2023-2024 MBB computer projections thread

[HFCS]

That Oglesby is a total moron.

The Big 12 scheduled teams like Kentucky, Uconn, Duke, North Carolina, Tennessee, Auburn, Dayton, Miami, San Diego State, Marquette, and Creighton.

That's not even counting some of the teams that were suppose to be good and just made the tourney last year like Texas A&M and Missouri.

He also operates as if the Big 12 hasn't been doing amazing the past 6 years with only 10 teams to draw on. You take those same 10 teams that are almost all good, add elite Houston, and add good BYU/CIncy...yeah it's a Power One conference that goes 10 to 12 deep out of 14 teams.

It's not like this is the MAC suddenly having 8 ranked teams.

It's a conference that has had 6/10 deserving ranked teams FOR MANY YEARS that added a top 5 team and a top 25 team. Shocker that there are 8 ranked teams when that happens.

 

[rosshm16]

Wow that Ogglesvy guy is an idiot/troll.

ACC this year is:
• 3-2 vs. the Big 10 (nobody played Purdue)
• 9-3 vs. the Big 12 (nobody played KU or Houston)
• 2-5 vs. the Big East
• 3-3 vs. the Pac-12 (Duke lost to Arizona)
• 12-18 vs. the SEC

So they do okay when they avoid all the top teams in the other conferences and match their best teams up with the likes of Baylor, OU, and Michigan State instead.

 

[Sigmapolis]

He also operates as if the Big 12 hasn't been doing amazing the past 6 years with only 10 teams to draw on. You take those same 10 teams that are almost all good, add elite Houston, and add good BYU/CIncy...yeah it's a Power One conference that goes 10 to 12 deep out of 14 teams.

It's not like this is the MAC suddenly having 8 ranked teams.

It's a conference that has had 6/10 deserving ranked teams FOR MANY YEARS that added a top 5 team and a top 25 team. Shocker that there are 8 ranked teams when that happens.

The only two teams in the conference you could argue are "bad" this year are WVU and OSU.

And I doubt those two programs are going to be down for very long.

Even UCF, the expected weakling, is within striking distance of the tournament if they nab a few big wins.

Oklahoma and Texas are two likely tournament teams, so those are losses. But they're being replaced with a likely #1 or #2 seed in Arizona and likely tournament teams in Colorado and Utah.

Arizona St. is the weakest addition of the four, but I can only imagine the P1 prestige will rub off on them.

 

[rosshm16]

The only two teams in the conference you could argue are "bad" this year are WVU and OSU.

And I doubt those two programs are going to be down for very long.

Even UCF, the expected weakling, is within striking distance of the tournament if they nab a few big wins.

Oklahoma and Texas are two likely tournament teams, so those are losses. But they're being replaced with a likely #1 or #2 seed in Arizona and likely tournament teams in Colorado and Utah.

Arizona St. is the weakest addition of the four, but I can only imagine the P1 prestige will rub off on them.

Didn't this WVU team have a lauded transfer class and high pre-season ranking until the Huggins incident? I didn't follow the fallout closely but I'd imagine some/most of those guys went elsewhere then. I think they've also had some injury issues.

OSU I think is just not great, no particular excuses. I like Boynton but not sure how long he'll last there in a competitive league at a program with OSU's history/expectations.

 

[Thomasrickj]

CBS has ISU at #6 (IE: a 2 Seed).
CBS's DipShizzle Jerry Palm (Big10 Homer), has ISU as a #5 seed........
Hmmmm?

Jerry "Rosy" Palm is a bum.

 

[CascadeClone]

Jerry "Rosy" Palm is a bum.

Only Lunardi is worse.

Bracketology is less scientifically rigorous than astrology. Until march 1, its just an excuse to clickbait. And by then, you can just take your net, divide by 4, and figure plus/minus 1.

 

[AuH2O]

He is an idiot. But he's also right in pointing out the Big 12 non-con (as a whole) was trash. We were the biggest offender.

With that said, the SOS ratings are biased when there are X amount of "bad teams" on the docket. Kansas' non-con was 60 something? GTFO of here with that nonsense. It's a lot harder to win games against elite competiton, on the road or at neutral sites, than it is to beat a slew of decent teams. Yet SOS constantly dings schedules, likes Kansas', that have more elite competition than anyone else, but also have more creampuffs than some other schedules.

His premise isn't without merit, but to the degree he harps on it without looking at the entire picture is ludicrous. He basically discredits himself.

The thing about college basketball is with 350 or whatever number of teams there are, there can be a huge gap in non-con SOS but there really is little practical difference.

You play a stretch of games against teams that are 300+ vs a bunch of teams that are 150-200 you should win them all comfortably as a good P6 team. There should also be a cap on even ranking teams in terms of SOS.

 

[ZRF]

The thing about college basketball is with 350 or whatever number of teams there are, there can be a huge gap in non-con SOS but there really is little practical difference.

You play a stretch of games against teams that are 300+ vs a bunch of teams that are 150-200 you should win them all comfortably as a good P6 team. There should also be a cap on even ranking teams in terms of SOS.

Agreed.

Does it really matter if you kill a team by 20 vs killing them by 40? They were both (likely) won with ease, with (as you stated) the 200 level opponent not making an appreciable difference vs a 300 ranked opponent. They both suck and should both be easy wins.

I was just specifically pointing out SOS ranks don't properly reflect the risk/reward from playing REALLY good teams. When you play those teams the odds of losing increase exponentially, meaning winning those games should comprise a much larger bump than I think they do. What's more difficult, playing 10 teams ranked 70-80 or playing 4-5 teams ranked in the top 20-30 and playing 5-60 ranked worse than 150? At current it seems SOS views the former as the tougher schedule when in reality it's the latter,

Then there is the argument of relativity, meaning that my previous scenario is probably flipped for team that sucks. If you are ranked 150 and play the first schedule, with the top 20-30 teams being likely blowouts, with the other games being potential wins, it's probably "easier" than playing 10 teams 70-80, teams that are all better than you and all likely losses. At that point it gets more complicated than what it's probably worth and the lesser teams aren't the teams these metrics were designed for.

In judging and ranking the cream of the crop, ergo tournament quality teams, I think they need to change the way they rank and evaluate these things. No way Kansas's non-con schedule wasn't top 10 in terms of difficulty.

 

[madguy30]

West Virginia is not good but they are capable; I'm anticipating them playing very well by the time they come to Ames and am expecting that to be a full meltdown situation if ISU loses.

One of those 'but they're horrible and lost a bunch of games early on and I won't acknowledge that they've been capable of beating about anyone in the league for two months' kind of things.

Similar to how a few struggled with Kansas football being decent this season because they were bad 3 years ago.

 

[NoCreativity]

West Virginia is not good but they are capable; I'm anticipating them playing very well by the time they come to Ames and am expecting that to be a full meltdown situation if ISU loses.

One of those 'but they're horrible and lost a bunch of games early on and I won't acknowledge that they've been capable of beating about anyone in the league for two months' kind of things.

Similar to how a few struggled with Kansas football being decent this season because they were bad 3 years ago.

I'm glad we don't play them in Morgantown, that would likely be a bad loss on our resume.

 

[madguy30]

I'm glad we don't play them in Morgantown, that would likely be a bad loss on our resume.

I'd rather it be in Morgantown than in Ames.

So long as ISU keeps things steadyish and only drops maybe one home game prior I'd guess that losing to them anywhere doesn't affect seeding. Maybe a line?

 

[NoCreativity]

I'd rather it be in Morgantown than in Ames.

So long as ISU keeps things steadyish and only drops maybe one home game prior I'd guess that losing to them anywhere doesn't affect seeding. Maybe a line?

I'm not really worried about them in Ames. They remind me of our 2018 team, dangerous enough on a particular night in Ames to win 4 conference games, but not much of a threat on the road.

 

[Clonefan32]

My two takes on this:

1. NCSOS is meaningless. I have no idea why anyone cares about it. It's 13 games out of 31 (or 11 out of 31 in the case of 20-game leagues like the Big Ten, ACC, Big East). The reason Oglesby is talking about NCSOS instead of overall SOS is because if you start including conference games, Big 12 schedules will start to look harder while ACC schedules will start to look easier. Per the NET, Iowa State's NCSOS is 325 while Duke's is 126. For overall SOS, ISU is 69, Duke is 88. So who has the harder schedule? What Oglesby is doing is pure confirmation bias.
2. The NET should release its methodology, but when people bash it and then use Kenpom/Torvik numbers, that logic doesn't track to me. NET/Kenpom/Torvik rankings tend to correlate pretty closely. It's not like NET is like BPI and has a ton of statistical outliers.

This is dead on. So teams beat "good teams" early on before we have any real clue if they are good or not. They benefit from a high ranking early and people start to form an opinion. With the benefit of time, you may realize that team they beat isn't actually that good, but an opinion has already been formed and they've already found themselves high in the rankings. Who the hell cares that Kansas beat Kentucky 3 months ago, or that Duke beat Michigan State in mid-November?

Give me what someone does in conference all day over non-conference.

 

[CyPunch]

Only Lunardi is worse.

Bracketology is less scientifically rigorous than astrology. Until march 1, its just an excuse to clickbait. And by then, you can just take your net, divide by 4, and figure plus/minus 1.

Palm is worse than Lunardi. One of the very worst over the last 5 years actually.

The Bracket Project - Ranking the Bracketologists

 

[NoCreativity]

What are we thinking for the Big 12 bids at this point? 9?

I dont think UCF, Cincinnati or K-State will have enough on their resume to get 10 bids.

 

[CyPunch]

What are we thinking for the Big 12 bids at this point? 9?

I dont think UCF, Cincinnati or K-State will have enough on their resume to get 10 bids.

KState badly needs a win Saturday in Stillwater.

Cincinnati is in a hole. They still play Houston twice. I don't know if they can get to 8 or 9 wins. They will be desperate when we head to Fifth/Third in a couple weeks.

 

[Sigmapolis]

Didn't this WVU team have a lauded transfer class and high pre-season ranking until the Huggins incident? I didn't follow the fallout closely but I'd imagine some/most of those guys went elsewhere then. I think they've also had some injury issues.

OSU I think is just not great, no particular excuses. I like Boynton but not sure how long he'll last there in a competitive league at a program with OSU's history/expectations.

West Virginia is not good but they are capable; I'm anticipating them playing very well by the time they come to Ames and am expecting that to be a full meltdown situation if ISU loses.

One of those 'but they're horrible and lost a bunch of games early on and I won't acknowledge that they've been capable of beating about anyone in the league for two months' kind of things.

Similar to how a few struggled with Kansas football being decent this season because they were bad 3 years ago.

The earliest iterations of Torvik's 2023-24 projections (way back last summer) had West Virginia expected to be one of the best teams in the conference. And it isn't hard to guess that given...

-- legendary coach out for one last ride
-- talent coming back, one of the best transfer classes in the country coming in
-- intimidating home court... been there a few times... WVU fans are nice to fans but ruthless to teams

...what they're like as a program and what they had coming onto the roster.

Huggins' "incident" sure ruined their plans. Despite that, they're dangerous. Every Big 12 team with the possible exception of Oklahoma State has enough talent to be dangerous any given night.

 

[rochclone]

What are we thinking for the Big 12 bids at this point? 9?

I dont think UCF, Cincinnati or K-State will have enough on their resume to get 10 bids.

Still think they get 10 with with two of Texas, Cincy and KSU making it. Lots of Top 40 Kempom opportunities in the last 10-11 games for these teams. Cincy has 6 games, Texas has 7 games and KSU has 8 games against the Top 40 in Kenpom.

 

[CloniesForLife]

Cincy is good when I've watched them but just not quite there from a Big12 perspective. I think in the Big 10 or ACC they would have a good shot at the tournament

 

[Cyclonepride]

Still think they get 10 with with two of Texas, Cincy and KSU making it. Lots of Top 40 Kempom opportunities in the last 10-11 games for these teams. Cincy has 6 games, Texas has 7 games and KSU has 8 games against the Top 40 in Kenpom.

The real key in my mind is how they handle the losing streaks. Any team that rises to the occasion is going to have a chance to bounce back. Any team that sulks and gets divided is going to sink like a rock.