I think "misinformation" is a bit strong of wording considering how loaded that term is nowadays and we're dealing with college basketball here, not matters of war and peace and life and death.
My justification for posting them for now would be something like...
(1.) This thread became an annual tradition 4-5 years ago when I was posting that email update in the more general bracketology thread.
@Cyclonepride made the suggestion we should have an annual thread for a consolidated discussion of the analytics and the men's basketball team; hence, it started.
It has some incumbency and nostalgia value for me and is easy to do.
(2.) Most of the regular posters in here and probably most of the lurker readers know by now that
Team Rankings has its flaws (especially weird edge cases in its model "they" should really do some work to clean up in a newer version). It is a flawed source but its flaws are "known knowns" easy to adjust for.
(3.) Their round-by-round odds in the Big 12 tournament and the NCAA tournament are unique from what I've seen of these projection models.
FiveThirtyEight used to do something like that and maybe Nate Silver will in the future, but
FiveThirtyEight is dead now. So, we might as well use all the data we have.
They might not be on the dot, but I think the 11.1% chance to win the tournament in KC and 2% to win The Big One are reasonable enough estimates, which help me ground my expectations this month. Even a very good team by the historical standards of Iowa State basketball only has roughly 1/50 odds to win it.
It is just so hard to do. :/
It's a flawed source but I don't think it is intentionally and maliciously misleading somehow. Saying Iowa State is going to be a #5 seed instead of a #3 or maybe a #4 isn't exactly genius propaganda.
