Against Ranked Teams - basketball - Week 9

[SWC75]

It occurred to me that with a new basketball season beginning I could do an “Against Ranked Teams” post for this sport, too. The margins of victory are similar to football. The formula is to first give each team that plays a ranked team from 1-25 points based on the ranking (I’ll use the writer’s poll) of their opponent. This chart shows you how many points they’d get for playing each team ranked at a certain level , (the ranking is first, the points, second):

1-25, 2-24, 3-23, 4-22, 5-21, 6-20, 7-19, 8-18, 9-17, 10-16, 11-15, 12-14, 13-13, 14-12, 15-11, 16-10, 17-9, 18-8, 19-7, 20-6, 21-5, 22-4, 23-3, 24-2, 25-1

I’ll call those “schedule points”. Then you look at the point differential in the game and apply it to the schedule points. If a team loses to the #1 ranked team by 10 points. They’d wind up with 15 points: 25 schedule points minus the ten points they lost by. If a team beats the #10 team by 5 points, they’d get 21 points: 16 schedule points plus the 5 points they won by. If a team lost to the #20 team by 6 points, they’d get nothing. The margin of defeat would cancel out their schedule points. If a team lost to the #25 team by 3 points, they get a zero. You can’t have negative points. You just failed in an attempt to get positive points.

I’ll figure the points based on games over the past week every Sunday and post them, along with cumulative season standings, just as I have done for football. As I said on that post, this is less a way of ranking than it is simply something you might want to look at in ranking them – or selecting them for a tournament. I recognize that rankings will change over the course of the season. I’m making the assumption that teams are worthy of the ranking they have at the time another team plays them. That may not always be true but a subsequent ranking may just reflect how good or bad a team has become since the game in question: they may have been as good as their ranking at the time.

WEEK NINE

Butler beat #1 Villanova 66-58 = 33 points
No. Carolina St. beat #21 Virginia Tech 104-78 = 31 points
Pittsburgh beat #11 Virginia 88-76 = 27 points
Notre Dame beat #9 Louisville 77-70 = 24 points
Iowa State lost to #2 Baylor 63-65 = 22 points
Kansas State lost to #3 Kansas 88-90 = 21 points
Florida State beat #21 Virginia Tech 93-78 = 20 points
Minnesota beat #15 Purdue 91-80 = 20 points
Oklahoma State lost to #2 Baylor 57-61 = 20 points
Texas Tech beat #7 West Virginia 77-76 = 20 points
Marquette lost to #1 Villanova 81-93 = 13 points
California lost to #4 UCLA 71-81 = 12 points
Clemson lost to #14 North Carolina 86-89 = 9 points
Wisconsin beat #25 Indiana 75-68 = 8 points
Boston College lost to #8 Duke 82-93 = 7 points
Texas Christian lost to #7 West Virginia 70-82 = 7 points
Indiana lost to #13 Wisconsin 68-75 = 6 points
San Francisco lost to #5 Gonzaga 80-95 = 6 points
Texas Tech lost to #3 Kansas 68-85 = 6 points
Ohio State lost to #20 Purdue 75-76 = 5 points
St. John’s lost to #10 Creighton 72-85 = 3 points
Georgia Tech lost to #9 Louisville 50-65 = 2 points
Providence lost to #10 Creighton 64-78 = 2 points

Cumulative Totals

Top 25

Baylor 109 points
Butler 91 points
Louisville 80 points
Kentucky 79 points
Indiana 68 points

Oregon 53 points
Duke 47 points
Notre Dame 47 points
Florida State 46 points
North Carolina 46 points

Creighton 44 points
Kansas 38 points
South Carolina 38 points
Villanova 37 points
Wisconsin 36 points

Iowa State 35 points
Purdue 35 points
Virginia Tech 35 points
Ohio State 34 points
Arizona 33 points

UCLA 33 points
Virginia 32 points
Georgia Tech 31 points
North Carolina State 31 points
Michigan State 29 points
West Virginia 29 points


Syracuse 0 points (95 teams have earned points so far this year)