Against Ranked Teams - Basketball Week 3

[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 THREE

Fort Wayne beat #3 Indiana 71-68 = 26 points
North Carolina beat #16 Wisconsin 71-56 = 25 points
Butler beat #8 Arizona 69-65 = 22 points
South Carolina beat #18 Syracuse 64-50 = 22 points
Baylor beat #10 Louisville 66-63 = 19 points
Colorado beat #22 Texas 68-54 = 18 points
Baylor beat #24 Michigan State 73-58 = 17 points
Georgetown beat #13 Oregon 65-61 = 17 points
South Carolina beat #25 Michigan 61-46 = 16 points
Duke beat #21 Rhode Island 75-65 = 15 points
Rhode Island lost to #1 Duke 65-75 = 15 points
Central Florida lost to #3 Villanova 57-67 = 13 points
Fla Gulf Coast lost to #13 Michigan State 77-78= 12 points
Temple beat #19 West Virginia 81-77 = 11 points
Georgia lost to #5 Kansas 64-75 = 10 points
Old Dominion lost to #10 Louisville 62-68 = 10 points
Santa Clara lost to #8 Arizona 61-69 = 10 points
Florida lost to #11 Gonzalez 72-77 = 9 points
Tennessee lost to #13 Oregon 65-69 = 9 points
Providence lost to #7 Virginia 52-63 = 8 points
Charleston lost to #3 Villanova 47-63 = 7 points
Northern Iowa lost to #11 Xavier 59-67 = 7 points
Wisconsin lost to #4 North Carolina 56-71 = 7 points
Wichita State lost to #10 Louisville 52-62 = 6 points
Mississippi lost to #12 Creighton 77-86 = 5 points
Temple beat #25 Florida State 89-86 = 4 points
Connecticut lost to #13 Oregon 69-79 = 3 points
Louisville lost to #20 Baylor 63-66= 3 points
Indiana State lost to #21 Iowa State 71-73 = 2 points
Northern Colorado lost to #8 Arizona 55-71 = 2 points
Alabama-Birmingham lost to #5 Kansas 63-83 = 1 point
Nebraska lost to #14 UCLA 71-82 = 1 point

Comments: All the tournament action gave a lot of games involving ranked teams, sometimes playing each other. Baylor is off to a great start and South Carolina had very strong week. There’s still a lot of points being earned by mid and lower majors who will disappear from the list when their conference season starts.

Cumulative Totals

Baylor 75 points
Kansas 38 points
South Carolina 38 points
Kentucky 34 points
Duke 32 points
Creighton 29 points
Indiana 27 points
Fort Wayne 26 points
North Carolina 25 points
Butler 22 points
Purdue 20 points
Colorado 18 points
Georgetown 17 points
Wagner 17 points
Arizona 16 points
Lehigh 16 points
Penn State 15 points
Rhode Island 15 points
Temple 15 points
Michigan State 14 points
Missouri 14 points
Central Florida 13 points
Florida Gulf Coast 12 points
Western Michigan 12 points
Georgia 10 points
Old Dominion 10 points
Santa Clara 10 points
Clemson 9 points
Florida 9 points
Tennessee 9 points
Providence 8 points
Army 7 points
Charleston 7 points
Northern Iowa 7 points
Rhode Island 7 points
Wisconsin 7 points
Hawaii 6 points
Wichita State 6 points
Dayton 5 points
Mississippi 5 points
CSU Bakersfield 4 points
Wake Forest 4 points
Connecticut 3 points
Georgia State 3 points
Louisville 3 points
Michigan State 3 points
Indiana State 2 points
Northern Colorado 2 points
Alabama-Birmingham 1 point
Nebraska 1 point
Stephen . Austin 1 point

 

[Sherlocked]

This is interesting, and certainly Baylor has gotten off to a good start, so there might be something there. I just don't know if losing to the #1 team by 25pts should be the equivalent of losing to the #25 team by 1pt. Doubt you're actually looking for feedback, but maybe use the point spread? Lost to #1 team by 10 as 10 PT underdog = 25 pts, Lost to #15 by 1 as 15 PT underdog = 25 pts[11 schedule + 14 (spread - diff)].

 

[SWC75]

This is interesting, and certainly Baylor has gotten off to a good start, so there might be something there. I just don't know if losing to the #1 team by 25pts should be the equivalent of losing to the #25 team by 1pt. Doubt you're actually looking for feedback, but maybe use the point spread? Lost to #1 team by 10 as 10 PT underdog = 25 pts, Lost to #15 by 1 as 15 PT underdog = 25 pts[11 schedule + 14 (spread - diff)].

I'm not a gambler so I don't look at that kind of point spread, which is not necessarily an estimate of a team's value, (they often manipulate it to get people to bet on certain games).

I use this system because I notice actual point differentials are usually within 25 points and if you gave a team from 1-25 points for playing a ranked team and then look at how much they lost or won by, you'd have a number which reflected how they did against ranked teams, which is a phrase one often hears in evaluating teams in March. I think this is better than saying "They were 3-5 against the top 25".

It works pretty well for football:
Against Ranked Teams- Football Week 13