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Message: [QUOTE="TheFarmFan, post: 3781016, member: 9403"] Massey automatically imports some data from the end of last year's season at the start of a new season to weigh the relative strength and expected performance of teams early on. The import of those old games diminishes rapidly as new games replace them and the ratings have enough datapoints to rank based solely on play from this season. I suspect what happened with Princeton is its SOS is based purely on those legacy games from last year that haven't dropped off because it hasn't played any games this year. For everybody else, this season's performance serves as the lion's share of their ranking composition. I suspect Ohio State is similarly benefiting in part from last season's performance (and especially its three late-season neutral court wins over Iowa, Michigan and Minnesota), but Massey also factors in Margin of Victory and Ohio State has won all its games in decisive fashion, so that probably helps. (And before you critique that approach, it's the reason why Massey's ratings are so much more reliable than RPI from the outset - RPI is often extremely wonky until well into the start of conference play, given how imbalanced a lot of teams' OOC schedules are. And personally, I find RPI a close to useless gauge.) [/QUOTE]