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The official NCAA rankings - Bradley is #1 in the MVC

tornado

tornado

New member
The RPI, the Sagarin, the Kenpom - they're all worthy of debate, but...

THE NCAA official Division I rankings are what matter and they are out as of 11/26/2018

https://www.ncaa.com/rankings/basket...l-net-rankings

Bradley is tops in the MVC at #87
#135 Indiana State
#145 SIU
#148 Loyola
#165 Missouri State
#174 Drake
#178 Illinois State
#191 Evansville
#245 UNI
#262 Valparaiso

Bradley's next couple opponents:
#161 IUPUI
#210 New Mexico
#212 Little Rock
#283 EIU
#26 Georgia Southern
#337 Southeast Louisiana
 
It is a bit of a surprise that the Valley is actually doing this bad...no teams in the top 75 and only one in the top 130..

but it convinces me all the more that their secret formula with factors they never really explain is obviously made up to favor the major conference schools.

For example- note that right ahead of Bradley is UCLA - they have ZERO road wins and zero neutral site wins plus they have been hammered TWICE at home by 20 or so points, and the entire list of teams they have wins over are: Presbyterian, St. Francis of Pennsylvania, Long Beach State (who have just ONE DI win!) and IPFW!!!!!!!!!!!
NOT ONE of the teams they have beaten has a winning record!
OMG - how do they get ranked by NCAA AHEAD of Bradley?? The answer is because they are UCLA and because the formula is built for them.
 
tornado said:
It is a bit of a surprise that the Valley is actually doing this bad...no teams in the top 75 and only one in the top 130..

but it convinces me all the more that their secret formula with factors they never really explain is obviously made up to favor the major conference schools.

For example- note that right ahead of Bradley is UCLA - they have ZERO road wins and zero neutral site wins plus they have been hammered TWICE at home by 20 or so points, and the entire list of teams they have wins over are: Presbyterian, St. Francis of Pennsylvania, Long Beach State (who have just ONE DI win!) and IPFW!!!!!!!!!!!
NOT ONE of the teams they have beaten has a winning record!
OMG - how do they get ranked by NCAA AHEAD of Bradley?? The answer is because they are UCLA and because the formula is built for them.
Click to expand...

UCLA is #86 on the NCAA's new NET. But using the old RPI formula, they are #138!-
http://warrennolan.com/basketball/2019/rpi-live

Heck, they just jumped ahead of 52 teams by using the mysterious new NET evaluation tool. Already there are many college basketball experts who are ripping the way the NCAA has handled this. The NCAA released a simplified explanation and graphic yesterday showing some of the things the NET takes into affect, but they were not specific about whether those were the only factors, or how the factors were weighed. Note how vague this explanation is-
https://www.ncaa.com/news/basketbal...ed-ncaa-adopts-new-college-basketball-ranking

Here is what ESPN writer John Gasaway thinks about the new NET-
Why the NCAA's new hoop rating is all wrong
http://insider.espn.com/mens-colleg.../25386163/why-ncaa-new-hoops-rating-all-wrong

Here is an example of what others who are involved in analytics think of the NCAA's NET-
https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1067113566958960640

And CBS college basketball expert Gary Parrish-
https://twitter.com/GaryParrishCBS/status/1067108130218233856

CBS Sports Matt Norlander-
https://twitter.com/MattNorlander/status/1067117070876332032

ESPN's Jeff Borzello-
https://twitter.com/jeffborzello/status/1067178776188973056

And here is what Jerry Palm thinks. Palm is perhaps the foremost expert on using advanced analytics to evaluate college sports rankings-
Release of first NET rankings creates more questions than answers when NCAA keeps formula a secret
https://www.cbssports.com/college-b...han-answers-when-ncaa-keeps-formula-a-secret/


Another opinion-
The NCAA's New "NET" Rankings Are Off To A Rough Start
https://thebiglead.com/2018/11/26/the-ncaas-new-net-rankings-are-off-to-a-rough-start/
 
I suspect they snuck some feature into their formula that rewards teams for being in the power conferences...

Note that Penn State has TWO losses, only 3 wins (all at home) and NO wins away from home and ZERO wins against any team in the TOP 125 of the ranking -
....and yet they come in at #75
How in the world does that happen - the only team Bradley has lost to was ON THE ROAD against a team that IS in the TOP 75 - which makes it a QUADRANT-1 game that we lost!!

Likewise - several other teams like Florida, Stanford, Georgia, Wichita...
all have been clobbered by anyone they have played who is any good - and have beaten nobody above them in the rankings -
yet they'd be among the top 1 or 2 teams in the MVC with their rankings!!
 
Gotta read this thread, it's hilarious-
https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/st...13566958960640

These are the worst rankings I've ever seen in any sport, ever. NCAA needs to go completely back to the drawing board.

The big problem seems to be that only 1 of the 5 components....considers strength of schedule. So it rewards team with good records against very poor schedules.

This is incompetently designed. It's worse than RPI. Worse than the eye test. It could make a total shitshow of the NCAA tourney for a couple years and cost the NCAA millions by devaluing its most valuable franchise. It's why you never want to design an algorithm by committee.

I also think, philosophically, NET suffers from a "throw a bunch of metrics at the wall and see what sticks" problem, which is often characteristic of unthoughtful algorithm design, instead of having considered more deeply what it's actually trying to predict or achieve.

...A lot of smart people have worked on this problem (power rankings) for a LONG time and the NCAA ignored all that and came up with something that doesn't reflect methodological best practices *and* which doesn't make sense, basketball-wise.

I don't think there's any method behind it at all; only madness.
 
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