Does The Big East Hurt Our KenPom?

[navery12]

Right but if you are expected to win by 10 and y win by 12 your rating goes up. If y are then expected to win by 12 and y win by 15 your rating goes up. Etc. so even if y keep winning but not by what the algorithm thinks y should it goes down. So the only way to increase you rating is to keep winning by more than expected…a ponzi scheme

Correct, the only way to improve your predictive ratings is to improve your play

 

[Scottobot]

No. Not being dominant hurts our rating. We are winning close games, which is preferable to losing, but we are not being consistently dominant. Games that should be easy wins are turning into stressful events. On the flip side, a few games that should have been losses turned into wins. Does that mean we tend to play down to our competition? Maybe. But we also tend to play up to our competition and beat the best teams that we play, even if our rating says we shouldn't.

Obviously it would be best to win close games that we shouldn't win AND blow out teams that we should beat. But, if that is not our reality, is it better to play down to weaker teams and win close games that we shouldn't win or blow out weaker teams and lose close games that we aren't supposed to win? I don't know. 2022/2023 was kinda like the latter and this team is the former. I guess we will see how this works out.

I agree with this, but there is a factor that the Big East refs do things to keep the games close. When UConn gets up 18 points, they let the other team foul at will with no calls, and anytime they miss on a drive to the hoop the refs reward them with FTs whether there was a foul or not.