Strongest Teams - Last 5 Years

[MacHoya]

This thread is probably better left for the slow part of the year – however, I am so excited to be back “in season” that I couldn’t resist doing a little research on Ken Pomeroy’s site to analyze which programs (and conferences) have had the most success over the past five years. I took the average of KenPom’s final season rankings for 2007 through 2010 and his current rankings for the 2011 season and arrived at the following top 25 list (with average rank):

1) Kansas (3.8)
2) Duke (6.4)
3) Georgetown (12)
4) Wisconsin (13.2)
5) Michigan State (13.6)
6) Pittsburgh (14.8)
7) Ohio State (15.4)
8) UNC (15.8)
9) Texas (16.4)
10) Memphis (17.2)
11) Purdue (18)
12) West Virginia (18.4)
13) Louisville (19.8)
14) Villanova (20.6)
15) Syracuse (20.6)
16) Clemson (23)
17) Texas A&M (24.8)
18) Kentucky (25.8)
19) Tennessee (26.4)
20) Marquette (26.8)
21) Xavier (27)
22) Kansas State (27.6)
23) Brigham Young (28.2)
24) Florida (29.2)
25) Missouri (29.4)

It is interesting to note that there are 6 Big East teams in the top 15. Further evidence that JTIII has indeed restored us to the top of the toughest league in the land.

[Coast2CoastHoya]

Fun idea, machoya. Nice to see that, despite having Tourney troubles, the team has indeed been at a VERY high level efficiency- and SOS-wise these past few years.

Just out of curiosity (and to give you more work), what happens if you take away 2007 (i.e. our Final Four awesomeness)? How do things look then? Or do these numbers already exclude that season?

[MacHoya]

If I back out our final four year, the top 10 over the past 4 seasons shakes out as follows:


1) Kansas (4)
2) Duke (5.25)
3) Michigan State (13.25)
4) Georgetown (13.75)
5) Wisconsin (14.5)
6) West Virginia (15)
7) Texas (15.25)
8) Pittsburgh (15.25)
9) Syracuse (16.5)
10) Purdue (16.75)

[MacHoya]

However the better adjustment may be to add 2006 - JTIII's first year and the first year of the expanded Big East. The top ten over JTIII's entire tenure is:


1) Kansas (4.2)
2) Duke (6.2)
3) Georgetown (12.3)
4) Texas (14)
5) Pittsburgh (14.3)
6) UNC (14.5)
7) Ohio State (15.8)
8) Memphis (15.8)
9) Michigan State (16.8)
10) West Virginia (18)

[Ranch Dressing]

Btw, I counted 7 BE teams in your original list. Very impressive showing by the conference.

Pomeroy certainly loves Hoya statistics. It's too bad the team's NCAA/NIT results doesn't match the aggregated ranking, outside of 2007. But perhaps this year we can turn that around...

[MacHoya]

On a separate topic - I have always been slightly bothered by the fact that the Big East takes a bit of a hit in Pomeroy's conference rankings due to the presence of 3 or 4 weak teams at the bottom of the conference. If you focus on the stronger teams in each conference, 52 teams have finished one of the prior 4 seasons or are currently ranked in Pomeroy's top 25 - broken down as follows:


ACC: 7 of 12 teams, or 58%
B10: 6 of 11 teams, or 55%
B12: 7 of 12 teams, or 58%
BE: 9 of 16 teams, or 56%
P10: 8 of 10 teams, or 80%
SEC: 5 of 12 teams, or 42%
Other: 10 of 272 teams, or 3.7%

Interestingly, based on this stat, the ACC, B10, B12 and BE all look similar and the Pac 10 looks superior. However, if you look at the average ranking of these top teams from each conference over the prior 5 years, the BE comes out significantly on top:


BE: Top 9 teams have an average ranking of 22.4
B12: Top 7 teams have an average ranking of 28.3
B10: Top 6 teams have an average ranking of 32.1
ACC: Top 7 teams have an average ranking of 34.3
SEC: Top 5 teams have an average ranking of 34.6
P10: Top 8 teams have an average ranking of 51.3 (Top 6 teams have an average ranking of 43.9)
Other: Top 10 teams have an average ranking of 57.5


This seems to suggest that the top programs in the BE are stronger and more consistent than the average top programs of other conferences while our weaker programs are weaker than average. The opposite is true in the Pac 10 where most of the programs occasionally have a strong year, however, during most years they struggle to show well.

[MacHoya]

Nov 22, 2010 22:36:30 GMT -5 Ranch Dressing said:

Btw, I counted 7 BE teams in your original list. Very impressive showing by the conference.

Pomeroy certainly loves Hoya statistics. It's too bad the team's NCAA/NIT results doesn't match the aggregated ranking, outside of 2007. But perhaps this year we can turn that around...

7 in the top 20
6 in the top 15

[MacHoya]

Last post and then I will shut up for awhile. Also interesting to note that the 7 top programs in the ACC (based on my definition above) do not include BC, VTech or Miami. How are them for sour grapes!

[Ranch Dressing]

It is pretty clear that the hoops programs of the turncoat schools have not improved since moving to the ACC - and arguably have gotten worse.

[Coast2CoastHoya]

Nov 22, 2010 23:31:46 GMT -5 Ranch Dressing said:

It is pretty clear that the hoops programs of the turncoat schools have not improved since moving to the ACC - and arguably have gotten worse.

Yeah, but they didn't really do it for hoops did they?

[SFHoya99]

Regarding underperformance in the NCAA tournament, I really don't think we've done that poorly.

The Ohio loss was bad, no doubt. But the same effect we're seeing we people's perception of the ODU is still occurring with that Davidson loss -- it was in NC, against a wildly underseeded team that went to the Elite Eight, and we played five on eight. If Davidson was named Wisconsin, fewer people would be talking about it.

Basketball Prospectus' print offering this year has an article on the NCAA tourney and "easy roads" over the last five or so years. Not surprisingly, most of the most successful teams have had really easy roads - UCLA, Duke, Connecticut, Florida and WVU have had much easier opponents than their seeds would expect.

Georgetown has had the third hardest set of opponents relative to seed. (That's not to say we haven't gotten breaks - OSU in 2006 was easier than the average 2 seed, but it was in Dayton).

That doesn't mean we've been good in the tourney overall. But BP puts us at 7.43 wins expected given our opponents in our 11 games. We've had seven. That's underperformance, but not by all that much.

[hoyarooter]

A good post is worth repeating. ;D

[lichoya68]

carpe diem THATS what counts go hoyas ;D ;D ;D

[lichoya68]

or for those who forgot latin like me thats basically EAT THE BANNANNA NOW ;D ;D

[joey0403p]

SF Hoya - I completely agree with you - but no one wants to hear that. Not to hijack the thread - but it is one more reason we need an oncampus arena. if we had one - we would at least have the chance to play at the verizon center some years. That is similar to when duke or unc gets to play in NC.

Nova - specifically does not play more than 5 games (or whatever the maximum is) at the 76ers arena in years that tourney games are to be played there. I think (not sure) the last year they went to the final 4 it was through philly.

[Jack]

Nov 23, 2010 13:06:47 GMT -5 joey0403p said:

Nova - specifically does not play more than 5 games (or whatever the maximum is) at the 76ers arena in years that tourney games are to be played there. I think (not sure) the last year they went to the final 4 it was through philly.

They made it in 2009, coming out of the Boston regional where they crushed Duke in the Sweet 16 and Pitt in the Final.

While an on-campus arena would be nice, this is a very small part of the reason for pursuing it. What might be more helpful is if UMCP would host the tournament in College Park for once - then GU could potentially get the virtual home game if they earned it. Even so, Verizon Center has clear advantages over Comcast for the site selection group, and UMCP doesn't seem interested in bidding for it.

[4aks]

Nov 23, 2010 13:06:47 GMT -5 joey0403p said:

SF Hoya - I completely agree with you - but no one wants to hear that. Not to hijack the thread - but it is one more reason we need an oncampus arena. if we had one - we would at least have the chance to play at the verizon center some years. That is similar to when duke or unc gets to play in NC.

Nova - specifically does not play more than 5 games (or whatever the maximum is) at the 76ers arena in years that tourney games are to be played there. I think (not sure) the last year they went to the final 4 it was through philly.

Just to throw in a thought - "on-campus" should be in Rosslyn, the plot of land that I-66 runs under has in the past been offered up as a site for a convention center; it's the logical place for an arena with the major roads and 2 metro lines, a reasonable walk from the hilltop (much closer than 'across campus' at many universities).

[theexorcist]

Nov 23, 2010 15:20:11 GMT -5 4aks said:

Nov 23, 2010 13:06:47 GMT -5 joey0403p said:

SF Hoya - I completely agree with you - but no one wants to hear that. Not to hijack the thread - but it is one more reason we need an oncampus arena. if we had one - we would at least have the chance to play at the verizon center some years. That is similar to when duke or unc gets to play in NC.

Nova - specifically does not play more than 5 games (or whatever the maximum is) at the 76ers arena in years that tourney games are to be played there. I think (not sure) the last year they went to the final 4 it was through philly.

Just to throw in a thought - "on-campus" should be in Rosslyn, the plot of land that I-66 runs under has in the past been offered up as a site for a convention center; it's the logical place for an arena with the major roads and 2 metro lines, a reasonable walk from the hilltop (much closer than 'across campus' at many universities).

Hardly - it should be in the middle of the Potomac, between Rosslyn and Georgetown, and primarily reachable by kayak. In the offseason, we could rent it out to supervillains who need a doom fortress.

[MacHoya]

Nov 23, 2010 10:14:28 GMT -5 pash said:

Similarly, here are the aggregate AP rankings for the most recent five years, using the end-of-season (pre-tourney) polls for 2007-2010 and this week's poll for 2011:

Rank	Team	Total Points
1	Kansas	103
2	Duke	85
3	Memphis	80
4	Pittsburg	74
5	North Carolina	72
6	Ohio State	69
7	Michigan State	63
8	Georgetown	58
9	Syracuse	52
10	Villanova	51
11	UCLA	50
11	Wisconsin	50
13	Louisville	48
14	Purdue	47
15	Kentucky	42
16	Kansas State	41
17	Texas	40
18	Butler	39
19	Tennessee	35
20	Florida	33
21	Missouri	32
22	Connecticut	31
23	Gonzaga	26
24	Washington	24
25	Baylor	21
25	Xavier	21

(Total points are calculated by awarding the standard 25 points for the top spot, on down to one point for the twenty-fifth spot, to each team for each year it appeared in the respective poll. "Others receiving votes" not included.)

By conference:

Conference	No. of Teams	Avg. Rank
Big East	6	11
Big XII	5	16
Big Ten	4	9.5
Non-BCS	4	17.25
SEC	3	18
ACC	2	3.5
Pac-10	2	17.5

Interesting Pash. Assigning points for 1 through 25 place finishes ends up rewarding teams (such as those in the Pac 10) which have a top 25 finish one year and fall below 50 the next (ala UCLA/UNC/Memphis from 2009 to 2010). In other words, a ranking of 26 is considered the same as a ranking of 126. The Hoyas' (JTIII's) record of finishing in the top 27 in each of the past six years (per KenPom) is matched only by Kansas, Duke and Texas. Every other program has slipped out of the top 30 at least once.

By the way, if I use your methodology with the KenPom data, the results are surprisingly similar. The biggest differences are that KenPom would rank Georgetown and Wisconsin 3 and 6 places higher respectively while Pittsburgh and Villanova would be ranked 5 and 6 places lower respectively.

[71hoya]

You could put a boat house for the crew team on that island also.