Rankings Misadventures

The most frequently referenced poll in major college basketball is the ESPN/USA Today Coaches Poll - it seems sensible because surely the coaches know who's best, even if occasionally they have a conflict of interest when voting.

However, coaches in major college basketball implicitly know other programs that they respect and assume to be good - after all, who has time to follow all 344 Division I Programs, and have a full time job that is highly demanding? Those 'household' name programs are likely to crop up amongst the top of any ranking because when you think of college basketball, you tend to think of Kentucky, North Carolina, Duke, Indiana, Kansas as opposed to um, Iona.

That bias will tend to produce results that are skewed towards schools with rich basketball history. Today we're going to look at the ranking resume of one mid-major powerhouse compared with more prestigious programs. As we've previously discussed, home court advantage is a major factor in college basketball (69% of home teams won their games last year). We'll also use my rankings as a proxy for who the worst loss a team experienced; as of last week my computer generated rankings had a 96% correlation with the Massey Index.

Given those two caveats, the rest of the comparison should be pretty straight-forward.


Team A
Record: 17-3
4 Top RPI 50 Wins
% of Road Games: 30
Weakest loss via Andrade rankings: #27

Team B
Record: 18-2
4 Top RPI 50 Wins
% of Road Games: 40
Weakest loss via Andrade rankings: #88

Team C
Record: 16-3
5 Top RPI 50 Wins
% of Road Games: 21
Weakest Loss via Andrade Rankings: #56

You could make a case for any of these teams to be ranked ahead of one another.

A has only lost to teams that will make the NCAA Tournament, while B and C have lost to teams that will be in the NIT (if that in the case of B) if they fail to win their conference tournaments. However, this means that A is just 4-3 in games against the RPI top 50.

B has traveled the most, and although they've lost to the weakest opponent, they've lost the least period and have defeated just as many top RPI 50 teams as A and only one fewer than C, weakening any SOS arguments against them.

C has the most RPI Top 50 wins, but travels outside their home infrequently and that loss to #56 is puzzling.

Ready to reveal? A is Ohio State, B is Creighton and C is Kansas.

Bold Prediction: Assuming Creighton maintains their current pace and suffers no serious injuries, Creighton will be seeded at least two spots lower than Kansas and Ohio State and will advance further than one of the two.