NET and KenPom Tracker 23-24 (SU = 84 3/9/24) | Page 26 | Syracusefan.com

NET and KenPom Tracker 23-24 (SU = 84 3/9/24)

5 Star Betting Pick for KP Doubters tonight. Take Bowling Green
Since KP rating typically matches lines (or very close to it)

Kent St (#303 Luck) at Bowling Green -1 (#8 Luck)

Other Games not as pronounced
Kentucky (#202 Luck) at South Carolina +6 (#26 Luck)
Ohio (#362 Luck) at Akron -8 (#122 Luck)

Yes I did make the bolded picks in small plays to see what would happen. I think some of these teams due to their "luck" which I think is mislabelled as a term, have had margin outliers impact their ratings good or bad.

I'll see how it works, but it probably has more value closer to December 20th to say January 15th in theory. (Noted to myself as a system play for next year)

2-1 yesterday (To be clear these are bets that try to take advantage of potential holes in KP ratings (not to prove that KP is right) and done since KP ratings tend to heavily compare to lines)

Southern Miss -3.5 at Coastal Carolina
Samford +2.5 at Furman
Indiana St -11.5 at UIC
North Alabama at Kennesaw St -6.5


Today's choices
 
After NC State were back to 76 NET and 77 KP. We really need to have a few more 10 point+ wins, especially road wins, while avoiding blowout losses the rest of the way to improve our NET. We’ve been stuck in the 70’s range for quite a few weeks. I think we need to be top 50 along with 21+ wins to get in the NCAAT. It sucks but our winning margin really matters the rest of the year.
 
What’s the over under on ACC bids? 3.5 or 4.5?
It’s frustrating that there is talk of only 3 or 4 teams getting in, forget the metrics. The ACC has consistently had teams over perform in the NCAA Tourney in recent years. It sucks because I think as a coach you want your team to improve as the year goes on and especially recently that has been a major characteristic of ACC teams, but it hurts the national perception of the conference when it comes to selecting teams. There is a lot of teams that have been consistently good, but are essentially performing at the same level now than they were at the beginning of November. These teams won’t rise to the next level and be out in the first weekend, along with the teams that they lost too in conference play that got in because they beat a team that was elite in November.
 
Its unfortunate but you need to blowout teams to get numbers better.

Can anyone explain why Auburn is so high?
Some good wins-
VT, Indiana, Ole Miss
But overall, top 10 team?!? Am i missing something?
Yeah that’s certainly something that hopefully will work itself out by March. There a consensus 3 seed atm while we are on the outside looking in. Though if we looked at these resumes blind. Maybe Auburn gets the edge over us, but is the difference really a 3 seed vs outside the field.
 
Cornell got a big win over Princeton last night, moving their NET up from 89 at the beginning of the week up to 79.

Our home win against them is starting to get close to Q2 (#75) , which at least will mean it matters, rather than just largely being another game.

Looking at upcoming games, the key game for them in getting their NET over the top might be at Yale (#91) on February 10.
 
Yeah that’s certainly something that hopefully will work itself out by March. There a consensus 3 seed atm while we are on the outside looking in. Though if we looked at these resumes blind. Maybe Auburn gets the edge over us, but is the difference really a 3 seed vs outside the field.
Auburn has a big edge over us right now. They have beaten better teams than SU has (Va Tech by 17, Ole Miss by 23 and Texas A&M by 11). They have won six Quad 2 games and are blowing out opponents in those contests (Indiana by 28, Arkansas by 32 and St Bonaventure by 17. They are 4-1 at neutral sites losing by six to Baylor. Their only two SEC losses came on the road by four to Alabama and by six at Mississippi St. and those defeats are more impressive than our only road victories at Pitt by 11 and Georgetown by 12. The regular season has six weeks to go and Syracuse can do a lot to improve its current NET ranking, but there is a big difference between the two teams overall records right now. Go Cuse!
 
Re Auburn being a "consensus" #3 seed.

Remember that the Matrix, especially at this time of year can have some leg elements to it.
The Matrix was not updated for yesterday's games, plus many contributor's are still only updating their brackets once a week... they will ramp as we get closer to the tournament.

On the matrix, all 80 did not consider yesterday's loss, and 32 of the 80, did not consider the fact they have lost twice in a row.

They were generally viewed as a 4 seed for those that updated after their last loss. They will probably be 4/5 next week.
 
Also while the NET has some correlational value, it is far from a direct correlation between the NET and the seed line, especially if you lack quality wins.

Auburn is currently #9 in NET, but it will come in as a 4/5 seed by the time all the brackets in the matrix catch up for its recent 2 games.
 
After NC State were back to 76 NET and 77 KP. We really need to have a few more 10 point+ wins, especially road wins, while avoiding blowout losses the rest of the way to improve our NET. We’ve been stuck in the 70’s range for quite a few weeks. I think we need to be top 50 along with 21+ wins to get in the NCAAT. It sucks but our winning margin really matters the rest of the year.

Top 50 will be tough.
Also since we are playing competitive teams, while margin will only help things (10 points though won't really help too much), its really about winning. The biggest quick driver in the NET right now is getting a road, as I track the biggest movers from week to week.

We must win our road games if we want to see our NET shoot up, margin doesn't really matter in those games.
 
Auburn has five quad games in its next seven contests. We are going to see a lot of movement in Bracketology and seed projections throughout February. Go Cuse!
 
Auburn has a big edge over us right now. They have beaten better teams than SU has (Va Tech by 17, Ole Miss by 23 and Texas A&M by 11). They have won six Quad 2 games and are blowing out opponents in those contests (Indiana by 28, Arkansas by 32 and St Bonaventure by 17. They are 4-1 at neutral sites losing by six to Baylor. Their only two SEC losses came on the road by four to Alabama and by six at Mississippi St. and those defeats are more impressive than our only road victories at Pitt by 11 and Georgetown by 12. The regular season has six weeks to go and Syracuse can do a lot to improve its current NET ranking, but there is a big difference between the two teams overall records right now. Go Cuse!
We will see with Virginia Tech as we play them later though at home. Texas A&M is a solid win, though this was at home. Speaking of Texas A&M, they split there series with LSU. Ole Miss also lost to LSU on the road. Margin of victory shouldn’t matter at all when selecting teams for the tourney though it appears that this is part of the NET formula. Does a team advance to the sweet 16 when they lost there round of 32 game by 2 points after winning the first round game by 50 points?

I will agree that Auburn does have a big edge, though I think the argument for it is flawed.
 
Big Movers in NET this week - what did they do. (Top 80 teams only)
Analysis to see what moves the needle the most


Texas +17 (up to 42) (Q1 Road Win, Q1 Road Loss, won by 3 points net)
Northwestern +17 (up to 61) (Q1 Home, Q2 home, won by 30 points)
Ole Miss +13 (up to 57) (Q1 Road, Q3 Home, won by 29 overall)
Butler +12 up to 54 (Q3 Road + Q2 Home , won by 31 total)
Washington St +11 up to 41 (Q1 (#30) home +Q2 home, won by 31 total)
Cornell +10 up to 79 (Q2 Home, 15 points)

Road Wins still seem to be biggest driver. Texas, Ole Miss. Butler also benefitted from throttling Georgetown.

But margin also seems to help -- as the two teams that really moved up with 2 nice home wins also won by a total of 30. But wins themself probably made up biggest part of incrase. I'm trying to find a comp (purely in terms of wins) to Northwestern and Washington St where the games were closer.
 
Auburn has five quad games in its next seven contests. We are going to see a lot of movement in Bracketology and seed projections throughout February. Go Cuse!

Yep - as of now 55% of Syracuse's game are still against OOC, which I assume is similar to everybody. So a lot of cupcake games still that didn't really drive resumes. Now "almost" every game is a Q1 or Q2 game for everybody

Unfortunately OOC play for the ACC as a whole, limits the positive we can do, but there is still lots of good out there. But we need to win.
 
After NC State were back to 76 NET and 77 KP. We really need to have a few more 10 point+ wins, especially road wins, while avoiding blowout losses the rest of the way to improve our NET. We’ve been stuck in the 70’s range for quite a few weeks. I think we need to be top 50 along with 21+ wins to get in the NCAAT. It sucks but our winning margin really matters the rest of the year.
It sucks a lot because there is so much more to an individual game than the margin.
 
The NET:


Don't really see this as an issue for NET (and NET has some large issues related to blowout, especially road blowouts that we are now seeing in conference play). But playing a good team on the road close should have some limited element of reward for a team.

It's a 1 game quirk of rewarding a close road loss, that pops up because one team is right around a quad line edge. The NET in this one regard is still operating fine, it just looks silly because Clemson is right on that edge.
 
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Don't really see this as an issue for NET (and NET has some large issues related to blowout, especially road blowouts that we are now seeing in conference play). But playing a good team on the road close should have some limited element of reward for a team.

It's a 1 game quirk of rewarding a close road loss, that pops up because one team is right around a quad line edge. The NET in this one regard is still operating fine, it just looks silly because Clemson is right on that edge.
Something can be operating as it was designed, but it can also be inherently flawed. The way I looked at it, the officials benefited the most since they can sleep at night knowing that both teams benefited from the game in terms of metrics lol. It’s for the better of the sport to advocate the emphasis on wins and losses. Though this is much easier said than done given a mid major record and power conference record are different.

There is years where we benefited from the system in terms of metrics and other years where we haven’t, but may have had a better overall record.
 
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Are we not upset with Kenpom and NET anymore?

Anyway, here's a couple of interesting sites and things I've stumbled across via Reddit:
An opensource KenPom of sorts:

Some nice pages here in there: 1) current Efficiency rankings, 2) final record prediction chart (SU most likely finish is ~17-14, 10th in ACC), 3) upcoming game predictions (SU 81, Louisville 69 [nice]).

Spaghetti chart showing ACC movement in KenPom over the season. No real big surprises here. Syracuse had a nice heater for a while.

bhv536xz7sgc1.png
 
Are we not upset with Kenpom and NET anymore?

Anyway, here's a couple of interesting sites and things I've stumbled across via Reddit:
An opensource KenPom of sorts:

Some nice pages here in there: 1) current Efficiency rankings, 2) final record prediction chart (SU most likely finish is ~17-14, 10th in ACC), 3) upcoming game predictions (SU 81, Louisville 69 [nice]).

Spaghetti chart showing ACC movement in KenPom over the season. No real big surprises here. Syracuse had a nice heater for a while.

bhv536xz7sgc1.png
Schedule adjusted Margin of Victory predicted well, again
 

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