Inter-conference records among the majors

[Tiamat7]

There is one more P5 vs. P5 game, Illinois vs. Missouri, which is tonight. With the rest of the schedule pretty much locked in, we have a pretty good picture of how many teams each conference will get. No league is dominant enough this year that sub .500 teams in conference play will get a lot of leeway, so a good rule of thumb is: "how many teams from the league would get a bid with a .500 record in conference play?"

There are 37 at-large bids plus 5 conference champions = 42 bids.

Start with teams ranked 40 or higher in the NET:

SEC: 8 (Vanderbilt, Georgia, LSU, Alabama, Tennessee, Arkansas, Florida, Kentucky)
Big 12: 7 (Iowa State, Arizona, BYU, Texas Tech, Houston, UCF, Kansas)
Big 10: 9 (Nebraska, Michigan, Purdue, Michigan State, Indiana, UCLA, USC, Iowa, Illinois)
ACC: 8 (Duke, UNC, Virginia, Miami, Louisville, SMU, Clemson, NC State)
Big East: 4 (UConn, Seton Hall, St. Johns, Villanova)

That is 36 bids that these conferences have a high confidence of getting as of Christmas. I could be off by 1, but something really weird would have to happen for any of the conferences above to be 2 off from my prediction above.

Some of the teams listed above won't make it, but they will likely get replaced by another team from the conference. For example, if Texas finishes with a winning record, it means that one of the SEC teams listed above had a losing record, and probably took itself out of a bid. Weird stuff can happen, like 2 years ago when Seton Hall was terrible OOC and finished with a winning record in league play, but those are exceptions.

Close: Auburn (43), Baylor (42), California (44), Butler (46), Ohio State (49)

Depending on how many mid-majors get bids, there are another 2-3 bids from among the "close" teams. Again, some of these may swap out if a Wisconsin or TCU does well in league play. .500 in league play puts these teams right on the bubble. The Big East has a slight advantage here because Butler is less exposed to the "marginal Zero Sum Game" problem, where as a conference stretches towards the middle of its standings, someone has to finish .500 or with a losing record. Butler is not really in the middle of the standings, and it also doesn't have a deep top of the league that gives a lot of teams in the league 4 or 6 automatic losses.

Others of note:

Gonzaga (5), Utah State (17), St. Louis (25), St. Mary's (24), Tulsa (41), Yale (45), McNeese (47), Boise (48)

Gonzaga is the only team on this list that is a lock to get a bid if it doesn't win its conference tournament because none of them other than Gonzaga have quality wins. For now, I am assuming that the mid-majors get 2 at-large bids, but that is a conservative assumption. Zero mid-major at-large bids is a real possibility.

Thank you for this detailed analysis!

Regarding the under .500 P5 qualifiers, I fully expect the Big 12 to get a couple sub .500-- and perhaps well under .500 (in conference) -- teams in the tournament.

 

[pepband99]

It does what now? Show me where he says it does that.

It’s literally in the header above the ranking.

 

[auror]

It’s literally in the header above the ranking.

You're misinterpreting what it is saying. It's a mathematical calculation, an "expected team", not the actual team that will go .500 or the median team. The bad teams are included in the calculation, and how likely a team is to beat them has a proportional impact on the conference rating with every other team. It's better than a straight average because it doesn't skew, but it has more data than a median.

Ratings methodology update | The kenpom.com blog

"There are some other useful changes as well. The strength of schedule rating is now more fair. After a through search, I’m now using an implementation of Jeff Sagarin’s WIN50 method.3 The SOS figure represents the strength of team that would be expected to win half its games against the team’s schedule. It is handy because it minimizes the effect of outliers on the SOS calculation while allowing everyone’s SOS value to be compared on the same scale.

If a team plays mostly tough opponents, then the SOS rating isn’t as sensitive to the quality of the bad teams it plays. Whether Texas played Central Connecticut instead of UTSA last season wouldn’t have changed its SOS much. Flip this principle for a team that has mostly bad opponents on its schedule. Mostly this won’t have a big impact, but under the previous method, which used a simple average of its opponents’ ratings, whether you played the 350th- or 351st-best team in 2013 would have had far-too-serious implications on one’s SOS.

The same method is also used to rate conferences. A conference’s rating is the strength of team that would be expected to go .500 against a round robin schedule. This, too, reduces the effect of outliers. For instance, the Mountain West jumps from 12th to 10th in 2015 as the effect of #349 San Jose State is reduced."

 

[PRHusky]

Anyone else find it funny that the numbers posted in this thread to try to prove that the Big East is not doing as badly as many are saying actually show that the Big East is clearly the worst major conference this season?

 

[pepband99]

You're misinterpreting what it is saying. It's a mathematical calculation, an "expected team", not the actual team that will go .500 or the median team. The bad teams are included in the calculation, and how likely a team is to beat them has a proportional impact on the conference rating with every other team. It's better than a straight average because it doesn't skew, but it has more data than a median.

Ratings methodology update | The kenpom.com blog

"There are some other useful changes as well. The strength of schedule rating is now more fair. After a through search, I’m now using an implementation of Jeff Sagarin’s WIN50 method.3 The SOS figure represents the strength of team that would be expected to win half its games against the team’s schedule. It is handy because it minimizes the effect of outliers on the SOS calculation while allowing everyone’s SOS value to be compared on the same scale.

If a team plays mostly tough opponents, then the SOS rating isn’t as sensitive to the quality of the bad teams it plays. Whether Texas played Central Connecticut instead of UTSA last season wouldn’t have changed its SOS much. Flip this principle for a team that has mostly bad opponents on its schedule. Mostly this won’t have a big impact, but under the previous method, which used a simple average of its opponents’ ratings, whether you played the 350th- or 351st-best team in 2013 would have had far-too-serious implications on one’s SOS.

The same method is also used to rate conferences. A conference’s rating is the strength of team that would be expected to go .500 against a round robin schedule. This, too, reduces the effect of outliers. For instance, the Mountain West jumps from 12th to 10th in 2015 as the effect of #349 San Jose State is reduced."

Err ok.

So I took it originally that it was everyone that was projected to go under 500 was eliminated.

And it’s actually for 500 against a round robin.

So the big east is the least skewed. The bigger conferences more so. But it’s still very very close.

 

[ecasadoSBU]

Anyone else find it funny that the numbers posted in this thread to try to prove that the Big East is not doing as badly as many are saying actually show that the Big East is clearly the worst major conference this season?

There is no debate or question from anyone in this board on whether the Big East this year is the weakest of the major conferences. It is obvious in the stats and also on the floor that we are in 5th place. With that said:

(1) the difference between the major conference and the Big East isn't as great as it made seem to be by the media and some here
(2) the difference between the Big East (5th out of 31) and the ACC/BIG/SEC is less than the difference between the Big East and the MWC (6th) and West Coast Conference (7th)

 

[nelsonmuntz]

Anyone else find it funny that the numbers posted in this thread to try to prove that the Big East is not doing as badly as many are saying actually show that the Big East is clearly the worst major conference this season?

Anyone else find it funny that you are saying other posters are saying the exact opposite of what they actually said?