I've expanded this from a top 40 rating to a top 50. Because I care. I also confirmed that I rated every team that received votes in the preseason coaches' pool, and every team that appears in Ken Pomeroy's preseason top 75, and Dan Hanner's top 70 teams.
There are some significant differences from the previous top 40 I posted. First, I fixed a lot of mistakes and added a bunch of new information. For example, Vanderbilt was previously rated highly, but I've since learned that two players who I expected to play major roles have left the program. I'm sure there are still mistakes, but whatever.
Second, I've changed how I account for freshmen. Previously, I'd given extra credit only for top-10 recruits. This led, in particular, to my model rating Kentucky and Kansas significantly lower than the conventional wisdom. So I decided to rejigger this to add extra credit for top-20 recruits. Now Kentucky is number 1 and Kansas moves up to 8th from 18th or so. Kentucky's recruiting class is absolutely ridiculous.
Of course, I also changed the source data from Kenpom 1.0 to Kenpom 2.0
So, below are the Torvik Top 50. I've also included comparisons to Pomeroy's top 50 and Hanner's top 50. As Chorlton mentioned before, it is interesting to look for outliers and variance. In my ratings, the outliers of are:
Saint Louis at 13 (high)
Missouri at 27 (high)
Syracuse at 31 (low)
Marquette at 36 (low)
Utah State at 34 (high)
Syracuse and Marquette are rated low mainly because they will be relying heavily on freshman (and, in Syracuse's case, a transfer) who don't get any credit in my system. Time will tell if they deserved any credit.
Utah State is an interesting one because I didn't include them in my original ratings. But I added them after seeing that they rated 58th in the Hanner ratings. They return virtually all their minutes, and have a number of young, efficient players. It will be interesting to see how they do.
Overall, there is a lot of agreement in the ratings. Of my top 50 teams, 43 appear in Hanner's top 50, and 40 appear in Pomeroy's. Of my top 20 teams, 16 appear in both Hanner and Pomeroy. Overall, there are 38 consensus teams in the top 50 and 14 in the top 20.
Anyhow, at the end of the season I'll compare these ratings to the tournament S-Curve and we'll see who gets the best of it.
| Team | T-Rank | Kenpom | Hanner |
| Kentucky | 1 | 5 | 1 |
| Florida | 2 | 3 | 5 |
| Louisville | 3 | 1 | 2 |
| Duke | 4 | 6 | 6 |
| Michigan St. | 5 | 2 | 3 |
| Ohio St. | 6 | 7 | 7 |
| North Carolina | 7 | 10 | 13 |
| Kansas | 8 | 8 | 4 |
| Gonzaga | 9 | 18 | 18 |
| Connecticut | 10 | 11 | 25 |
| Virginia | 11 | 19 | 11 |
| Michigan | 12 | 12 | 12 |
| Saint Louis | 13 | 31 | 24 |
| Wichita St. | 14 | 40 | 23 |
| Georgetown | 15 | 14 | 31 |
| Wisconsin | 16 | 22 | 10 |
| Arizona | 17 | 23 | 8 |
| Memphis | 18 | 16 | 15 |
| Oklahoma St. | 19 | 4 | 9 |
| Creighton | 20 | 13 | 19 |
| Villanova | 21 | 26 | 36 |
| Oregon | 22 | 56 | 33 |
| Iowa | 23 | 15 | 16 |
| Stanford | 24 | 29 | 38 |
| Baylor | 25 | 28 | 35 |
| Indiana | 26 | 25 | 29 |
| Missouri | 27 | 49 | 52 |
| Saint Mary's | 28 | 52 | 42 |
| Purdue | 29 | 30 | 46 |
| Notre Dame | 30 | 32 | 26 |
| Syracuse | 31 | 9 | 14 |
| VCU | 32 | 21 | 22 |
| New Mexico | 33 | 17 | 21 |
| Utah St. | 34 | 78 | 58 |
| Harvard | 35 | 51 | 27 |
| Marquette | 36 | 24 | 17 |
| UCLA | 37 | 27 | 20 |
| Pittsburgh | 38 | 20 | 28 |
| Boise St. | 39 | 42 | 41 |
| Kansas St. | 40 | 43 | 54 |
| San Diego St. | 41 | 64 | 49 |
| Texas | 42 | 80 | 67 |
| Dayton | 43 | 68 | 66 |
| La Salle | 44 | 55 | 43 |
| Providence | 45 | 41 | 50 |
| Tennessee | 46 | 34 | 34 |
| Alabama | 47 | 33 | 40 |
| Maryland | 48 | 44 | 45 |
| Iowa St. | 49 | 38 | 62 |
| Vanderbilt | 50 | 70 | 79 |
*Update: Made two small adjustments: (1) Akron, formerly #45, drops out after I learned last year's starting point guard was kicked off the team; and (2) Arkansas, formerly #47, drops out after I learned that Hunter Mickelson transferred to Kansas. Vanderbilt sneaks back in at #50.
No comments:
Post a Comment