Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Jammin’ on the James

Here’s the CAA log5 breakdown, as contributed by many. Surging ODU has the best odds out of the 2-seed.

                  Qtrs   Semis  Finals  Champ
 2 ODU             100    89.2   67.1    42.5
 1 VCU             100    88.8   54.9    27.6
 4 Drexel          100    85.4   40.4    17.5
 6 GMU            91.3    47.6   14.7     5.6
 3 Hofstra         100    51.6   15.1     5.4
 7 Towson         68.9     8.9    2.8     0.6 
 5 N'eastern      79.7    13.6    2.4     0.4
 8 Bill & Mary    68.0     9.0    2.0     0.3
10 UNCW           31.1     2.0    0.3     0.0
 9 Georgia St.    32.0     2.2    0.3     0.0
12 Delaware       20.3     1.0    0.1     0.0
11 JMU             8.7     0.8    0.0     0.0

Tuesday, February 27, 2007

It’s That Time of Year

It’s time to calculate conference tournament odds based on log5 principles. The Valley Ledger has the data for Arch Madness.

This is strictly a volunteer effort. If you go through the trouble of computing the odds for a conference tournament, I’ll post them. For those interested, 11.5 is the exponent of choice this season.

Monday, February 26, 2007

The Value of Consistency

One of the big issues in my mailbox is how consistency impacts a team’s prospects in The Tournament. More specifically: how can we expect Southern Illinois (Pythagorean rating: 34, Consistency: 1) and Nevada (Pythag: 63, Consistency: 2), teams that have dominated their respective conferences without piling up big margins of victory, to perform in The Tournament? Keep in mind, with just three prior years of data, we don’t have a whole lot to go on statistically. But here are the teams that had some things in common with the canines hoping for a deep run this season:

2004 Northern Iowa (Pythag: 71, Consistency: 11) Result: First round loss to eventual Final Four participant Georgia Tech. Close game that wasn’t decided until the final minute. (Note: UNI didn’t win the MVC that season, but was the closest thing fitting my criteria in 2004.)
2005 Gonzaga (Pythag: 32, Consistency: 12) Result: As a 3-seed, lost to 6-seed Texas Tech in the second round.
2005 Southern Illinois (Pythag: 29, Consistency: 19) Result: As a 7-seed, lost to Oklahoma State in the second round, 85-77.
2005 Nevada (Pythag: 52, Consistency: 29) Result: As a 9-seed, lost to eventual runner-up Illinois, 71-59, in the second round.
2006 Gonzaga (Pythag: 41, Consistency: 1) Result: As a 3-seed, lost to eventual runner-up UCLA, 73-71 in the sweet sixteen.
2006 Northwestern State (Pythag: 105, Consistency: 2) Result: As a 14-seed, lost to 6-seed West Virginia, 67-54, in the second round.

Sensibly, one would think that consistent conference-dominators would be underrated by a system based on points for/against. And the evidence points that way, although last season’s cases are the most clear-cut examples. Another possibility for this season that nobody is really talking about is Vermont (Pythag: 153, Consistency 18, 15-1 in America East). They could be an intriguing 14-seed if they qualify.