Could Wichita get to #1

[dcZONAfan]

Nobody should take the RPI serious ever since its by far the worst metric available but the committee looks at it so its natural to use it. The eye test is fine and my preferred method as well but unfortunately we dont get to see all these teams 12-15 times a year so in a case like Wichita sometimes the metrics are all you have to go on. I watch as much CBB as anyone and Ive seen Wichita 2 times this year compared to 8+ of most of the other top 10-20 teams.

then why mention it at all?

 

[podsox]

they will lose at Illinois st

 

[CatsTopPac]

I see where dc is going with that. And just to play devil's advocate with the numbers though, rmilia:

Wichita State has a worse current SOS than any of those teams except for Cincy and Pitt.

So as much as you are considering who they have beaten who is top whatever, you are omitting all of the other teams that they have faced who are such complete garbage that they essentially have the night off (while the rest of those teams still have to play teams that at least have a boxer's chance to beat them. Because other than a respectable win @ St. Louis, their only other road win of the entire season against a team with a record above a .500 just happened against mighty Missouri State, and they needed OT do it.

Beating BYU was eh-to-good, and so was beating Tennessee. But the BYU game was in KC, and Tennessee was at home. As a matter of fact, their only games away from the state of Kansas took place in Southern Illinois (very close), StL (not far at all), Tulsa (down the road), and Alabama (against a sub .500 team where they won by 5).

I just don't buy that WSU has earned anything. They beat a bunch of teams that they should have beaten. The only win they have that means anything to me is against StL. The StL win was good, but everything else was largely blah. I'll even give the win against BYU in KC by 5 a nod, but that's all I have that is even close to respectable. Everything else is crap. And honestly, even those two wins were pretty mild for a team that is supposed to be top 10, or 5, or whatever.

And that's basically it. Everything else this year is garbage. Hell, their biggest challenge for the rest of the entire year, is a game at Indiana State. Indiana State!!!!!!! That's some Gonzaga shit right there. They won't have earned anything if they get to #1, and I don't even think that they have earned the top 10 they have now. I think that top 15 is pretty accurate.

I'm not saying that WSU is terrible. I think they are a top 15 team. But even looking at last year, they didn't play anyone in the tourney until OSU, and I would even argue that the OSU win was a combination of overlooking them, and a hangover from beating AZ. But, they won, and I give them credit. I think the reason they even got close to Louisville is because they were a good team, and because they had a week to prepare for them. I take nothing away from WSU, but I also don't think that they could beat two top 15 teams in the same weekend away from the state of Kansas.

I'm just saying that they pulled some shit off last year, but I think the moons aligned, and they took advantage of it. Good for them. I don't think they've proved anything this year though, to be top ten, let alone top 5, or #1.

 

[gpm1976]

Nobody should take the RPI serious ever since its by far the worst metric available but the committee looks at it so its natural to use it. The eye test is fine and my preferred method as well but unfortunately we dont get to see all these teams 12-15 times a year so in a case like Wichita sometimes the metrics are all you have to go on. I watch as much CBB as anyone and Ive seen Wichita 2 times this year compared to 8+ of most of the other top 10-20 teams.

The eye test is fine if you see that team play every game and then see how the teams they beat stack up to other competition. The problem I have is that the one game you watch is the one where they match up perfectly against that opponent and/or have just a great shooting night where everything gels. So I guess I agree that you have to look at the overall resume once the season ends and see how did on the road or against teams that could exploit a weakness.

 

[gpm1976]

I see where dc is going with that. And just to play devil's advocate with the numbers though, rmilia:

Wichita State has a worse current SOS than any of those teams except for Cincy and Pitt.

So as much as you are considering who they have beaten who is top whatever, you are omitting all of the other teams that they have faced who are such complete garbage that they essentially have the night off (while the rest of those teams still have to play teams that at least have a boxer's chance to beat them. Because other than a respectable win @ St. Louis, their only other road win of the entire season against a team with a record above a .500 just happened against mighty Missouri State, and they needed OT do it.

Beating BYU was eh-to-good, and so was beating Tennessee. But the BYU game was in KC, and Tennessee was at home. As a matter of fact, their only games away from the state of Kansas took place in Southern Illinois (very close), StL (not far at all), Tulsa (down the road), and Alabama (against a sub .500 team where they won by 5).

I just don't buy that WSU has earned anything. They beat a bunch of teams that they should have beaten. The only win they have that means anything to me is against StL. The StL win was good, but everything else was largely blah. I'll even give the win against BYU in KC by 5 a nod, but that's all I have that is even close to respectable. Everything else is crap. And honestly, even those two wins were pretty mild for a team that is supposed to be top 10, or 5, or whatever.

And that's basically it. Everything else this year is garbage. Hell, their biggest challenge for the rest of the entire year, is a game at Indiana State. Indiana State!!!!!!! That's some Gonzaga shit right there. They won't have earned anything if they get to #1, and I don't even think that they have earned the top 10 they have now. I think that top 15 is pretty accurate.

I'm not saying that WSU is terrible. I think they are a top 15 team. But even looking at last year, they didn't play anyone in the tourney until OSU, and I would even argue that the OSU win was a combination of overlooking them, and a hangover from beating AZ. But, they won, and I give them credit. I think the reason they even got close to Louisville is because they were a good team, and because they had a week to prepare for them. I take nothing away from WSU, but I also don't think that they could beat two top 15 teams in the same weekend away from the state of Kansas.

I'm just saying that they pulled some shit off last year, but I think the moons aligned, and they took advantage of it. Good for them. I don't think they've proved anything this year though, to be top ten, let alone top 5, or #1.

I agree with you that they really play no one. It's easy for a team to keep winning when the competition is not from a top conf. week in and week out. You get to rest guys and keep them fresh and healthy. That said, they will probably win out and get a 1 seed... and that has a lot to do with them going to the final 4 last year.

 

[TrollyMcTroller]

i know that. But it's entirely through the eye test, NOT through their resume. anybody who thinks otherwise is, naturally, quoting fucking RPI statistics that tell them Massachusetts has the 3rd best fucking resume with their wins over a pretty shitty (yes, i'll say it) New Mexico team, a more shitty BYU team, lsu, nebraska, eastern michigan, ohio, providence, st joe's, st. bonnies, holy shit it's even worse when i spell the whole fucking thing out.

THAT RESUME ALONE SHOULD MAKE NOBODY TAKE RPI SERIOUS UNTIL THE END OF THE SEASON FOR AS LONG AS WE FUCKING LIVE

Settle down man. Breathe in through the nose... out through the mouth. Count to ten. Feel the stress wash away.

The RPI is not a great metric, but it is unavoidable as long as the NCAA TSC relies on it. That's just something you're going to have to learn to live with. It's certainly not great this time of year, but at least at this point you can get an indication of where teams are going to end up. In a discussion about tournament seeding, it's as good of an indicator as any, especially if you use it to forecast, not just using the numbers at face value.

Right now UMass has an RPI of .6874.
The A10 Has an RPI of .5571

Knowing that, it's pretty safe to say that even if UMass wins out, based on their future competition, their RPI will drop significantly before the end of the year. (And I don't think UMass, or anyone for that matter wins out for the rest of the year)

I didn't have to watch a single UMass game to know that.

The thing a lot of people don't realize is that it's a little dangerous to try and sum up a team (or their resume) with one number. What does UMass's #3 ranking in the RPI mean exactly? Well, I can assume they've probably played some decent teams. They've probably won a significant portion of their games, and I can probably guess that they didn't play very many truly awful teams. Do I know if they beat any good teams? Nope. And that's where you start running into problems. You have to dig a little bit deeper to get a good picture of what's going on. The problem is, using the single number is really convenient, and by in large, people don't like writing (or reading) really long posts.So instead you get the Reader's Digest version... "Here's where they're ranked!"

Now, I'm as big a fan of the eyeball test as any. I've used it for example to form some pretty strong opinions about Duke and Louisville this season. But relying strictly on the eyeball test is fool hardy. No single person can come close to watching enough games to get a true picture of Division 1 ball. You like Arizona. You've probably seen most or all of the Wildcat's games this year. I'd say you have a pretty good idea how they play. That however doesn't mean you have a good idea how they stack up against the rest of the field. You've probably seen some other games too. How many you think you'll see this season 50? 100? That's 2% of the games in D1 this season.

Stats are fanfuckingtastic for giving you a baseline from which to apply your eyeball test. And they are pretty much inescapable. Even if you never look at KenPom or Sagarin or the RPI or BPI or Massey, or Dave's Discount Rankings or whatever... how do you make a judgement on a team that you haven't seen play? The Polls? You think that none of the voters look at the metrics? You don't think they still have some influence over the polls at all? College Basketball is simply too big to avoid the using the numbers. That's why the RPI was invented in the first place. You can't expect the selection committee to be intimately familiar with ever team being considered. Shitty as the RPI may be, I'd rather them decide based on a shitty number than a wild ass guess. And if they hadn't seen the team play, that's all it would be is a fucking guess.

So don't hate the numbers. Hate the people that misuse them.

 

[dcZONAfan]

Settle down man. Breathe in through the nose... out through the mouth. Count to ten. Feel the stress wash away.

The RPI is not a great metric, but it is unavoidable as long as the NCAA TSC relies on it. That's just something you're going to have to learn to live with. It's certainly not great this time of year, but at least at this point you can get an indication of where teams are going to end up. In a discussion about tournament seeding, it's as good of an indicator as any, especially if you use it to forecast, not just using the numbers at face value.

Right now UMass has an RPI of .6874.
The A10 Has an RPI of .5571

Knowing that, it's pretty safe to say that even if UMass wins out, based on their future competition, their RPI will drop significantly before the end of the year. (And I don't think UMass, or anyone for that matter wins out for the rest of the year)

I didn't have to watch a single UMass game to know that.

The thing a lot of people don't realize is that it's a little dangerous to try and sum up a team (or their resume) with one number. What does UMass's #3 ranking in the RPI mean exactly? Well, I can assume they've probably played some decent teams. They've probably won a significant portion of their games, and I can probably guess that they didn't play very many truly awful teams. Do I know if they beat any good teams? Nope. And that's where you start running into problems. You have to dig a little bit deeper to get a good picture of what's going on. The problem is, using the single number is really convenient, and by in large, people don't like writing (or reading) really long posts.So instead you get the Reader's Digest version... "Here's where they're ranked!"

Now, I'm as big a fan of the eyeball test as any. I've used it for example to form some pretty strong opinions about Duke and Louisville this season. But relying strictly on the eyeball test is fool hardy. No single person can come close to watching enough games to get a true picture of Division 1 ball. You like Arizona. You've probably seen most or all of the Wildcat's games this year. I'd say you have a pretty good idea how they play. That however doesn't mean you have a good idea how they stack up against the rest of the field. You've probably seen some other games too. How many you think you'll see this season 50? 100? That's 2% of the games in D1 this season.

Stats are fanfuckingtastic for giving you a baseline from which to apply your eyeball test. And they are pretty much inescapable. Even if you never look at KenPom or Sagarin or the RPI or BPI or Massey, or Dave's Discount Rankings or whatever... how do you make a judgement on a team that you haven't seen play? The Polls? You think that none of the voters look at the metrics? You don't think they still have some influence over the polls at all? College Basketball is simply too big to avoid the using the numbers. That's why the RPI was invented in the first place. You can't expect the selection committee to be intimately familiar with ever team being considered. Shitty as the RPI may be, I'd rather them decide based on a shitty number than a wild ass guess. And if they hadn't seen the team play, that's all it would be is a fucking guess.

So don't hate the numbers. Hate the people that misuse them.

well put...but i might do a little bit of both, if i'm being honest

 

[gpm1976]

Settle down man. Breathe in through the nose... out through the mouth. Count to ten. Feel the stress wash away.

The RPI is not a great metric, but it is unavoidable as long as the NCAA TSC relies on it. That's just something you're going to have to learn to live with. It's certainly not great this time of year, but at least at this point you can get an indication of where teams are going to end up. In a discussion about tournament seeding, it's as good of an indicator as any, especially if you use it to forecast, not just using the numbers at face value.

Right now UMass has an RPI of .6874.
The A10 Has an RPI of .5571

Knowing that, it's pretty safe to say that even if UMass wins out, based on their future competition, their RPI will drop significantly before the end of the year. (And I don't think UMass, or anyone for that matter wins out for the rest of the year)

I didn't have to watch a single UMass game to know that.

The thing a lot of people don't realize is that it's a little dangerous to try and sum up a team (or their resume) with one number. What does UMass's #3 ranking in the RPI mean exactly? Well, I can assume they've probably played some decent teams. They've probably won a significant portion of their games, and I can probably guess that they didn't play very many truly awful teams. Do I know if they beat any good teams? Nope. And that's where you start running into problems. You have to dig a little bit deeper to get a good picture of what's going on. The problem is, using the single number is really convenient, and by in large, people don't like writing (or reading) really long posts.So instead you get the Reader's Digest version... "Here's where they're ranked!"

Now, I'm as big a fan of the eyeball test as any. I've used it for example to form some pretty strong opinions about Duke and Louisville this season. But relying strictly on the eyeball test is fool hardy. No single person can come close to watching enough games to get a true picture of Division 1 ball. You like Arizona. You've probably seen most or all of the Wildcat's games this year. I'd say you have a pretty good idea how they play. That however doesn't mean you have a good idea how they stack up against the rest of the field. You've probably seen some other games too. How many you think you'll see this season 50? 100? That's 2% of the games in D1 this season.

Stats are fanfuckingtastic for giving you a baseline from which to apply your eyeball test. And they are pretty much inescapable. Even if you never look at KenPom or Sagarin or the RPI or BPI or Massey, or Dave's Discount Rankings or whatever... how do you make a judgement on a team that you haven't seen play? The Polls? You think that none of the voters look at the metrics? You don't think they still have some influence over the polls at all? College Basketball is simply too big to avoid the using the numbers. That's why the RPI was invented in the first place. You can't expect the selection committee to be intimately familiar with ever team being considered. Shitty as the RPI may be, I'd rather them decide based on a shitty number than a wild ass guess. And if they hadn't seen the team play, that's all it would be is a fucking guess.

So don't hate the numbers. Hate the people that misuse them.

You are 100% correct. The problem is that the people who are voting on these teams fall into this category big time. Hence we have all these numbers floating around so they can attempt to use them to rank the teams. It's not a perfect system and never will be.. but that's why we all love March so much.

 

[gpm1976]

well put...but i might do a little bit of both, if i'm being honest

Man, it's a free country.. say what you want. You're not hurting anyone.

 

[TrollyMcTroller]

You are 100% correct. The problem is that the people who are voting on these teams fall into this category big time. Hence we have all these numbers floating around so they can attempt to use them to rank the teams. It's not a perfect system and never will be.. but that's why we all love March so much.

This is why I don't care for the Coach's poll in particular. I think most of the AP voters watch a fair amount of basketball. And I know a lot of writers make references to various rating systems. But the Coaches? All they ever see is their own team, and game-tape of their opponents. Not a very good way to objectively evaluate a bunch of teams.

 

[gpm1976]

This is why I don't care for the Coach's poll in particular. I think most of the AP voters watch a fair amount of basketball. And I know a lot of writers make references to various rating systems. But the Coaches? All they ever see is their own team, and game-tape of their opponents. Not a very good way to objectively evaluate a bunch of teams.

yeah, I don't like that poll either. there's no way coaches are out there watching other teams play every night. There's no time. They're watching film and getting ready for their next game. I would rely more on the opinion of an analyst as well.

 

[rmilia1]

yeah, I don't like that poll either. there's no way coaches are out there watching other teams play every night. There's no time. They're watching film and getting ready for their next game. I would rely more on the opinion of an analyst as well.

None of the human polls are really good IMO. Thats why the committee doesnt use them at all when it comes to seeding. There are simply too many games/too many teams for these guys that vote to have a chance to watch even 20% of them. People complain about metrics and I get it BUT the reality is that using the eye test to vote or seed teams is a huge FAIL because even the most avid fan can only watch the TOP teams maybe 50% of the time and they certainly rarely watch the smaller conference teams.

 

[TrollyMcTroller]

None of the human polls are really good IMO. Thats why the committee doesnt use them at all when it comes to seeding. There are simply too many games/too many teams for these guys that vote to have a chance to watch even 20% of them. People complain about metrics and I get it BUT the reality is that using the eye test to vote or seed teams is a huge FAIL because even the most avid fan can only watch the TOP teams maybe 50% of the time and they certainly rarely watch the smaller conference teams.

I think the AP does a pretty good job especially considering there is no real direction for the voters. There is nothing that says they are voting for the best team, or the best resume, or the coolest mascot. The just put a bunch of teams in order. The fact that you can give that many people such tremendous leeway and end up with something that even approaches good is a small miracle. But I think what happens with that lack of direction is you get a good mix of resume and team strength which give a pretty good overall picture. (as far as I know, no one is voting based on coolest mascot)

My biggest issue with the AP is it suffers somewhat from confirmation bias, but beyond that, I think they do a pretty good job.

 

[Midwest2k]

There is no reason WSU should lose the rest of the season...but any given day they could be beat...ask Lasalle, Gonzaga and tOSU about that last year...that said if they win out there is no reason why they should get anything less then a #1 seed. To give it to a 1 or 2 loss team over a returning final four team that wins out is to play fav's in the media. They win out they will get a 1 seed.

 

[pumpkinhead33793]

Damn, I forgot that Creighton is no longer in the Missouri Valley.

 

[podsox]

I think Wichita st will struggle with Illinois st tonight and possibly pick up their first L

 

[gordontrue]

I think Wichita st will struggle with Illinois st tonight and possibly pick up their first L

Wichita St has only played 2 road games in conference, and trailed by 19 in one of those.

7 of the next 11 games for the Shockers are on the road. They're going into small, loud environments with crowds jacked up at the chance to take down a top-5 team.

That all starts tonight, and anything can happen.

 

[podsox]

Well isu is currently 1-20 from 3 at home. Brick city

 

[gordontrue]

1 for 25!?!

1!!!!

for 25!?????

 

[podsox]

Half of them were good looks. Amazing to put a number up like that at home