I’ve got a new toy to play with.
At the beginning of January, Ken Pomeroy had a blog post about the fairness of wins. The basis of the post is simple. All wins are not created equal. The location of the victory plays a huge role in its worth. So last night, I stole his idea (Thanks, Ken!) and created buckets for every game played this year. I have broken the games in to four tiers. I used Providence as my baseline team, as they were my “First Team Out” when doing the research last night. For example, a Tier 1 win can be classified as a win over a top 20 team at home, a top 40 team at a neutral site or a top 65 win on the road. All three of those buckets have the same average win%. Then, I did the same exercise for Tier 2, Tier 3 and Tier 4. The following is a snapshot of Wichita St. Not that this is showing anything we didn’t already know.
Even though the Shockers are the only remaining undefeated team, EPW isn’t putting them on the top line for seeding. The breakdown of their victories tells the story. Having only two high ranking victories (@ Saint Louis, home vs. Tennessee) will weigh them down like an anchor on Selection Sunday.
Compare their resume to a Creighton team that sits one spot behind Wichita St. The Blue Jays have four Tier 1 wins, plus three more in Tier 2. These are the type of numbers that jump off of the page when evaluating resumes. People will ignore the fact that Creighton is projected to have five losses at the end of the regular season. It’s all about the big wins. I was able to clean up my spreadsheet over the past two days, so I know have the EPW ratings for every team in D1. In case you are curious, Southern Utah brings up the rear with a negative .756 rating. I’ve embedded the output so you can take a look at the ratings for every single team. If there’s a number in the “S-Curve Rnk” column, this means they are projected to be in the NCAA tournament. Click here to open the sheet in a new tab.
(*Also, I am currently in the middle of my third annual Celebrity Death Pool draft. You can follow along at home by clicking the links on the sidebar for the 2014 version. Scoring system based on life expectancy from actuary tables, if you are curious.)