have beaten, but who all also have worse records than us. The one big difference? All of them have much lower "Luck" ratings than us (we rank as the 12th luckiest team in Pomeroy's system, while those three rank 229th, 270th and 304th). For those not familiar, the "luck" factor for Pomeroy is supposed to capture how much the team is under or over-performing against the computer's predictions. So it seems that Pomeroy's and ESPN's BPI ratings are both seeing something in our statistics that significantly decreases our predictive ranking relative to our actual resume. What that is though, I can't figure out.

Lastly, I'll reiterate that our ESPN Strength of Record rating currently sits at 42, and direct you to this quote from a recent ESPN article about conference strength.

"ESPN's strength of record describes which teams have the most impressive win-loss records. Our analysis shows that if in a typical year, a team is in the top 50 of SOR on Selection Sunday, it deserves to make the NCAA tournament."

http://www.espn.com/mens-college-basketball/story/_/id/18518019/conference-power-rankings-according-bpi

[justducky]

Lastly, I'll reiterate that our ESPN Strength of Record rating currently sits at 42, and direct you to this quote from a recent ESPN article about conference strength.

"ESPN's strength of record describes which teams have the most impressive win-loss records. Our analysis shows that if in a typical year, a team is in the top 50 of SOR on Selection Sunday, it deserves to make the NCAA tournament."

OK, so I just started watching BPI last year and there are significant gaps in my knowledge. Was our 42ish selection Sunday number last year only for predictive purposes or was there an actual or implied SOR ranking? In other words what was its selection Sunday value last year (and was it followed) and how should we value it this year?

Going to their projections they have us at 13.7 HL wins vs 4.3 HL losses and an ending BPI of 35.      

[a3uge]

I think on another thread someone mentioned Valpo's poor performance in ESPN's BPI ranking, where we place well above 100. Looking at it a little closer is very interesting, and I thought this would be a good spot to drop what I found.

The BPI is supposed to be a "forward-looking" system designed to predict the outcome of future games - similar to Jeff Sagarin's ratings. However, ESPN also now has a "backwards-looking" system (which they call Strength of Record or SOR) designed solely to quantify how impressive a team's resume is, but not necessarily make a prediction about future performance - basically a more sophisticated RPI, which was not created for prediction but only to better rank past results. These two measures sometimes disagree significantly about a team, and Valpo has one of the widest gaps of any team in Division 1. The BPI places us at 117, while our SOR sits at 42 - 75 places better.

http://www.espn.com/mens-college-basketball/bpi/_/season/2017/page/2/view/resume
http://www.espn.com/mens-college-basketball/bpi/_/page/5/view/bpi

It's basically like ESPN's computers are saying our team is a fraud. Our past results may look great, they say, but don't expect us to live up to them going forward. Of course I, and I assume most people on this board, wouldn't accept that conclusion, but it does seem to be what the computers at ESPN think. It also seems to jive with Ken Pomeroy's ratings where we now sit (at 84th) significantly behind, Alabama (75th), BYU (66th) and Rhode Island (46th) who we of course have beaten, but who all also have worse records than us. The one big difference? All of them have much lower "Luck" ratings than us (we rank as the 12th luckiest team in Pomeroy's system, while those three rank 229th, 270th and 304th). For those not familiar, the "luck" factor for Pomeroy is supposed to capture how much the team is under or over-performing against the computer's predictions. So it seems that Pomeroy's and ESPN's BPI ratings are both seeing something in our statistics that significantly decreases our predictive ranking relative to our actual resume. What that is though, I can't figure out.

Lastly, I'll reiterate that our ESPN Strength of Record rating currently sits at 42, and direct you to this quote from a recent ESPN article about conference strength.

"ESPN's strength of record describes which teams have the most impressive win-loss records. Our analysis shows that if in a typical year, a team is in the top 50 of SOR on Selection Sunday, it deserves to make the NCAA tournament."

http://www.espn.com/mens-college-basketball/story/_/id/18518019/conference-power-rankings-according-bpi

Part of the reason why the luck / predictive rankings are so bad is due to the amount of close wins they've had - Valpo was down at halftime in several of their early season wins. 3 of the 4 losses were blowouts.

[talksalot]

Mid Major poll update: Valpo Soars all the way from #13 all the way up to #12 after two huge blow-out wins over above-average HL teams.  Oakland, losers of 3 out of 4, are still in the poll at #25.   No Mention of Wright State or Northern Kentucky; but GB gets votes after we blow them out of the gym.

Nice to see MoState and Santa Clara getting some votes here.

1.   Gonzaga (31)   19-0   775   1   West Coast
2.   UNCW   19-2   723   2   Colonial
3.   New Mexico State   18-2   679   3   Western Athletic
4.   Wichita State   17-4   673   4   Missouri Valley
5.   Saint Mary's   17-2   669   5   West Coast
6.   Illinois State   16-4   570   6   Missouri Valley
7.   Chattanooga   15-4   561   7   Southern
8.   Akron   16-3   549   8   Mid-American
9.   UT Arlington   14-5   494   9   Sun Belt
10.   Monmouth   16-5   464   14   Metro Atlantic
11.   Belmont   13-4   407   16   Ohio Valley
12.   Valparaiso   16-4   401   13   Horizon
13.   Georgia Southern   13-6   344   18   Sun Belt
14.   UNC Greensboro   16-5   339   23   Southern
15.   ETSU   15-5   258   12   Southern
16.   Charleston   16-5   254   15   Colonial
17.   Winthrop   15-4   249   25   Big South
18.   Vermont   16-5   224   22   America East
19.   Ohio   12-5   197   17   Mid-American
20.   Arkansas State   13-6   184   21   Sun Belt
21.   Florida Gulf Coast   15-6   176   19   Atlantic Sun
22.   BYU   15-6   161   NR   West Coast
23.   North Dakota State   14-6   123   NR   Summit
24.   Fort Wayne   14-7   99   10   Summit
25.   Oakland   15-6   96   11   Horizon

OTHERS RECEIVING VOTES: Sam Houston State 64, Bucknell 62, Princeton 46, UL Lafayette 45, Eastern Michigan 36, Northern Illinois 29, Loyola (CHI) 21, UC Irvine 17, UNC Asheville 14, Grand Canyon 11, Missoouri State 9, Furman 7, Little Rock 7, UMBC 7, Yale 6, New Orleans 5, Northeastern 4, Texas Southern 4, UT Martin 4, Santa Clara 3, Green Bay 2, Canisius 1, NC Central 1, Tennessee State 1.

Had to look up NC-Wilmington... a legit 17-2, losses are to Top 50-Middle Tennessee State and @Clemson; top 100 road wins @St Bonaventure and @Charleston.   Worst Wins, #269 Eastern Kentucky, #255 Western Michigan, #252 Delaware, plays #276 James Madison on Thursday.

Belmont, ranked ahead of us, is 0-4 against top-100 teams, Florida, Vandy, Midd Tenn and Rhode Island.  They've won the rest of their games, but only two teams have a winning record! #116 JaxState is their best win.

Monmouth, ranked ahead of us, has losses @ North Carolina,@ South Carolina, @ Syracuse.  Followed the UNC loss with losses to #199 Rider and #176 St. Peters.  Best Wins @77 Memphis and @105 Iona.  Worst Wins, #283 SC State, #281 Niagara, #273 Army,  #268 Cornell,

Texas-Arlington, ranked ahead of us, has losses @18 Minnesota @88 FGCU and @31 Arkansas... and then had a bad stretch a few weeks ago losing road conference games @272 Texas State and @197 Troy. Worst Win #309 North Texas

Compare those to Valpo's losses @13 Oregon @3 Kentucky, Home #175 Santa Clara, Home #130 Oakland.  Best Wins #49 Rhode Island, #89 Alabama, #99 BYU.  Worst Wins #342 SUU and #327 Coppin State, #266 Detroit, #261 Chicago State.

[valpotx]

We would kill several of the teams ahead of us...

[zvillehaze]

I think on another thread someone mentioned Valpo's poor performance in ESPN's BPI ranking, where we place well above 100. Looking at it a little closer is very interesting, and I thought this would be a good spot to drop what I found.

The BPI is supposed to be a "forward-looking" system designed to predict the outcome of future games - similar to Jeff Sagarin's ratings. However, ESPN also now has a "backwards-looking" system (which they call Strength of Record or SOR) designed solely to quantify how impressive a team's resume is, but not necessarily make a prediction about future performance - basically a more sophisticated RPI, which was not created for prediction but only to better rank past results. These two measures sometimes disagree significantly about a team, and Valpo has one of the widest gaps of any team in Division 1. The BPI places us at 117, while our SOR sits at 42 - 75 places better.

http://www.espn.com/mens-college-basketball/bpi/_/season/2017/page/2/view/resume
http://www.espn.com/mens-college-basketball/bpi/_/page/5/view/bpi

It's basically like ESPN's computers are saying our team is a fraud. Our past results may look great, they say, but don't expect us to live up to them going forward. Of course I, and I assume most people on this board, wouldn't accept that conclusion, but it does seem to be what the computers at ESPN think. It also seems to jive with Ken Pomeroy's ratings where we now sit (at 84th) significantly behind, Alabama (75th), BYU (66th) and Rhode Island (46th) who we of course have beaten, but who all also have worse records than us. The one big difference? All of them have much lower "Luck" ratings than us (we rank as the 12th luckiest team in Pomeroy's system, while those three rank 229th, 270th and 304th). For those not familiar, the "luck" factor for Pomeroy is supposed to capture how much the team is under or over-performing against the computer's predictions. So it seems that Pomeroy's and ESPN's BPI ratings are both seeing something in our statistics that significantly decreases our predictive ranking relative to our actual resume. What that is though, I can't figure out.

Lastly, I'll reiterate that our ESPN Strength of Record rating currently sits at 42, and direct you to this quote from a recent ESPN article about conference strength.

"ESPN's strength of record describes which teams have the most impressive win-loss records. Our analysis shows that if in a typical year, a team is in the top 50 of SOR on Selection Sunday, it deserves to make the NCAA tournament."

http://www.espn.com/mens-college-basketball/story/_/id/18518019/conference-power-rankings-according-bpi

Very nice summary.  Ken Pomeroy had a blog post about the NCAA selection committee's use of "predictive" metrics.  http://kenpom.com/blog/that-meeting-at-the-ncaa-hq/#more-1417

I recall this being discussed quite a bit when the 2015 Maryland team received a #4 seed (against Valpo) based on a 27-6 record and a 13 RPI.  However, Kenpom rated them #33 and ranked #2 in "luck", leading many people to predict they'd be gone early in the tourney.  It played out that way as they needed some favorable calls (and non-calls) to get past Valpo before losing to WVU in their next game.

An interesting comparison between that team and this year's Valpo team is the explanation for Pomeroy's "luck" component.  Basically, it was believed that Maryland won a majority of "50/50 games" not because of luck, but because they had a player in Melo Trimble who could make huge plays down the stretch and never missed free throws late in games.  Very similar to what Peters does for Valpo in close games.  So what appears to be luck when looking at numbers (and something that should even out over the season) can actually be something that's predictable and repeatable (a good player making big plays in close games).

As Pomeroy points out, the most important factor in evaluating whether teams "deserve" to be in the NCAA tourney should be based on actual game outcomes, not some prediction of how teams may perform in the tournament.  IMO, Kenpom/Sagarin/KPI ratings shouldn't be ignored, but should be used when differentiating between teams with similar resumes.

[valpo84]

#10 in this power ranking

http://www.midmajormadness.com/2017/1/24/14370256/mid-major-madness-power-rankings-week-10-gonzaga-saint-marys-illinois-state-Winthrop

[agibson]

#10 in this power ranking

http://www.midmajormadness.com/2017/1/24/14370256/mid-major-madness-power-rankings-week-10-gonzaga-saint-marys-illinois-state-Winthrop

So here too we hold steady while Oakland continues to drop.

It may be that time of the season where, at least for mid-majors, if you want to move up the ranks it's mostly about teams above you losing. Everybody has the chance for "bad losses" but few mid-majors have the chance for "signature wins" and even putting the smack down on conference foes you're expected to beat may not catch voters' attention.

[oklahomamick]

Now that conference play has started we will not have another opportunity for a top 100 win.  We currently have 3?  Which is more than most of the teams above us.  (Someone pointed that out earlier).

[a3uge]

We may have 3 top 100 wins but some of the other teamside have signature wins .  We've beaten one tournament bubble team. We don't have anything close to a signature win.

Not Akron, the teamside right ahead of us.

[FieldGoodie05]

We may have 3 top 100 wins but some of the other teamside have signature wins .  We've beaten one tournament bubble team. We don't have anything close to a signature win.

Not Akron, the teamside right ahead of us.

The Mid American Conference...where does it stand compared to the HL in all these acronyms (rankings)?  I've always viewed the MAC as a far superior conference for most sports. 

[a3uge]

We may have 3 top 100 wins but some of the other teamside have signature wins .  We've beaten one tournament bubble team. We don't have anything close to a signature win.

Not Akron, the teamside right ahead of us.

The Mid American Conference...where does it stand compared to the HL in all these acronyms (rankings)?  I've always viewed the MAC as a far superior conference for most sports.

Their conference has a good RPI (in men's basketball) because they consistently play one of the easiest schedules in D1. Poor SOS by every member benefits RPI. None of their teams ever have decent wins outside of conference, and they don't have teams that are at-large worthy (whereas Valpo, UWGB, and Butler have been there or close).

[justducky]

Their conference has a good RPI (in men's basketball) because they consistently play one of the easiest schedules in D1. Poor SOS by every member benefits RPI.

The MAC rpi ranking is now 15 with the HL at 18. The HL has 3 top 50 wins vs 0 for the MAC. One of our top 50 wins is YSU over the mighty Akron Zips at rpi #41. It seems like the MAC strategy of weakening OOC schedules to game the system has only shown limited success, and I would think it makes it much more difficult for them to schedule.

I hope WSU, NKU, Oakland, UIC, GB and Valpo can continue with their improvements so the Horizon can get solidly back in front. I don't like trailing them.

[valpotx]

The MAC as a far superior conference?  Come on, man .  We can routinely beat their schools in men's basketball, volleyball, baseball, softball, and several other sports.  They are on par with the HL in most sports.

[a3uge]

None of their teams ever have decent wins outside of conference, and they don't have teams that are at-large worthy (whereas Valpo, UWGB, and Butler have been there or close).

As best as I can remember Butler is the only team to get an at large bid from the HL, and that was just once.Although since leaving the Horizon League they've gotten at large bids in 3 seasons and probably will again since as of now they have the #3 ranked rpi (good example of why we need a better confrence). Last year was our best team and we didn't get an at large. So I'm not really sure what you're referencing wine you're talking about all these at large worthy teams we've had.

Valpo was at-large worthy to the point where the NCAA is reconsidering the selection committee process. I would lump UWGB in there as well 4 years ago as they had plenty of at large votes. Also, Butler would have been an at-large had they lost the conference tournament in a number of year - so yes, they've had multiple at-large worthy teams. Even dating back to Bruce Pearl's UWM team, they would have probably been an at-large had they lost the conference tournament. The MAC hasn't had anything resembling that because most of their teams play cupcake schedules.

[agibson]

As best as I can remember Butler is the only team to get an at large bid from the HL, and that was just once.

It's been a little while, but at-large bids and at-large quality seeds used to be fairly common.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizon_League_Men%27s_Basketball_Tournament#Post-season_success

Last literal at-large bids were Butler in 2009 and 2007.

Milwaukee had an at-large quality 11 seed in 2006, and while they won the HL tournament in 2003 to get their 12 seed, it matched Butler's at-large 12 seed that season.

In 1998 Detroit (10) and UIC (9) _both_ got at-large bids, while Butler was the upset HL tourney victor and got a 13.

In 1996 Green Bay got an at-large 8.

And then, yeah, back in the 80's the likes of Xavier, Evansville, and Dayton got a bunch of at-large bids and at-large quality seeds.

I don't look back to the 80's as much. But, that track record from say 1996-2006 (and then Butler had at-large quality seeds every season after that until they left the conference) is what I was _hoping_ we were getting into when we joined the Horizon League. Not a conference where we'd go to the NCAA tournament every year. But, a conference where when we did win the conference tournament we could hope for a 13 seed, a 12 seed, or preferably better. And where, for seasons where we were upset as favorites in the conference tournament, we would have good hopes (even an expectation?) of an at-large bid.

Obviously that's not materialized. Of course a good dose of that is on us. We've not had the success in the non-conference to regularly build at-large quality resumees. But the league sure hasn't helped us. Too few are the years where there have been "quality" wins available in conference play. And there are always bad losses available. Part of the trade off has been that we've won the conference (regular season, at least) more often than I'd expected. But, that feels something like a return to the Mid-Con.

[valpocleveland]

RPI as of this morning:

62 62 Vanderbilt 0.5697 9-11 SEC 2 0.6256 222 0.4022 6-6 69 2
63 63 Valparaiso 0.5687 15-4 Horz 148 0.5034 39 0.7647 9-3 53 101

Would love to settle this on the court!

[VUSL98]

Valpo (61) just leapfrogged Vandy (62).