Why does SP+ hate Kansas State?
Kansas State dropped to 74th back in September following its first-game upset loss to Arkansas State. The Wildcats have since won four Big 12 games in a row but have crept up to only 66th overall. What gives? A few things, it seems.
First, the Arkansas State loss was really bad. My post-game win expectancy figure -- which takes the key predictive stats from a given game, tosses them into the air and says "Based on these stats, you could have expected to win this game X% of the time" -- was only 8% for KSU. This wasn't a random, unlucky upset (like what Penn State, with its 95% post-game win expectancy, suffered against Indiana this week); it was a "you were lucky to only lose by four" upset. That Arkansas State has lost three of its four other FBS games and fallen to 82nd in SP+ is an anchor that will continue to drag the Wildcats down.
The corresponding upset of Oklahoma didn't prove a huge rebound. KSU upset the top-10-at-the-time Sooners, 38-35, in their first game post-ASU. (What a strange season this has already been.) But OU held a major success rate/efficiency advantage, and SP+ saw turnovers luck as a major force in the victory -- KSU recovered two of the game's three fumbles, and while each team defensed five passes (INTs plus breakups), the Wildcats finished with three INTs to OU's zero, an unlikely combination. Post-game win expectancy for KSU in that one: only 36%.
KSU then beat mediocre-at-best teams by margins that suggest above-average-at-best quality -- 76% win expectancy against No. 86 Texas Tech, 53% over No. 51 TCU -- and only got so much credit this week for manhandling dreadful, 119th-ranked Kansas. Accordingly, they've only risen a bit.
This is not newfound territory for KSU fans. A nascent version of SP+ was incredibly unimpressed with the 2011 Wildcats team that seemed to win every game by three points while getting outgained by 200 yards (only a slight exaggeration) before coming around on Bill Snyder's 2012 and 2013 teams. Chris Klieman has worked a bit of Snyder-like magic in his brief KSU tenure, going 5-2 in one-score games in Big 12 play (and strangely only 1-2 in non-conference). But each of their last five opponents is better than TCU, Texas Tech or Kansas. They'll probably have to improve a decent amount on paper to keep their Big 12 lead.
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