FiveThirtyEight Article: This UConn Team Was Better Than Last Year’s Team

[StarMan]

This UConn Team Was Better Than Last Year’s Team -- and possibly the best ever.

 

[Sluconn Husky]

Not surprising to me that the last three rank highest.

The top 8 are all UConn teams and even two that didn't win titles ('11 and '12) make the first 14.

All told, 12 of the top 19 are Husky squads. Not bad.

 

[Plebe]

Not surprising to me that the last three rank highest.

The top 8 are all UConn teams and even two that didn't win titles ('11 and '12) make the first 14.

All told, 12 of the top 19 are Husky squads. Not bad.

Fascinating to me that the 2002 squad, which many still consider the best ever, ranks only 5th on that list.

 

[bags27]

And of course, what this cannot measure is what the 2001 team (ranked here 19) would have looked like, if only, if only, if only....Ah nuts!

BTW, I don't know if this very generous article on the NCAA website has been linked in our blog:

UConn women's basketball: How to appreciate the true dynasty of the Huskies

includes this amazing stat:
Connecticut has allowed one opponent to shoot 50 percent ... in 443 games.

 

[BigBird]

Note: The top five teams, all being UConn, lost how many games? One.

 

[Sluconn Husky]

includes this amazing stat:
Connecticut has allowed one opponent to shoot 50 percent ... in 443 games.

That was Notre Dame in the 2011 Semi-Final, a fluke occurrence that might've prevented another title (UConn could've beaten A&M).

Stanford nearly hit 50% in their win last season.

 

[CONNMAN98]

Computer ratings like Massey's and Sonny Moore's have a value and can be interpreted in many ways. One way they have very little value is comparing them year to year. That's not how they work. There is no connection between different years as no games are played between teams from different years.

This UCONN team may be the best ever but this writer created a very illogical way to compare them.

Notice how 20 of the top 25 have played in the last 11 years, and only 5 of the top 25 played in the first 8 years. Is this possible? Yes but very unlikely.

Most of the more recent teams are rated higher. Why? Who knows but how can CONN '13 be rated over CONN '09 if there's supposed to be any correlation between years (there's not)

Let's not forget CONN '13 lost 4 games (3 to ND) and didn't win either the Big East regular season or tournament.
CONN '09 were undefeated and won all of their games by double digits!

 

[UcMiami]

Computer ratings like Massey's and Sonny Moore's have a value and can be interpreted in many ways. One way they have very little value is comparing them year to year. That's not how they work. There is no connection between different years as no games are played between teams from different years.

This UCONN team may be the best ever but this writer created a very illogical way to compare them.

Notice how 20 of the top 25 have played in the last 11 years, and only 5 of the top 25 played in the first 8 years. Is this possible? Yes but very unlikely.

Most of the more recent teams are rated higher. Why? Who knows but how can CONN '13 be rated over CONN '09 if there's supposed to be any correlation between years (there's not)

Let's not forget CONN '13 lost 4 games (3 to ND) and didn't win either the Big East regular season or tournament.
CONN '09 were undefeated and won all of their games by double digits!

No, but they do give a relative separation between a team and the other teams playing in the year - so you can say 'relative to their competition' the team in 2003 distanced itself from the other teams in 2003 more than the team in 2005 did from their competition, or whatever - which is really all you can do in any ranking of teams across years. And while I haven't delved into all of the factors included in their calculations, some of them are not comparative but raw - their values are not regularized to a specific scale of say 100 so the raw numbers they produce can give a little more than a comparative result.