Yeah same thing is happening with Florida State. Not a single good win but they’ve beaten a couple teams by 30 and therefore they end up at 46 in KenPom
Yeah, it makes sense, its just irksome. I know he has a limit somewhere after which the additional margin rapidly matters less, but it feels like its too high when a 35-point win over Nebraska, even at Nebraska, is carrying that much value on your resume.
I don’t know about Ken but Bart Torvik has addressed that as an issue with how predictive metrics are used rather than the metrics themselves. Ken or Bart probably would tell you those results show Michigan has a higher ceiling moving forward than Wisconsin and so they wouldn’t even dispute that ranking. They’d just argue against anyone who tried to use the higher KenPom ranking to put Michigan higher than Wisconsin on a seed list.
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Any system has its flaws, but I think Houston highlights a big one. They have pretty much destroyed teams worse than them. Just pulverized them into a pulp. But they can’t beat teams as good as them.
Usually it doesn’t matter, because teams that blow out bad teams will also do well against good teams, too.
And Houston is going to stay a question mark because they only have two games left against teams in their band (Memphis 2x). And because Sasser got hurt / Mark isn’t coming back.
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Because KenPom is predictive, he gradually reduces the preseason ratings weight throughout the season, and they stay a part of the rating for most of the season. As has been stated, single game results can change a team’s rating pretty drastically already, so imagine what kind of results you would have if you didn’t keep the preseason ratings in there for a long time. His goal is make the best predictions possible, not to rank teams based on their results. It is why teams like Purdue in 2019 were still rated highly by Ken and Bart after starting 6-5.
He does weight his results based on the margin, so blowouts are weighted less. I dabbled in a rating system for a few years and emailed him a few questions, so I know this to be a fact.
One more thought on margin of victory being important, did we feel good about beating Pitt at home by 1? It goes in the win column, just like a blowout would have, but most people probably thought less of the team after that game than they would have if we had beaten them by 20 or even 10. In my opinion, margin of victory is important, to an extent, to determine how good a team is.
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This might be a little stretch. Yes they have lost to the two best teams they have played this year, but they nearly came back from a 20point halftime deficit in their loss to Wisconsin and were a possible goaltend away from winning at Alabama. Other good teams lose games too, I guess except Baylor. I’m not saying that the team is likeable, especially after what they did after the Alabama game, but they are a very good basketball team. It a shame Sasser and Mark are out because I would be curious to see how they would finish their season with a full roster.
I think the logic behind the system is that based on the close losses to teams just like them, that they are roughly equivalent to those teams and therefore properly ranked.
My read based on watching them against us and a few minutes against Wisconsin was that they are good at bully ball but can’t beat teams with just decent shooters/scorers.
Of course, as time has gone on, I realize that “just decent” shooter/scorer on Wisconsin is probably gonna be POTY …
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Watching Iowa-Wisconsin — Johnny Davis is the truth
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Man didn’t we once upon a time have a crystal ball for him? Not sure how far we got in his recruitment and think we ended up taking someone else and not really pursuing but I could easily be misremembering or thinking of someone else.
He was a package deal with his twin brother who is not a P5 caliber player. However, given our approach of not using all of our scholarships that wouldn’t have been a terrible use of one
On the Johnny Davis front: both he and and Keegan Murray are twins.
On the efficiency stats front: generally, I’m a big fan, and I think they’ve been a major plus for hoops coverage. But my BIGGEST issue with them (and mostly with the types of folks that make them) is that they keep perpetuating this idea that 3pt% is entirely or mostly independent of defense. I just think that’s wrong or so incomplete as to be misleading. I do wonder if they’d be better off looking at EFG% or something, because maybe what happens is good defense forces worse looks, so 3s become long, contested 2’s or something like that.
I don’t think 3pt% is entirely independent of defense, as a team can not give up a good look for the entire shot clock and then force a team to take a deep contested 3 that is extremely unlikely to go in. But I believe where they are coming from is that if your defense could be terrible and leave Steph Curry open for a 3, and he could still miss it. Or your defense could be very good and force a bad 3 point shooter into a tough shot and it could still go in.
You also have scenarios like we did against Navy. Sean Yoder was 3-3 from 3 against us, all in the first half. He is 3-24 from 3 in the 11 games since and is a career 21.9% 3 point shooter at 19-89. He had a good game against us, but based on his ability, he would be unlikely to repeat it. Therefore, one would say that Navy was lucky he shot that well, even if we played bad defense against him.
The efficiency people do emphasize the ability to stop teams from shooting 3’s. Like in your situation, if you can run a shooter off the 3 point line and force them to take a long 2, that would be seen as a positive because you will shoot roughly the same percentage (unless you’re Armaan Franklin) and will only get 2 points instead of 3.
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I guess the way I’d prefer they describe it qualitatively (and tbh, that’s the crux of my complaint – a lot of quantitative minded folks are bad at describing things qualitatively) is that 3 pt variability is partially dependent on the defense but mostly dependent on normal variability. But of course that “partial” leaves a lot of room for variability. Like, if me and 4 buddies were playing the '15 Kentucky defense our 3 point variability vs playing 5 dudes our age and size would be mostly dependent on the defense and less dependent on our normal variability.
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This comment got me to thinking: who was the best set of twins in college? Do twins generally do better playing together or for different teams?
Off the top of my head, I can think of, in no particular order, Burge, Collins, Lopez, Harrison, Martin, Champagnie, Cavinder, Morris
Damn VMI had twins during my time at UVa. Great guards who were around 5-10. Damon I think was one of the names.
Also Heidi and Heather Burge were pretty damg good ha
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Ramon and Damon Williams. Think there have been 3 sets of twins hooping for the Keydets over the years.
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Thats right. they could hoop
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Big win for Texas Tech tonight knocking out Baylor on their home floor
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Plus, Stanford beat USC. Undefeated’s going down.
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