What is the definition of an "elite" basketball program? | Page 2 | The Boneyard

What is the definition of an "elite" basketball program?

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I understand the idea - but a team that made one semi-final 5 elite eights 2 second round and 2 missed the tournament would have 30 points and I think they are not as good a team as one that made the sweet sixteen 10 times in ten years. One team had was good half the time and bad the rest of the time while the other was one of the top 9-16 teams in the country for all 10 years. If you don't subtract points for bad years, some extremely inconsistent teams may rise toward the top of your rankings.

But I do "subtract" points for poor performance. If the Sweet Sixteen is your norming point, I subtract 3 points from that position for every team that doesn't make the tourney, 2 points for every team that exits in the first round, and 1 point for every team that exits in the second round. If the Sweet Sixteen is the borderline that separates elite status from the non-elite, I deduct 20 points from the team that exits in the first round every year for a decade when compared to one that makes the Sweet Sixteen every year.

You bring up an interesting point in your example, that of consistency. Both teams as you cite them played in 30 games. The "Games Played" measure does not assign any level of worth to a performance with greater variability versus one no variability. If the tortoise and hare had finished in a dead heat, would it have made any difference that the hare had sprinted and rested, sprinted and rested compared to the slow steady tortoise? If you're a bookie, no. If you're a finance manager looking profits, yes. A musician who plays the same note for three minutes probably won't find much of an audience.

Back to the case at hand. Both teams find equal value in my measure of games played. However, they can be differentiated based on the standard deviations of their respective performances. The first team has games played values of 6,4,4,4,4,4,2,2,0,0 while the second team has values of 3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3. The first team's performances have a standard deviation of 1.94 while the second team's is 0.00

Personally, given the complexities of real world situations, I don't believe measuring consistency adds enough light to the situation to justify it's inclusion (and therefore the added complexities). For example, in my list, Oklahoma and Baylor both tied at 42 games played over the interval 2000-2013.

Oklahoma made the field every year, were eliminated in the first round twice, eliminated in the second round 3 times, eliminated in the Sweet Sixteen 6 times, eliminated in the Final Four twice and were national runner-up once.

Baylor missed the tournament entirely twice, were eliminated in the first round once, eliminated in the second round 3 times, eliminated in the Sweet Sixteen 4 times, eliminated in the Elite Eight once, eliminated in the Final Four once, and were national champs twice.

I don't know if you have a preference for which team performed better over the interval, but if you want to add in consistency, Oklahoma had a standard deviation of 1.47 while Baylor's was 2.18.
 
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And finally, is there a time limit on teams that used to be great or "elite" but now can't even crack the Final Four? Louisiana Tech appeared in 10 Final Fours and won 2 National Championships, but not since 1999. Can we say they "used to be elite"?

I don't have a measure for who used to be elite but lost their status over time but I suggest that the length of time a team was elite should play some part in such a determination. For example, a team that was elite for 20 years takes longer to come off the list than one that was on for 10 years.
 

alexrgct

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alex...awesome work! Love the formula, points for regular season, seeding and tourny play...cool the way the top teams were the same w/ my simple formula and your more complex system! I think Oklahoma might have been missed...no big deal....good stuff!!

Best, Uc and Reg good work too....was writing while posts were going up....thanks...!!

OU was an error in Excel on my part. They have 240 points from 2000 on.
 

msf22b

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As Stewie's grandfather Potter said (in a slightly different context): :)
It's hard to define "but I know it when I see it."
 

Tonyc

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Elite imo would be a team that continually is top 4 and ranked at the end of the season as a 1 or 2 seed. Now some teams are one year wonders, some teams get a great player who carrys them for 4 years and they disappear. UConn has been that for a very long time. So has Stanford, Duke and ND. MD in and out and Tenn was there but no longer is. UConn is the most elite and Geno has built a dynasty. There are no current dynasties other then UConn in WCBB today.
 

DaddyChoc

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Elite = wealth, big money! on the women side these days there isn't many "elite" program. If my children played at Rutgers I'd consider it "elite" program... popular coach, big name, big games, winning seasons, alumni etc. but I understand ;)
 

doggydaddy

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Elite = wealth, big money! on the women side these days there isn't many "elite" program. If my children played at Rutgers I'd consider it "elite" program... popular coach, big name, big games, winning seasons, alumni etc. but I understand ;)

Really? Rutgers doesn't need more success than it has had the last five years?

One sweet sixteen was their best. Last year they were 16-14 and didn't make the tourney.
 

doggydaddy

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Doggy who's elite?
The real question is "what" is elite.


Seems to me that many here have different definitions.

At least one thing to me would be consistent success W/L wise and NCAA success wise.

What is NOT elite is the performance of RU the last five years. I would go as far as to call them underachievers.
 
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Elite has a different meaning for everyone. It doesn't mean that one poster is right and another wrong. My meaning for elite is greatness sustained over a long period of time.
 

easttexastrash

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There are dynasties, such as UCONN and Tennessee, and then there are elite programs. IMO, elite programs are those that are consistently in the top 10.
 

stwainfan

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Because of their great history of both Tennessee and UCONN. I would say they have been the best two programs of all time.
After those teams imo the only program that matches that type of success is LA Tech. They have over 1,000 wins and 3x National Titles.
 

DaddyChoc

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The real question is "what" is elite.


Seems to me that many here have different definitions.

At least one thing to me would be consistent success W/L wise and NCAA success wise.

ok... we do agree on something here :rolleyes:

big name coach means something to me... CViv qualifies!

the range of being a Top 10... or top 50 is wide based on 300 Div 1 schools.

a kid sign to Oklahoma, Sherry Coale.... thats not big news? Elite news?


or should we all just agree that UCONN is the only elite school these days?
 

DaddyChoc

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There are dynasties, such as UCONN and Tennessee, and then there are elite programs. IMO, elite programs are those that are consistently in the top 10.
how often is that?

ND, Okla, UNC, Rutgers, LVille, etc.

it changes soooo much there's no true definition of elite on the womens side
 
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Love this thread. It will be up to the Boneyard to lead the way in establishing a standard for the use of the word elite. The point is to establish a definitive definition and usage rules for the word as it applies to women’s basketball. I believe, once its development is completed, the Boneyard Eliteness Table (BET) will end the arguments. Whenever a member of the press or others misuses the word, we can point him to the table. You can BET on it.

Continued discussion will lead to a solution. Keep it going.
 

Icebear

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Best, I love your optimism but you are naive. ;)
 

doggydaddy

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ok... we do agree on something here :rolleyes:

big name coach means something to me... CViv qualifies!

the range of being a Top 10... or top 50 is wide based on 300 Div 1 schools.

a kid sign to Oklahoma, Sherry Coale.... thats not big news? Elite news?


or should we all just agree that UCONN is the only elite school these days?


Who said we should all agree on anything?

If your definition only fits UConn, than UConn is your only elite.

Again, it depends on what is elite and know one here has the ONE definition that would satisfy everyone.

Your RU example of elite fits your definition. It fits many of mine. Including Stringer. But it doesn't fit mine in regards to performance. Don't you think that an elite program should have better W/L and NCAA success over the last five years?
 

DaddyChoc

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why are we stuck at 5 yrs... is that the only hurdle that's stopping Rutgers from being ELITE?
 

doggydaddy

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why are we stuck at 5 yrs... is that the only hurdle that's stopping Rutgers from being ELITE?

WE are not stuck on anything. It's MY criteria. As you said, you have your own.

I just believe that an elite team, you have to win consistently.

RU had four years before that where they were close to an elite team. But even then, they only made one FF.

Her longevity has gone a long way in making RU elite, but in my opinion, they don't fit the bill.
 

UcMiami

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Going at this from the back end first and looking at the desired end result of an Elite designation I tend to favor a somewhat inclusive definition of Elite - we have recently heard the 99%/1% in politics, but I think I still prefer the 90%/10% range to define the top end of things. In D1 there are 300 +/- WCBB teams which would mean the top 10% would be somewhere in the 30 team range - or, because some schools have a WCBB program almost by default, maybe dropping the 'Elite' designation to around 20 would be more realistic. (NB the 99/1 result would be 2-3 teams) So if we aim to designate the top 20 +/- teams, it would seem we are looking for teams consistently in the top 20 and or consistently getting to the 2nd/3rd round of the NCAA tournament. That widens the pool considerably from what a lot of people have suggested.
The other issue is time frame for the consistency - personally, I think it has to be a recent time frame and long enough to mitigate against the result that a single star player can have on what has been and soon will be again a mediocre team. with scholarships at four years, using 8 years would seem to be a minimum and I think 10 years is a good number - when you go beyond 10 years you diminish the importance of current success and with a rapidly developing game you run the risk of including results from what was truly a different era in the game.
And the proof of any definition really lies not in the obvious top end of the pool (Uconn) but in the borderline - teams that had a nice run and have trended down, and teams that were bad but are trending up, and the teams that have been consistently decent, but never reached the summit. Rutgers is a perfect example of the first, Baylor maybe of the second (and of the 4 year influence of a single recruit), and maybe UNC as the third? I suspect by my definition all three would be in, but you could easily argue that any one of them may not belong.
Finally - if you look at recruiting and general reaction to where end recruits sign (and discount choice based purely on home town), I think it indicates what people generally consider to be elite programs - when Bone signed with SC, it was a real surprise when DD signed with UNC, not so much, etc.

Just one final thought - I checked the definition in Websters and was shocked, I tell you shocked, to discover the word comes from French - seems to be awfully un-American to be using a French word to define anything related to Uconn, he said as he ate his Freedom Fries! (That was how I knew that TN complain was completely bogus - Sue and Diana have never eaten French Fries in their lives!) :confused:
 
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