2018-2019 B1G Basketball Thread

[847badgerfan]

Have you ever tracked the accuracy of the initial tiers vs what we end up with as the season progresses?

Here comes the mother of spreadsheets.

[medinabuckeye1]

Here comes the mother of spreadsheets.

LoL.  
To answer Bwar's question, no and it would be nearly impossible.  I don't keep a record of the old tiers like I do with the Power Rankings in football.  
FWIW:  To me this isn't about ranking who is best or seeing how it changes, this is about making reasonable projections and reasonable interpretations of results.  For example, consider Ohio State and Purdue.  Based on our tiers, we consider them to be roughly equivalent (both tier-2) but we project that PU will finish 13-7 while tOSU will finish 14-6.  The one-game difference is purely schedule.  Purdue's missed road games are against Illinois, Rutgers, and Iowa.  Those are three of the worst teams in the league so Purdue doesn't catch a break there.  Ohio State, by contrast, does not have to travel to Madison to play the Badgers so the Buckeyes do catch a slight break.  
It is worse part-way through the season.  Even though we consider the Boilermakers and Buckeyes to be roughly equivalent, the Buckeyes are 2-0 while Purdue is 1-1.  If projections hold, it will get worse.  Purdue is expected to lose again on January 8 (@MSU), January 11 (@UW), and January 23 (@tOSU) while we do not project any Buckeye losses until January 26 (@UNL).  
If those projections hold then as of January 25 the Buckeyes will have a MUCH better record than the Boilermakers AND a H2H win.  Optimistic Buckeye fans and pessimistic Boilermaker fans might think that Ohio State is VASTLY better than Purdue.  The purpose of this exercise, IMHO, is largely to be a reality check on that sort of thing.  If all of these projections hold (they won't) then I'll be the one pointing out that the Buckeyes don't have a much better record and a H2H win because they are a much better team but rather because they played an easier schedule and hosted the H2H game.  

[betarhoalphadelta]

Understood... FYI part of the reason is that I posted about this at the Purdue blog in order to both discuss it and to try to highlight this forum. 

I think a lot of the folks over there don't particularly think Purdue is a tier-2 team right now, and one of the comments was asking about historical accuracy. I think the question came from a place of "do these guys have a track record of fitting teams into the right tier early."

From the standpoint of my own memory, I think we've been pretty solid, unless you have a team that ends up doing well or badly completely out of nowhere.

[medinabuckeye1]

Here comes the mother of spreadsheets.

FWIW:
The basketball projections spreadsheet is already the mother of spreadsheets.  It is so complex that I had to build in a double-check feature to catch mistakes so I actually project records two ways:

• Mathematically:  I start with the record that we would project on a 26-game double-round-robin then subtract the six games not played then adjust for upsets to get a projected final conference record.  
• Game-by-game:  For this one I enter ALL 140 B1G games into the spreadsheet along with a projected result (or actual result once the game has been played) then I have the spreadsheet set up to add up the W's and L's and calculate a separate projected final conference record.  

Then I have another column that checks the two projected records for each team against each other to make sure that they match.  

The good thing is that I set this up years ago and each year I just update for the new schedule so I don't have to rebuild it from scratch.  I do still have to enter the 140 games and projections for each.  

[medinabuckeye1]

Understood... FYI part of the reason is that I posted about this at the Purdue blog in order to both discuss it and to try to highlight this forum.

I think a lot of the folks over there don't particularly think Purdue is a tier-2 team right now, and one of the comments was asking about historical accuracy. I think the question came from a place of "do these guys have a track record of fitting teams into the right tier early."

From the standpoint of my own memory, I think we've been pretty solid, unless you have a team that ends up doing well or badly completely out of nowhere.

I've shared this on the Ohio State BB forum before and I never got much traction there.  
I don't have any idea on historical accuracy because I don't track it but I usually don't make a whole lot of moves during the year (thankfully because moving a team up or down a tier is a major PITA, see above post about what the spreadsheet entails).  That said, a one-tier movement is a fairly big deal.  

• Moving Purdue down to tier-3 would change their projected 26-game double-round-robin record from 19-7 to 14-12.  
• If they were moved down to tier-3 the six games they miss would change from a projected 6-0 (in tier-2) to 4-2.  
• Thus, the net change would be from 13-7 in tier-2 (19-7 minus 6-0) to 10-10 in tier-3 (14-12 minus 4-2).  

That three game difference is a pretty big deal because it would be the difference between Purdue getting to Indy comfortably in the NCAA and just playing for seed vs Purdue getting to Indy probably needing to at least make it to the weekend.  

It would also be a big difference in seed in the B1G Tournament.  At 13-7 I project them to be a #5 seed in Indy playing the 11/14 winner on Thursday and then #4 on Friday.  At 10-10 they would project to be tied with Maryland for 7/8 so they would have a tougher Thursday game against #9 or #10 AND a MUCH tougher Friday game against #1 or #2.  

All-in-all, there is a substantial difference between probably playing Ohio State on Friday for seed only in a game that would be close to a pick-em as compared to playing Michigan on Friday in a "must-win" situation.  

[betarhoalphadelta]

Thanks... I'm personally not convinced Purdue is tier-2. 

[ELA]

Wisconsin scored 69 in a half.  I think they've gone back to back games without scoring 69 combined before.

[MarqHusker]

Do you have your household budget down on a master spreadsheet back to the ....90s?

[medinabuckeye1]

I added in the OOC games using the worldwide leader's "matchup predictor" to project results and here is what I have for projected final standings:

Team	Conf-W	Conf-L	ProjT-W	ProjT-L
M	18	2	29	2
UW	15	5	24	7
MSU	14	6	23	8
tOSU	14	6	24	7
Purdue	13	7	21	10
UNL	12	8	22	9
IU	12	8	20	11
UMD	10	10	20	11
Minny	7	13	17	14
NU	6	14	16	15
Iowa	6	14	17	14
PSU	5	15	12	19
RU	4	16	11	19
ILL	4	16	9	22

My thoughts on tournament berths if these projections all came to pass:
M, UW, MSU, and tOSU would all be clearly in.  IL, RU, PSU, IA, and NU would all be clearly out unless they won the B1G Tournament.  That leaves:
Purdue 13-7/21-10:
I think the Boilermakers would be in, but they would want to avoid a bad loss.  Their opening game in Chicago would be on Thursday against the RU/NU winner and losing that could be problematic.  They would probably still be in, but it would be close with a loss there.  

Nebraska 12-8/22-9:
Like the Boilermakers, the Cornhuskers would probably be in but they would want to avoid a bad loss.  Their opening game in Chicago would be on Thursday against Iowa and losing that could be problematic.  They would probably still be in, but it would be close with a loss there.  

Indiana 12-8/20-11:
Like the two teams listed above, the Hoosiers would probably be in but they would want to avoid a bad loss.  Their opening game in Chicago would be on Thursday against the PSU/IL winner and losing that could be problematic.  They would probably still be in, but it would be close with a loss there.  

Maryland 10-10/20-11:
I think that they would need one win in Chicago.  Their opener would be against Minnesota and I don't think they could afford a loss there.  A win there would get them into a game against Michigan and they could probably afford a loss to Michigan with a final record including BTT games of 11-11/21-12.  

Minnesota 7-13/17-14:
I think the Gophers would need to win the BTT.  Their best case scenario short of that would be to:

• Upset Maryland on Thursday
• Pull off a major upset of Michigan on Friday
• Upset tOSU on Saturday (this could be PU or even NU or RU but MN's best case would be tOSU)
• Lose a close game to Wisconsin in the CG (this could be UNL, IA, MSU, IU, PSU, or IL but MN's best case would be UW)

In that case, including their 3-1 BTT run the Gophers would finish 10-14/20-15.  That *MIGHT* get them in because the wins over UMD and tOSU would help and obviously the win over Michigan would be a "signature win" but that record is still weak overall.  

[betarhoalphadelta]

Purdue 13-7/21-10:
I think the Boilermakers would be in, but they would want to avoid a bad loss.  Their opening game in Chicago would be on Thursday against the RU/NU winner and losing that could be problematic.  They would probably still be in, but it would be close with a loss there.  

If Purdue makes it to 13-7 I won't be worried. None of the OOC losses even approached being a "bad loss" and the wins needed to get to 13-7 in conference would necessarily give us victories over some pretty solid teams. I think the selection committee would see that we scheduled VERY tough OOC, and although we didn't win, we put up a fight. Beyond that, to get to 13-7 in conference would show growth as a team. I don't know the extent to which they look at "last 10 games" any more, but I think they'd recognize that Purdue came into the season as a young/inexperienced team and finished strong to get to 13-7. And regarding the "bad loss", if we took a bad loss but STILL managed 13-7, it probably means we beat a pretty stout B1G team on their home court that our own projections show today as a loss.
Now, I'm not sure we can get to 13-7. I think we might be right on that cusp of tier 2 and tier 3, which means that we might be splitting the difference between the projected 13-7 and the projected 10-10.
If we're 11-9 (19-12), I think we have some serious work to do in the BTT-getting to Saturday at least. If we're 12-8 (20-11), I think we at minimum have to win our first BTT game. 

[SFBadger96]

Wisconsin scored 69 in a half.  I think they've gone back to back games without scoring 69 combined before.

They were playing a team whose last four opponents (or something like that) averaged 109. That's some bad defense. Really bad defense.

[medinabuckeye1]

If Purdue makes it to 13-7 I won't be worried. None of the OOC losses even approached being a "bad loss" and the wins needed to get to 13-7 in conference would necessarily give us victories over some pretty solid teams. I think the selection committee would see that we scheduled VERY tough OOC, and although we didn't win, we put up a fight. Beyond that, to get to 13-7 in conference would show growth as a team. I don't know the extent to which they look at "last 10 games" any more, but I think they'd recognize that Purdue came into the season as a young/inexperienced team and finished strong to get to 13-7. And regarding the "bad loss", if we took a bad loss but STILL managed 13-7, it probably means we beat a pretty stout B1G team on their home court that our own projections show today as a loss.
Now, I'm not sure we can get to 13-7. I think we might be right on that cusp of tier 2 and tier 3, which means that we might be splitting the difference between the projected 13-7 and the projected 10-10.
If we're 11-9 (19-12), I think we have some serious work to do in the BTT-getting to Saturday at least. If we're 12-8 (20-11), I think we at minimum have to win our first BTT game.

I think they'd be fine at 13-7, my only concern would be the potential bad loss on Thursday.  
If it matters, that "last 10 games" thing should help PU.  Without looking it up I think we are projecting them to start something like 4-4 which means we are projecting them to finish 9-3 to end up 13-7.  That front-loaded schedule should help Purdue's "growth as a team" argument even though it has more to do with random quirks of scheduling than "growth".  It looks better to start 4-4 and finish 9-3 than to start 9-3 and finish 4-4.  The same is true even if you adjust that down to 3-5/8-4 looking better than 8-4/3-5.  

[betarhoalphadelta]

I think they'd be fine at 13-7, my only concern would be the potential bad loss on Thursday.  
If it matters, that "last 10 games" thing should help PU.  Without looking it up I think we are projecting them to start something like 4-4 which means we are projecting them to finish 9-3 to end up 13-7.  That front-loaded schedule should help Purdue's "growth as a team" argument even though it has more to do with random quirks of scheduling than "growth".  It looks better to start 4-4 and finish 9-3 than to start 9-3 and finish 4-4.  The same is true even if you adjust that down to 3-5/8-4 looking better than 8-4/3-5.  

Agreed that the front-loaded schedule helps the "last 10 games" argument... The problem is that I'd rather face some of those tougher teams after the team has completed that "growth as a team" phase lol... 

[Brutus Buckeye]