Ken-pom 2011-12 Basketball Ratings | The Boneyard

Ken-pom 2011-12 Basketball Ratings

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Pomeroy Ratings for 2011-12. He mentions in his blog that it will become subscription. Oh we're rated higher (6th) this year than we were last when we won it all(10)...

http://kenpom.com/
 
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I don't understand how a any system could objectively place Duke ahead of Syracuse or UConn.
 
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I don't understand how a any system could objectively place Duke ahead of Syracuse or UConn.
It wouldn't be right if dook wasn't ranked every year in the top 5. Its just means that the season is upon us. I know you are not that surprised.
 

Rico444

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What data is he using to base these rankings on? We haven't had any games yet, and there's no way to tell the improvement you're going to see from these players, or how these freshman will do.
 
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My understanding is that Ken Pom is based in part on perceived strength of opponents and therefore likely record (though I could be wrong)... which would help Duke to place quite high... (The ACC is terrible)... Also, let's not forget that Duke does have a lot of guys coming back that are pretty good. I hate them as much or more than anyone else, but the reality is that at the end of the year they will have an inflated record and will probably get their typical preferential NCAA seeding and venue allocation... They are a system team and, even when they aren't great, are never an easy out
 
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I don't understand how a any system could objectively place Duke ahead of Syracuse or UConn.

TZZ,

I hear you, and the fact that Duke seemingly lost more production than us makes it hard to understand a seemingly pythagorean-based system that focuses only on returning players for this type of pre-season rating. FWIW, Duke always scores high on Ken Pom's ratings (you can go back and look at previous finishes by year to see this).

...just saw that UK is "ranked" number one. I have no idea what this ranking is supposed to mean or what it is based on, given that it is literally impossible to make pythagorean projections for freshman in college basketball. Ken Pom is generally interesting, and perhaps on the vanguard on some of the good new stats, but unless I've totally missed the explanation of these ratings, or unless he has, this ranking is mainly useless.

EDIT: By the above, I mean that the rankings are useless if they purport to be all-encompassing (a la AP / ESPN Coaches polls) or truly predictive (i.e., the sabermetric-type goal)
 
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These are NOT ratings. Prior to the season Pomeroy (and Sagarin) simply set a starting point by using a weighted average of the previous few seasons. Then as teams play each other, real data replaces this hypothetical starting point.
 
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These are NOT ratings. Prior to the season Pomeroy (and Sagarin) simply set a starting point by using a weighted average of the previous few seasons. Then as teams play each other, real data replaces this hypothetical starting point.

Not to pick on these ratings, then, by taking them for something that they're not, but aren't they pretty worthless? Is there any acknowledgment of that in his annals? What good is that formula in today's college bball?

EDIT: feel free to replace "ratings" with whatever term you prefer.
 
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those ratings are a joke

that site was better when the guy posted up the RPI. only thing good about that site is easy access to teams schedules/records but now you have realtimerpi.com for that too. his blogs kinda interesting sometimes too but his ratings make no sense at all and are pretty worthless.
 
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No-one who follows his ratings at all would have thought for a second that they could be meaningful when the season hasn't even started.

Pomeroy's statistical analysis is the best available by a wide margin btw. Worth a huge amount to those who follow hoops closely.
 
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No-one who follows his ratings at all would have thought for a second that they could be meaningful when the season hasn't even started.

Pomeroy's statistical analysis is the best available by a wide margin btw. Worth a huge amount to those who follow hoops closely.

Stamford,

Thanks for pointing that out, that these preseason ratings are meaningless. It would be nice if Ken did, too. (Again, maybe he has pointed this out somewhere.)

It may sound odd because I was only an hour ago being critical of these ratings, but I'm actually an avid reader of his blog and enjoy what he puts out. I agree he is way ahead of virtually all other comers in this area. I guess I'd question how much his statistical analysis is "worth" though, to anyone, at this stage of the game, which I imagine would constitute an indictment as to the utility of advance stats in basketball.
 
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No-one who follows his ratings at all would have thought for a second that they could be meaningful when the season hasn't even started.

Pomeroy's statistical analysis is the best available by a wide margin btw. Worth a huge amount to those who follow hoops closely.

(continued)

I think his site his very interesting, but I'm not sure that it has been able to "move the needle" on the proving grounds that matter. If you bet, say, on one thousand games last year using his standard predictor, would you have been more right than wrong? Are any of his metrics more advanced or predictive than, say, Luke Winn's well-received (at least here, lol) defensive analysis of the Husky march in the tourney last year? (You'll recall he broke down ours and Butler's games leading up to the final, using a painstaking categorization of "open shots," "contested shots," and "altered/blocked shots" I believe, to show how sick our D was and not a fluke...Just to use this as an example, does anyone do this for all college bball games? Does Ken Pom's site?)

I feel like the great new stats are still early on in R&D, and the ratings that KP has put out for almost a decade are issued out of a commercial necessity that don't mean much yet. It's a workshop still, imho. Don't know where the absolute value of that is, except for the tinkerers.
 
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No-one who follows his ratings at all would have thought for a second that they could be meaningful when the season hasn't even started.

Pomeroy's statistical analysis is the best available by a wide margin btw. Worth a huge amount to those who follow hoops closely.
I follow them pretty closely. Not worth a single penny. Not when collegeRPI.com went subscriber, not when part of teamrankings.com went subscriber. Not worth a cent.
 

Fishy

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They're entertaining and occasionally have some value, but ultimately, the subjective eyeball test is as good as anything.

UConn's run last year torpedoed a ton of statistical rules and regs - there just isn't a stat that measures "doesn't like to lose tournament games".
 

mets1090

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UConn's run last year torpedoed a ton of statistical rules and regs - there just isn't a stat that measures "doesn't like to lose tournament games".

3-0, 5-0, 6-0. Those are the only stats I need to see to sum up last year's team
 

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This is like discussing RPI rankings in December. It has no meaning yet. Revisit the ratings in 10 or 12 weeks.
 

willie99

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I don't understand how a any system could objectively place Duke ahead of Syracuse or UConn.

his system is tailored to fit Duke's and UNC's style of play

I guess their style is better in his eyes

we be ugly
 
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The college basketball prospectus is out and he explains the system a bit more in it. To wit:

"I decided to give the system a name. How about we call it Crazy Uncle? I don’t have a crazy uncle, but the output of this system fits the stereotype of someone making stunning predictions just to get some attention. Crazy Uncle provides an objective approach to setting expectations for each of the 344 teams signed up to play Division I basketball this season. Since it’s based on a bunch of equations, it’s insulated from the groupthink that tends to permeate poll voting in the instant-communication age. For example, last season Crazy Uncle’s top four was Duke, Kansas, Ohio State and Pitt. Those four ended up being the No. 1 seeds for the NCAA tournament five months later. It’s also true that none of the 66 AP poll voters had those four teams as their top four."

"This is not to say the Crazy Uncle is better than the voters. As one who prides himself on recognizing the impact of luck, it’s obvious to me that Crazy Uncle benefited from good fortune in matching his top four with the one-seeds. That’s not going to happen every year, or maybe ever again. Any preseason ranking figures to have a lot of uncertainty associated with it. Furthermore, this achievement only has merit if you believe the one-seeds really were the four best
teams in the nation, and you could make the case that Pitt was not. So I don’t want to give the impression that Crazy Uncle is always right, just that you should consider his opinion."

"Crazy Uncle is giving you something different, driven by numbers. Specifically, the ingredients are the last three seasons of efficiency data, information on how much of last season’s roster returns, and the destinations for the top 50 incoming recruits in the country. The algorithm is largely unchanged from last season with two key exceptions. Last year I only included the previous two seasons of efficiency data. It turns out that including a third season can improve the system slightly. In addition, Crazy Uncle is smarter about the use of recruiting information. In this area, less is more. Whereas last season I attempted to include recruiting information for every Division-I team, there is far too little predictive information in recruiting ratings outside the elite recruits for it to be worth the effort it takes to compile this information. Actually, I’ve found that limiting Crazy Uncle’s knowledge to the top 50 recruits (as determined by rscihoops.com) is for the best. For the recruits I do include, their impact is more intelligently determined than last season. Not only are available minutes considered when determining a recruit’s impact, but the team’s recent level of play is considered as well. Thus, even when few minutes are available on a relatively weak team, Crazy Uncle acknowledges that a four-star recruit or two can have a major impact."

"Note that when assessing roster continuity, Crazy Uncle is technically not using returning minutes. Minutes used are not created equal and calibration of the system to past seasons shows that players that carry a higher burden of the offense (as measured through percentage of possessions used) or are more efficient than their team’s offense tend to be more valuable. Players that do both are extremely important and the loss of such players (think Kemba Walker and Jimmer Fredette) is treated much more harshly that their minutes played would suggest. Crazy Uncle invokes similar principles to determine the impact of personnel changes on defense."
 
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