Friday, February 7, 2014

Profile superlatives

Let's look at a few basic metrics that can be found on your typical at-large resume.  And let's identify outliers from it, and see if we can glean some nuggets.

True road wins:
Stephen F Austin 10
Manhattan, Delaware, North Dakota St, St Louis, Wichita St 8
SFA are kings here, despite their bad SoS, at least they do some of the work on the road.  Wichita obviously hasn't lost on the road; NDSU has lost 5 and Delaware 6, Manhattan 3.  So opportunity is part of the battle, but teams that go on the road are usually rewarded.  File that away, bracketologists, when it comes time to seed those teams.
Among those on 7 road wins:  Villanova, Southern Miss, Indiana St.  Slight bubble hope for the latter two teams there.

Average RPI win:
Kansas 67
Wisconsin 105
Arizona 106
UMass 107
Kentucky, Duke, Iowa St, Michigan St 114
Look how insane Kansas' number is.  67!  Here you can see why Wisky hasn't slipped a lot in projections, and why I'm still bullish on UMass.  The other teams are pretty much what you'd expect.
Among bubble teams, Xavier at 117 is a big outlier in the positive direction.  Cincinnati at 154 and SDSU at 157 could be troublesome for getting a top seed, and Louisville at 181 is downright alarming.

Non-conference SoS (only listing in-contention teams)
Kansas 1
BYU 5
Wisconsin 7
North Dakota St 15
Kentucky 18
Kansas has a historically great schedule.  BYU?  That's why they're still lingering in bubble conversations.  NDSU representing well.  As for Kentucky, you can argue if they've underachieved or not, but a quality SoS is going to help them, like it or not.
In the other direction:  Clemson 301, SMU 297, Louisiana Tech 294, Iowa 248, Indiana St 219, Arizona St 212.

Top 100 wins:
Kansas 14
Michigan St 12
Wisconsin 11
Syracuse 11
UMass 11
Michigan 10
Arizona 10
Ohio St 10
Villanova 10
Kansas is a ridiculous 5-4 vs. RPI Top 25.  OSU and UMass have 8 of those 10 against 51-100.

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