Nitpicking here, I could be mistaken but I thought at tip all three had moved into double digit territory. Or perhaps they were all double digit at some point.
2018-2019 computer projections thread
- Thread starter Sigmapolis
- Start date
True, but if you look around CBB there are not many teams with multiple road wins vs. ranked teams, plus a road win vs. a team currently projected to be in the tournament (OU). NET and the committee value road wins against good teams. ISU has performed very well in that regard. Seems like historically ISU has had some WTF games, though they had typically been bad teams on the road. This year it's been OK teams at home. Another thing we have to remember, currently 80% of the league is projected as an NCAA tournament team. That's insane, and means any time you don't bring your A-game you have a good chance of losing. Since the year ISU made it with Royce, the conference has had 50-70% of the league qualify for the dance. Most of those years the league was better at the top (KU), but it's not been nearly as deep as it is this year.
To be honest, if I had my choice between a consistent, relatively low ceiling 5 or 6 seed going into the tournament or a jekyl and hyde team, I'll take the latter, buckle up for the ride and hope they get hot.
Those were the closing lines. I'm guessing TCU got to double digits at some points if it closed at 9.5 though
Last night's presser was the first time the team looked angry/pissed off. Maybe this will be the aha moment, too bad it didn't arrive a few games earlier.
You have a website source for those past lines? I struck out, could only find historical money lines or predictive stuff...
We have played like one of the best teams in the country several times, including some difficult road victories against some very good programs right now like TTU and KSU.
We have played badly at home a few times.
Most of the time we have been somewhere in the middle.
Adjusting for the competition and netting it out, coming out with something like 15th is reasonable. All of the computer rankings have us in that range, for that matter.
You seem to want to downgrade our average because we might have a high "standard deviation." I do not know how high our SD is compared to other schools, though.
"Depends on the day" is true for any college basketball team outside of maybe Virginia, Duke, and Gonzaga this year. Everybody else has had some clunker performances.
Hate to be a Debbie Downer but this is the third time this has happened. If it's taken them this long to be 'pissed off' I have little faith that this will be some sort of turning point. There aren't any ruthless competitors on this team that will respond in that way. No Niang, Ejim, Kane, Morris, Hogue, and the like.
I’d vote we’re up to 3 clunkers waivering on a 4th, even 5 can be argued.
But yes, the std deviation is what I’m getting at. It’s not just me, the national press has commented prior to yesterday that we are not consistent or trustworthy. Probably why the human polls don’t value us as much as the computers.
In terms of the computers, while I do prefer their rankings in basketball (not so much in football, that’s a story for another time) they are far from perfect. Look no further than Nebraska for evidence.
Yeah I'm pretty encouraged by the responses. I'm sure many of us remember the running jokes about repeated "wake up call" games. Some teams seemed to need them more than others, but that seemed to be an ongoing things.
As EarthIsMan pointed out in his rebounding thread, if ISU rebounds at a below average rate, they win that game. From the four guard lineup, hard hedging by bigs, and the need to push pace by getting out in transition this is not going to be a great rebounding team. I know people are wanting changes, but if you watch lots of those offensive rebounds, it's amazing watching time after time one or two of our guys turn and watch the ball on the rim without checking their guy. Same goes for the defense on Mason. Guy has a dogcrap left hand and an injured right foot, yet our guards gave him his right hand repeatedly with relative ease.
Prohm failed to make adjustments, but to me it is not about changing scheme or who you are. I would've liked for him to go deeper to his bench just to show that playing without discipline and failing to do simple things with consistency isn't good enough.
I hate to be the simpleton yelling "box out" in the stands, but at times it was that simple. Although a lot of what lead to their Oreb was our porous dribble penetration defense; Baylor all too often had men in position to get those Oreb without a chance.
This is just one of the several instances of such...
I would be embarrassed watching that film with my teammates and coaches. Honestly, the 2 clips above are cringeworthy on the lack of effort given. Its almost comical.
I do not see why a team who has an average performance of 20th or 30th in the nation should be considered better than us if they are more consistently at that level but never hit the heights that we did against Kansas, Texas Tech, and Kansas State.
Yes, a team like ours is more likely to get upset in the first weekend of the tournament with a cruddy performance, but it is also more likely to hit on all cylinders and take a bite out of a Top 10 team in the second weekend if it makes it there. Maybe this squad has more "risk" involved with it, but I am fine with that and not going to dock us because we can be both great and bad. I will take the upside rather than knowing we will pull a Fran and lose the second game.
Iowa State teams have struggled with consistency since Johnny Orr. This is just how college basketball works sometimes. I wish we were automatic, but we are not. "Good like clockwork" and "sometimes great, sometimes bad" are equivalents, to me.
I agree with you on the ratings between the sports, by the way --
Computer rankings with football is really hard because of the small quantity of games, small number of possessions/plays across a season, and limited sample sizes of games between different conferences. Basketball is comparatively easy with its additional games and possessions and way more sampling between leagues throughout the season.
I would argue the college game is not that stylistically diverse between conferences, too (not many conferences have a defined style like they do in football, though individual programs do), which makes making such comparisons easier for the computers.
Comparing the SEC and Big 12 in basketball is way easier than comparing them in football, for example, given the lack of huge stylistic differences in basketball.
Right - it really came down to two simple things that could've been done and this is a win. Don't let Mason go right, sometimes on some basic P&R action, sometimes in iso; and put a body on your guy on the defensive glass. That doesn't fix everything, but those are two really simple things that if you do a half-ass job of it you win the game.
Like I said, I am fine with having poor rebounding games. The structure of ISUs team and the philosophy of pushing pace and playing to strength means ISU is susceptible to it and can usually offset it. But it was one of those rare games where the lack of putting a body on guys was so terrible that I remember saying out loud "there's a nice box out" when Jacobson checked a guy. It was like watching my kids' 5th grade teams where kids are just flying to the ball and when a kid actually boxes out well it jumps out to you. Usually you can rewatch a game where ISU gets outrebounded and come away thinking it wasn't that bad - lots of long rebounds, officials allowed for a really physical style, etc. In this game it really was just simply THAT bad. Maybe worse. There were plenty of ISU defensive rebounds that Baylor bobbled or lost and turned into loose balls.
The good news - this team bounces back like none I can remember at ISU.
First, our efficiency metrics may fall if this inconsistent play continues.
Second, it is a fine line. We’re basically talking a handful of outcomes. It doesn’t take much degradation in SD to have a swing that yields a team on paper that is top-xy, but changes a great year record wise (plus regular season championship/great-seed-facilitating-run) into a mid-pack, mid-seed or second round exit.
The models are fun for seeing the teams on more of a continuu past simple binary outcomes, but everything that matters is still completely weighted on the ability to string “isolated” positive outcomes together.
Every year there are teams that do well by metrics from not having a consistent weakness, but that’s often not enough to win the amount of games commensurate of the metrical ranking. In the type of success we’re chasing, your on days don’t equitably offset your off days as well as they do on paper.
This is always true. We were roughly #10 on Barttovik at one point -- we are down to #14 now. If we keep repeating performances like the ones we had against TCU and Baylor, then obviously our computer ranking is going to head south quickly.
Models are fun but also useful as predictive devices. No, they are not perfect, but Las Vegas makes a lot of money off having the best ones, so there are things to learn from them about the way the team is likely to play the 1.5 months of the season from here.
I know a season is judged and goes into the record books based on W-L binaries. Period. Having the best adjusted net efficiency in the Big 12 does not put a banner in the rafters. The point about the computers is not that they somehow undo a team that underachieves.
If anything here, I think they have two uses...
(1.) Predictions about how the team is likely to perform in games remaining. Towards this, the computer say this is a good team that should win many of those games.
(2.) Giving you some objective standard as to if a team did under-perform or not. To judge if a team under-performed, you have to have some objective metric for how good it was in the first place. The model helps calibrate expectations for how a good a team was before you compare that standard to their actual W-L records. Was this a mediocre team who squeaked by a lot with a low ceiling and we should be happy to get what we get? Or is this a team who had a high ceiling but played bad games on occasion and therefore underachieved by losing a second round game in Columbus, Ohio to some #10 seed from a mid-major conference?
Particularly when we saw that team play like it could take on the world at times?
We use the models to have a more objective discussion of #2.
This is exactly my point -- a much better summary of mine about the downsides of consistency at a lower rating versus the roller-coaster we are on right now.
They both have their good and their bad. I would rather roll with the upside, though.
I think we are saying the same things (I don't understand the dumb rating though) in different ways. The underlying point I think I haven't conveyed well here is that the inconsistency of this team is beyond normal; although I'd argue that "normal inconsistency" is normal for everyone sans blue bloods.
Problem being, a normal level of inconsistency this season and we'd be up 2-3 games in the Big XII race.
Great, we can later define what is a great team, and what makes a year a success. But until then, it is a weak rebuttal to call on season long efficiency rankings given the huge disconnect to how wining anything that’s relevant actually happens.
Your Vegas and predictive benefit of the models are true, and they’re very helpful if otherwise betting blind, but are vulnerable to the same disconnect ailment as to why a great metrical ranking sometimes doesn’t equate to a great year.
It’s possible this is a bout of midseason boredom, or we could be seeing signs that although our average is good, our floor is fatal and occurs too often to have breakthrough success. That would be a common theme in our tournament seasons.
Last edited:
I apologize -- kind of on the warpath after last night. I think it was collectively frustrating.
I think we mostly agree on these issues, too.
Do you know a way to quantify a team's consistency or not? I would think just averaging the Barttovik game ratings would be one way to do it.
The more variance in your ratings, the less consistent of a team, no?
Do you objectively know that ISU is less consistent than other teams, though?
Take a look at our game chart on Barttovik...
IOWA STATE
Compared to Kansas, who has a very similar rating overall...
KANSAS
Are they really that different?
Both have some great games, a lot of very good ones, a few meh ones, and a couple clunkers.
Last edited:
