AAC and new Big East - power conference or mid-major

[mudcat]

http://www.swishappeal.com/2013/6/1...rican-athletic-conferences-power-or-mid-major

Here's what Swish appeal has to say. My take is that this is based on what those schools did previously in other conferences - who know what the AAC may be in 3 years?

 

[meyers7]

Both, at least for the next couple of years the AAC and BE -Catholics will be in-between the majors (ACC, B1G, Big-12, PAC-12, SEC) and the mid-majors (West Coast, USA, A10, etc.)

RPI wise they end up a little closer to the majors than the mid-majors.

 

[Icebear]

Mid major. May develop but I do not believe it will.

 

[Big UConn]

http://www.swishappeal.com/2013/6/1...rican-athletic-conferences-power-or-mid-major

Here's what Swish appeal has to say. My take is that this is based on what those schools did previously in other conferences - who know what the AAC may be in 3 years?

The Swish Appeal Article is pure crap. Mean, Median and Mode of tourney invites have nothing to do with the strength of a conference. Finishes say among the top four teams in the country each year would be more accurate. The key factor is how many NCAA tourneys has the conference won. Second would be how many final fours. This article was written to make the AAC look bad. Face it, everyone wants UConn to fail. But we are not going to.

 

[Icebear]

No, having one dominant team that wins the championships every year does not mean a conference is strong it means that team is strong. When the Big East would go 7 or 8 teams deep into the NCAA tournament that meant the conference is strong. As long as the AAC gets no more than a couple of teams into the tournament they cannot be considered a strong conference.

 

[Alydar]

What makes a conference strong, quality or quantity. Getting 6 or 7 teams into the dance is nice but if there are only two getting to the S16 while another "weaker conference gets 2 teams to the E8, which is stronger? And would you rather root for a national champion from the CAA (for example) than for an ACC powerhouse that only makes the regionals?

 

[Big UConn]

No, having one dominant team that wins the championships every year does not mean a conference is strong it means that team is strong. When the Big East would go 7 or 8 teams deep into the NCAA tournament that meant the conference is strong. As long as the AAC gets no more than a couple of teams into the tournament they cannot be considered a strong conference.

Last year Syracuse, Villanova and St Johns were invited to the NCAA and each lost in the first round. South Florida lost in the second round. The only reason the Big East was considered powerful last year is because of three teams: UConn, Notre Dame and Louisville. ALL these three made it to the final four. Very clearly, the only teams that count are those who make it to the Final Four. The teams that get bounced in the first round mean nothing. They have nothing to do with whether a conference is a power conference. So going 7 deep last year meant nothing. Having three teams in the Final Four was impressive. Using Final Four appearances would be much more indicative of how strong a conference really is that the "mode of invites."

 

[UcMiami]

RPI is a huge decider on 'strength' of a conference and any conference in which every team plays the #1 nationally ranked team twice every year will see its members RPI go up regardless of won/loss records. It happened years ago in the BE and it will happen again in the AAC. The new Big East on the other hand will see its RPI drop steadily with Uconn, ND, Louisville, and Rutgers departed.
And I do believe recruiting for teams that take WCBB seriously is improved by having the Uconn circus come to town - not at the top end, but in the middle of the pack from say rank 20 - 100. If you can't play on KML's or Stewart's team, getting to play against them twice a year is better than some other options. And recruiting coaches to a program should also get easier. Jeff to Louisville and there incredible rise in fan support as well as performance was easier because of Uconn and later ND.

 

[Icebear]

Last year Syracuse, Villanova and St Johns were invited to the NCAA and each lost in the first round. South Florida lost in the second round. The only reason the Big East was considered powerful last year is because of three teams: UConn, Notre Dame and Louisville. ALL these three made it to the final four. Very clearly, the only teams that count are those who make it to the Final Four. The teams that get bounced in the first round mean nothing. They have nothing to do with whether a conference is a power conference. So going 7 deep last year meant nothing. Having three teams in the Final Four was impressive. Using Final Four appearances would be much more indicative of how strong a conference really is that the "mode of invites."

And those 3 in the Final Four is vastly different from a conference with one team winning the championship. Besides when you put 7 teams into the dance several times you have to expect numerous teams to lose in the first round. Those are not the teams that dominated the conference but they were good enough with SOS and RPI to be given bids to the dance.

 

[pinotbear]

I suspect that a great deal of the success that programs like G'town, St.Johns and even 'Nova have had in recruiting is because they've been playing in such a powerful conference for WBB. When you can say to a kid "we play CT, ND, U of L, Rutgers,", this can be a powerful endorsement of the quality of your program. Conference reputation, to me, has more cachet in recruiting for the second & third tier schools in a conference. "We play with the big boys (or girls, to be precise)". If you ARE one of the big girls, you don't need that "quality-by-association" quite so much.

The point I'm getting to is this: the new Big East loses all of the big girls. Recruiting just got a lot harder for the coaches in the Catholic 7. In the big, juicy roast turkey that was the old Big East WBB Conference, most of the good stuff is gone - all that's left is the wings n' such, with little meat to it. I expect a pretty steady decline in the quality of Big East WBB, particularly down the road a couple of years.

 

[Big UConn]

And those 3 in the Final Four is vastly different from a conference with one team winning the championship. Besides when you put 7 teams into the dance several times you have to expect numerous teams to lose in the first round. Those are not the teams that dominated the conference but they were good enough with SOS and RPI to be given bids to the dance.

The problem is, of course that at this point the season hasn't even started, and neither you nor I have any idea about how many teams from the AAC will be in the NCAA Tourney. I think one could rationally say that the possibility for UConn and Louisville to both be in the final four is significant. So even if we only get two out of the four teams in the F4, nobody is going to do any better. As for two years from now, don't even try to guess who's going to be in the F4.

And also, no one seems to have taken into consideration how many teams are in the conference. The Big East last year had 15 basketball members. The AAC this year will have 10. If you are going to use statistical concepts like "mode" in the way Swish Appeal did, you have to adjust the numbers for the size of the conference in order to draw the conclusions that they drew. They did not take the adjusted mean, they simply took the mode, which seems specious to me.

 

[meyers7]

What makes a conference strong, quality or quantity. Getting 6 or 7 teams into the dance is nice but if there are only two getting to the S16 while another "weaker conference gets 2 teams to the E8, which is stronger?

I'd say the one who puts 6 or 7 teams in the dance.

Actually I think RPI probably does the best job of ranking the conferences.

 

[meyers7]

I suspect that a great deal of the success that programs like G'town, St.Johns and even 'Nova have had in recruiting is because they've been playing in such a powerful conference for WBB. When you can say to a kid "we play CT, ND, U of L, Rutgers,", this can be a powerful endorsement of the quality of your program. Conference reputation, to me, has more cachet in recruiting for the second & third tier schools in a conference. "We play with the big boys (or girls, to be precise)". If you ARE one of the big girls, you don't need that "quality-by-association" quite so much.

The point I'm getting to is this: the new Big East loses all of the big girls. Recruiting just got a lot harder for the coaches in the Catholic 7. In the big, juicy roast turkey that was the old Big East WBB Conference, most of the good stuff is gone - all that's left is the wings n' such, with little meat to it. I expect a pretty steady decline in the quality of Big East WBB, particularly down the road a couple of years.

It's always food with you isn't it?

I agree, I think the Big East will be shrinking in stature in the coming years.

 

[meyers7]

The problem is, of course that at this point the season hasn't even started, and neither you nor I have any idea about how many teams from the AAC will be in the NCAA Tourney. I think one could rationally say that the possibility for UConn and Louisville to both be in the final four is significant. So even if we only get two out of the four teams in the F4, nobody is going to do any better. As for two years from now, don't even try to guess who's going to be in the F4.

And also, no one seems to have taken into consideration how many teams are in the conference. The Big East last year had 15 basketball members. The AAC this year will have 10. If you are going to use statistical concepts like "mode" in the way Swish Appeal did, you have to adjust the numbers for the size of the conference in order to draw the conclusions that they drew. They did not take the adjusted mean, they simply took the mode, which seems specious to me.

Yes, while their "answer" was correct, AAC is not going to be a strong "major" conference, the way they got to that answer was not very good. i.e., the "show the work" part left a lot to be desired.

 

[Big UConn]

I'd say the one who puts 6 or 7 teams in the dance.

Actually I think RPI probably does the best job of ranking the conferences.

http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2011/03/ratings_madness.html

http://www.basketballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=2451

http://www.bigbluehistory.net/bb/rpi.html

 

[Icebear]

The problem is, of course that at this point the season hasn't even started, and neither you nor I have any idea about how many teams from the AAC will be in the NCAA Tourney. I think one could rationally say that the possibility for UConn and Louisville to both be in the final four is significant. So even if we only get two out of the four teams in the F4, nobody is going to do any better. As for two years from now, don't even try to guess who's going to be in the F4.

And also, no one seems to have taken into consideration how many teams are in the conference. The Big East last year had 15 basketball members. The AAC this year will have 10. If you are going to use statistical concepts like "mode" in the way Swish Appeal did, you have to adjust the numbers for the size of the conference in order to draw the conclusions that they drew. They did not take the adjusted mean, they simply took the mode, which seems specious to me.

Except by looking at the past RPIs and SOSs of those schools and their ability to perform and success in the tournament or whether they have even been getting in at all.

 

[meyers7]

http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2011/03/ratings_madness.html

http://www.basketballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=2451

http://www.bigbluehistory.net/bb/rpi.html

All those talk about how bad RPI is in relation to individual teams, we are discussing conference strength. RPI certainly has it's problems. But in this discussion it is much better then SwishAppeals approach.

 

[Big UConn]

All those talk about how bad RPI is in relation to individual teams, we are discussing conference strength. RPI certainly has it's problems. But in this discussion it is much better then SwishAppeals approach.

Although I certainly do not like whatever Swish Appeal did (can't say I really understand what they did - as you say they were a little sparse on showing the work) but measuring a team or conference based upon the strength of the schools that team or conference plays, without taking into account the margin of victory, seems very heavy handed to me. As one of the articles said, you can get a good RPI by just playing strong teams and losing to them.

 

[diggerfoot]

Much of this discussion effectively defines strength of conference by how it can be measured. This leads to circular reasoning without any resolution .... not that there's ever such a thing as resolution on the Boneyard . A concept like conference strength needs to be defined independently of how it can be measured .... say, the difficulty of winning games if one has to play all the teams of that conference. Once defined then the different measurements ... championship, Final Fours, tournament appearances, RPI, etc. .... can be compared based on how well they fit that independent definition.

 

[meyers7]

Although I certainly do not like whatever Swish Appeal did (can't say I really understand what they did - as you say they were a little sparse on showing the work) but measuring a team or conference based upon the strength of the schools that team or conference plays, without taking into account the margin of victory, seems very heavy handed to me. As one of the articles said, you can get a good RPI by just playing strong teams and losing to them.

Agree adding in margin of victory would certainly help.

 

[Alydar]

I'd say the one who puts 6 or 7 teams in the dance.

Actually I think RPI probably does the best job of ranking the conferences.

I don't know this to be true but I read that a team that went 0-30 would have a reasonable RPI as long as all the losses were to top 15 teams.

 

[HuskyNan]

I'd say the one who puts 6 or 7 teams in the dance.

Actually I think RPI probably does the best job of ranking the conferences.

The ACC sent 4 teams to the NCAAs this past spring and had the fifth-best RPI. Yet young women appear to be anxious to get into the league, according to one of our experts.

 

[Alydar]

When I look at rankings like Sagarin, I see that they use a) record against 0-25 ranked teams and 0-50 ranked teams. This is a fine measure for men where the 25th best team can and has won a NC but in wcbb you can't equate a top 3 win to a win against a team ranked 23-25. It's not unusual to see a top 3 team lose to a 20th ranked team in mcbb. This is the same as Louisville (5 seed) beating Baylor last year. And Sagarin would score a win against Louisville as equal to beating Baylor. I don't see it. And I think that not having a team in the top 16 precludes a conference from being considered a "power conference".
.
My problem with RPI is that 3/4 of the rank is determined not by who you beat. It's about who are the teams you played and who those teams played. Wins & losses and the margins of those games are hardly considered.

 

[ctchamps]

IIRC wasn't the trajectory of the BE starting as a mid major when UConn went to it's first final four with the SEC and B!G being the number 1 and 2 conferences. The addition of VS at Rutgers made the BE a two horse race for some time. Then BC got into the picture with ND and Nova. Ville is new to the picture.

Maybe I have my recollection of the specifics wrong. But the general point is UConn elevated the BE to the status it ended at - the best woman's conference. So it is possible that things can play out again. Of course the older I get the less time I have to wait for things to play out. So maybe there will be a shortcut in the near future.

 

[meyers7]

The ACC sent 4 teams to the NCAAs this past spring and had the fifth-best RPI. Yet young women appear to be anxious to get into the league, according to one of our experts.

You use that word very loosely.

The ACC will probably be moving up (they'll immediately jump ahead of the former Big East and they'll be ahead of AAC) over the next couple years. The Big 12 will probably drop down some too. It's gonna be a good league, although kinda top heavy.