Outliers and sleep deprivation
by Ken Pomeroy on Wednesday, October 31, 2012
As I would do in previous seasons in the printed version of College Basketball Prospectus, I want to document a few of the perceived outliers in my preseason ratings for handy reference later in the season. This season, I’m including a breakdown of how much sleep I’ve recently lost over each team.
1. Kentucky: The Wildcats are not really an outlier, but it needs to be pointed out that the system is a prediction of end-of-season data. It may seem a bit odd then that I use them to populate the ratings at the start of the season. In most cases, I don’t think it matters much, but a team composed almost exclusively of freshmen would expect to improve as the season progresses. So Kentucky may not be the best team in the country right now.
I’d also point out that their current rating puts them fifth in last season’s final list. The way to interpret this is that whomever ends up being the best team in the land will have exceeded expectations. (In other words, the top team at the end will have better numbers than Kentucky’s expectation provided by the system.) And I think that makes sense in a year with so little preseason certainty at the top.
Sleep lost: 1 minute, watching All-Access Kentucky, a personal-best for me watching any reality show besides Big Brother.