As everyone here knows, rankings mean nothing in November. In fact, in my opinion, they don’t mean much until the end of February at which point they can begin to have an influence, however slight, on NCAAT seeding. For now, the rankings tell us more about those doing the ranking than the teams which are being ranked.
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Actually they are more accurate at predicting NCAAT success in November than in February/March. It gets more and more accurate until about week 6 and then gets worse for a while until it levels off at at a not very accurate level for the rest of the year.
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Why is that?
I think that there may a reason for that. I have a suspicion that there is a relationship between past NCAAT experience, and future NCAAT success. Couple with that all the usual suspects have that tournament experience, and that they tend to garner more attention at the start of the season, and you can build an argument from there. Or not.
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Best explanation I’ve seen is the human brain’s limit on interpreting data. In that like week 5-7 window we have enough information to make some conclusions but not so much that we can’t make sense of it all. After that there just are too many data points.
Other factor I think is that’s the timeframe teams are actually playing top teams from other conferences. How they fair in those games is probably a better predictor of tournament success than conference play where every body knows each other so we’ll.
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I believe KenPom has argued/speculated that it’s because early in the season the voters vote on who the best teams are, but later in the season they vote on who has the best resumes (sometimes unintentionally, because they’ve been “laddering” all season long – e.g. “Team X lost so I have to move them down a bit…” etc.).
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I know we discussed this a few weeks ago, but does anyone have that article that talked about the week 7 poll / predictive power? Thanks
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I think I set a reminder here to check that. My reminder hasn’t popped up yet. Believe it’s closer to Christmas.
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UVA to number 3 - love to see it.
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AP Voting - Week 4
#1 Voters:
#11 Voter (only voter that voted below #7):
Reference Link: Virginia Cavaliers Basketball at College Poll Tracker
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Do people from Hawaii actually watch basketball?
Hey he’s got us one spot above where we are in Torvik’s computer rankings, so he’s overrating us 
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He has Duke #2 and UNC #3, so no he doesn’t.
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Late to this party on the Katz list. But Indiana has beaten Xavier (#30 on Torvik) by 2 and has a victory over a #250 team and five wins over #300+ teams. Relatively skimpy resume so far.
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Banal observation: this team has been really good at winning games during winning time: a little bit during Baylor (stopping their run), a lot during Illinois (in a neutral yet slightly hostile environment **), and even more last night at Michigan (in a hostile environment). Last year, wee were not good at winning games during winning time.
** tangent — you didn’t think you’d get out of this with some of my quibbling, did you? — how many middle aged fans traveled to the neutral site game is one of the most overanalyzed yet mostly inconsequential things in college hoops.
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This just shows the amount of middle aged alumni that have disposable income to throw out there… which transitive property shows how successful your alumni have become after getting the coveted degree from said University 20 - 25 years ago… it’s the age bracket the tournaments are targeting I think.
Similar to the sports car… the ones that all the college age students and 20-somethings want… but only the middle aged consumer can afford it. LOL!
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True, but for Illinois, I’d add in: good direct flights, yuge alumni base, and dire need even by mid-November for some vitamin D. 
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This team feels 2015-16ish. Good offense, good but not elite D. We could get upset on the road in conference a couple times like that team, but our offensive upside means we can beat anyone when we are on. Could give us a high ceiling in the NCAAT if the D can improve some.
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