Against ranked teams: Week 3

[SWC75]

We often hear teams being evaluated at the end of the season by how they did “against ranked teams”. A couple of years ago I came up with a simple system for evaluating this, one with an acknowledged flaw but which nonetheless produced interesting results so I’ll do it again this year.

The system is very simple. First I hand out points to teams based on the ranking of their opponent. If you play the #1 ranked team, you get 25 points for playing such a powerful team. You get 24 points for playing the #2 team, 23 for playing the #3 team, etc. I’ll call them schedule points. Here’s a chart to make it easy:

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.

That’s step one. Now we play the games and see how these teams actually do on the field. What cued me into this is that most games will be won or lost by 25 points or less, so the points involved are comparable. You just compare the point differential to the points teams have gotten for playing a ranked opponent. If they beat the ranked opponent, their points will grow by the margin of victory. If they lose, you subtract the margin of victory from the schedule points. If that reduces them to zero or less, they get zero points. I’m not going to deal with minus points, just add up the positive points earned, or else my rankings would be cluttered up with a lot of inferior teams who were below the Mendoza line because they’d gotten blown out by their ranked opponents. If you play the #1 team and lose by 21 points, you’ll get 4 points: 25 schedule points minus the 21 points you lost by. If you play the #10 team and lose by 13 points, you’ll get three points. If you play the #15 team and lose by 14 points, you’ll get nothing, (11-14 = 0 in this system).

I’ll record the points earned each week and how the teams got them and add them up over the course of the season. That will show us how each team did “against ranked teams”. Like all cumulative standing, they will sort themselves out as the season goes on and come more and more into focus. Later listings will be more meaningful that early ones as more and more teams get through the meat of their schedules. The cumulative listing should I think be less a ranking of teams than a statistic you look at in determining where to rank the teams.

This week featured an extraordinary number of games in which teams earned points- 14 of them, compared to 17 in the first two weeks combined. Only 7 of them were the result of the four games between ranked teams.

WEEK 3 (9/17-19/2015)
Louisiana State beat #18 Auburn 45-21 8 + 24 = 32 points
Mississippi beat #2 Alabama 43-37 24 + 6 = 30 points
Stanford beat #6 Southern California 41-31 20 + 10 = 30 points
Notre Dame beat #14 Georgia Tech 30-22 14 + 8 = 22 points
Northern Illinois lost to #1 Ohio State 13-20 25-7 = 18 points
Brigham Young lost to #10 UCLA 23-24 16 - 1 = 15 points
Louisville lost to #11 Clemson 17-20 15-3 = 12 points
Georgia Tech lost to #8 Notre Dame 22-30 18 – 8 = 10 points
UCLA beat #19 Brigham Young 24-23 7 + 1 = 8 points
Air Force lost to #4 Michigan State 21-35 21-14 = 7 points
Alabama lost to #15 Mississippi 37-43 11- 6 = 5 points
Southern Methodist lost to #3 Texas Christian 37-56 23-19 = 4 points
Boston College lost to #9 Florida State 0-14 17-14 = 3 points
Connecticut lost to #22 Missouri 6-9 4-3 = 1 point

SEASON TOTALS
Louisiana State 35 points
Brigham Young 32 points
Texas A&M 32 points
Mississippi 30 points
Stanford 30 points
Alabama 29 points
Louisville 25 points
Michigan State 22 points
Notre Dame 22 points
Northern Illinois 18 points
Oregon 18 points
Minnesota 17 points
Northwestern 15 points
Jacksonville St. 13 points
Toledo 12 points
Georgia Tech 10 points
Mississippi State 10 points
Oklahoma 10 points
Virginia 10 points
UCLA 8 points
Western Michigan 8 points
Air Force 7 points
Virginia Tech 7 points
Wisconsin 6 points
Southern Methodist 4 points
Boston College 3 points
Connecticut 1 point

And our next opponent is...

 

[anomander]

We often hear teams being evaluated at the end of the season by how they did “against ranked teams”. A couple of years ago I came up with a simple system for evaluating this, one with an acknowledged flaw but which nonetheless produced interesting results so I’ll do it again this year. The system is very simple. First I hand out points to teams based on the ranking of their opponent. If you play the #1 ranked team, you get 25 points for playing such a powerful team. You get 24 points for playing the #2 team, 23 for playing the #3 team, etc. I’ll call them schedule points. Here’s a chart to make it easy: 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. That’s step one. Now we play the games and see how these teams actually do on the field. What cued me into this is that most games will be won or lost by 25 points or less, so the points involved are comparable. You just compare the point differential to the points teams have gotten for playing a ranked opponent. If they beat the ranked opponent, their points will grow by the margin of victory. If they lose, you subtract the margin of victory from the schedule points. If that reduces them to zero or less, they get zero points. I’m not going to deal with minus points, just add up the positive points earned, or else my rankings would be cluttered up with a lot of inferior teams who were below the Mendoza line because they’d gotten blown out by their ranked opponents. If you play the #1 team and lose by 21 points, you’ll get 4 points: 25 schedule points minus the 21 points you lost by. If you play the #10 team and lose by 13 points, you’ll get three points. If you play the #15 team and lose by 14 points, you’ll get nothing, (11-14 = 0 in this system). I’ll record the points earned each week and how the teams got them and add them up over the course of the season. That will show us how each team did “against ranked teams”. Like all cumulative standing, they will sort themselves out as the season goes on and come more and more into focus. Later listings will be more meaningful that early ones as more and more teams get through the meat of their schedules. The cumulative listing should I think be less a ranking of teams than a statistic you look at in determining where to rank the teams. This week featured an extraordinary number of games in which teams earned points- 14 of them, compared to 17 in the first two weeks combined. Only 7 of them were the result of the four games between ranked teams. WEEK 3 (9/17-19/2015) Louisiana State beat #18 Auburn 45-21 8 + 24 = 32 points Mississippi beat #2 Alabama 43-37 24 + 6 = 30 points Stanford beat #6 Southern California 41-31 20 + 10 = 30 points Notre Dame beat #14 Georgia Tech 30-22 14 + 8 = 22 points Northern Illinois lost to #1 Ohio State 13-20 25-7 = 18 points Brigham Young lost to #10 UCLA 23-24 16 - 1 = 15 points Louisville lost to #11 Clemson 17-20 15-3 = 12 points Georgia Tech lost to #8 Notre Dame 22-30 18 – 8 = 10 points UCLA beat #19 Brigham Young 24-23 7 + 1 = 8 points Air Force lost to #4 Michigan State 21-35 21-14 = 7 points Alabama lost to #15 Mississippi 37-43 11- 6 = 5 points Southern Methodist lost to #3 Texas Christian 37-56 23-19 = 4 points Boston College lost to #9 Florida State 0-14 17-14 = 3 points Connecticut lost to #22 Missouri 6-9 4-3 = 1 point SEASON TOTALS Louisiana State 35 points Brigham Young 32 points Texas A&M 32 points Mississippi 30 points Stanford 30 points Alabama 29 points Louisville 25 points Michigan State 22 points Notre Dame 22 points Northern Illinois 18 points Oregon 18 points Minnesota 17 points Northwestern 15 points Jacksonville St. 13 points Toledo 12 points Georgia Tech 10 points Mississippi State 10 points Oklahoma 10 points Virginia 10 points UCLA 8 points Western Michigan 8 points Air Force 7 points Virginia Tech 7 points Wisconsin 6 points Southern Methodist 4 points Boston College 3 points Connecticut 1 point And our next opponent is...

After the end of the LSU/Auburn highlights on one of the college football shows I think it was Joey Galloway who goes "LSU looks like the best team in the country right now". The way I see it we have nothing to lose. We should be loose, creative, and aggressive. It seems in other big games we played not to get blown out. I say let it hang out and see what happens. What is interesting is LSU' strength (.rushing) happens to be our strength (rush defense). Fournette is a different animal, but we have shut down big time backs before. I have a feeling Dungey plays, and we can only hope Ish is Ok, but either way offensively it will be a challenge. Great experience for the young guys to see just what it takes to be at the top level of this sport. Nobody is expecting us to win, so just go out, play loose, play with nothing to lose, and see what happens.