Slowly, slowly working on the spreadsheet.

Was looking at all-time win rankings and win % rankings, from the top 50 on wikipedia. But that would leave a lot of teams unranked, and the difference between Creighton (#46, 60%) and Dayton (not top 50, 59%) is a lot less than between Dayton (not top 50, 59%) and Richmond (not top 50, 53%). So I'm going with the percentages.

And since there's been a little bit of static lately, I'm including the C-7, just in case anyone needs a little reminder of what kind of group you're joining/trying to join.

Win % School
66 St John's
64 Villanova
63 VCU
62 Georgetown
62 DePaul
62 Marquette
60 Providence
60 Creighton
59 Dayton
59 Xavier
58 Seton Hall
58 Butler
57 Gonzaga
54 Saint Louis
54 Wichita State
53 Richmond

Oh, and George Mason, 50.4%

Bids School Final Fours
31 Villanova 4
30 Marquette 3
28 Georgetown 5
27 St John's 2
23 Xavier 0
18 DePaul 2
17 Creighton 0
15 Providence 2
15 Gonzaga 0
14 Dayton 1
11 VCU 1
11 Butler 2
9 Seton Hall 1
9 Wichita St 1
9 Richmond 0
7 Saint Louis 0
6 Mason 1

Thanks for doing this. If you could count up Elite 8's and/or Sweet 16's that would be cool too (and would help PC a little more) :o) . It would show how Xavier makes it through the first weekend a lot.

(01-04-2013 10:18 AM)billyjack Wrote:  Thanks for doing this. If you could count up Elite 8's and/or Sweet 16's that would be cool too (and would help PC a little more) :o) . It would show how Xavier makes it through the first weekend a lot.

I'm going to rely a little more now on the spreadsheet from the Georgetown board, so I'm just using NCAA appearances and wins for the last 10 years--9 appearances and 14 wins give Xavier their credit there.

Providence, I think reminding everybody of the 2 Final Fours gives a balanced picture there. The last 10 years columns are going to be what they are, though, for Providence and St John's both.

Biggest surprise this morning was VCU's winning percentage. It's "only" over 40 years, but I think it stacks up pretty well.

(01-04-2013 09:57 AM)johnbragg Wrote:  Slowly, slowly working on the spreadsheet.

Was looking at all-time win rankings and win % rankings, from the top 50 on wikipedia. But that would leave a lot of teams unranked, and the difference between Creighton (#46, 60%) and Dayton (not top 50, 59%) is a lot less than between Dayton (not top 50, 59%) and Richmond (not top 50, 53%). So I'm going with the percentages.

And since there's been a little bit of static lately, I'm including the C-7, just in case anyone needs a little reminder of what kind of group you're joining/trying to join.

I reorganized it into one block, sorted by NCAA bids.
School Win % NCAA bids Final Fours
Villanova 64 31 4
Marquette 62 30 3
Georgetown 62 28 5
St John's 66 27 2
Xavier 59 23 0
DePaul 62 18 2
Creighton 60 17 0
Gonzaga 57 15 0
Providence 60 15 2
Dayton 59 14 1
Butler 58 11 2
VCU 63 11 1
Richmond 53 9 0
Seton Hall 58 9 1
Wichita SU 54 9 1
Saint Louis 54 7 0
Geo Mason 50 6 1

Looking at it like this, Xavier has overperformed on bids vs win % and FF's. VCU's late start moves them down the table here. And Seton Hall, well....

I love the data threads.

This may sound silly, but I think overall win percentage might just be overrated. Hear me out:

Duke, UNC, Michigan St, Ohio St, Syracuse, UConn, Louisville, Kansas, Arizona and UCLA are all top 20 programs of all-time. How often do one of them lose 14+ games in a season? Like, one of them a decade, if ever? But what if they were in the same conference together? Someone is going 4-14 in conference play.

I mean zero disrepect to anyone here, but in another thread, I posted Xavier and Bonaventure's OOC win percentages. As dominant as Xavier has been for 20 years in the A-10, their OOC win pct is "only" like 50 points higher than the Bonnies. Because Bonaventure schedules knowing "We're probably going 8-8 in the A-10, so we need 7-9 wins OOC" and Xavier schedules knowing "We're only playing 3-6 games vs NCAA teams in the A-10, so we need to play Cincy, Butler, Vandy, Gonzaga, Memphis and Tennessee."

DePaul schedules OOC like Bona now. When DePaul was in C-USA, they didn't think "we're going to get hammered in conference." They thought "We're going to beat ECU, Tulane, Houston, Southern Miss, split SLU and Charlotte, lose 2 of 3 to Memphis/Cincy/Louisville and that's 10-6 and an NCAA bid."


Long story short: your record comes from your schedule. Your schedule has two parts: Non-Conference which changes every year and can be manipulated for RPI reasons; and Conference, which is changing to whatever the C7 decide it will be.

Obviously, we want good basketball teams, and winning percentage kind of determines who's a good basketball team. But it's kind of like listing the measurements of Victoria's Secret models so we can decide who's got a nice body: Xavier, Butler, Dayton, Saint Louis, VCU, Wichita State, Creighton, Gonzaga, etc wouldn't be on the runway if they didn't have nice bodies.

(01-04-2013 03:26 PM)JPSchmack Wrote:  I love the data threads.

This may sound silly, but I think overall win percentage might just be overrated. Hear me out:

Duke, UNC, Michigan St, Ohio St, Syracuse, UConn, Louisville, Kansas, Arizona and UCLA are all top 20 programs of all-time. How often do one of them lose 14+ games in a season? Like, one of them a decade, if ever? But what if they were in the same conference together? Someone is going 4-14 in conference play.

I mean zero disrepect to anyone here, but in another thread, I posted Xavier and Bonaventure's OOC win percentages. As dominant as Xavier has been for 20 years in the A-10, their OOC win pct is "only" like 50 points higher than the Bonnies. Because Bonaventure schedules knowing "We're probably going 8-8 in the A-10, so we need 7-9 wins OOC" and Xavier schedules knowing "We're only playing 3-6 games vs NCAA teams in the A-10, so we need to play Cincy, Butler, Vandy, Gonzaga, Memphis and Tennessee."

DePaul schedules OOC like Bona now. When DePaul was in C-USA, they didn't think "we're going to get hammered in conference." They thought "We're going to beat ECU, Tulane, Houston, Southern Miss, split SLU and Charlotte, lose 2 of 3 to Memphis/Cincy/Louisville and that's 10-6 and an NCAA bid."


Long story short: your record comes from your schedule. Your schedule has two parts: Non-Conference which changes every year and can be manipulated for RPI reasons; and Conference, which is changing to whatever the C7 decide it will be.

Obviously, we want good basketball teams, and winning percentage kind of determines who's a good basketball team. But it's kind of like listing the measurements of Victoria's Secret models so we can decide who's got a nice body: Xavier, Butler, Dayton, Saint Louis, VCU, Wichita State, Creighton, Gonzaga, etc wouldn't be on the runway if they didn't have nice bodies.

I think it matters when there's 3%+ gap. One of the reasons I bailed on using the Top 50 rankings was the numbers were so close--trivial difference in percentages looked huge in the rankings.

But VCU was surprisingly strong, historically. That 63% isn't meaningfully better, in my eyes, than Creighton's 60%, but it is a little better than Butler's 58%.

What I'm going to post later is a little arbitrary, but that's unavoidable. I came up with a "historical score" and gave one point for each Final Four, one point for a winning % above 55, another for a winning % above 60, and 1 point for each 10 bids. Then I ranked the candidates, 1-10, and gave 10 points for first place down to 1 point for 10th place.

Pts School % + FF + bids
10 Butler 1 + 2 + 1 = 4
10 VCU 2 + 1 + 1 = 4
8 Xavier 1 + 0 + 2 = 3
8 Creighton 2 + 0 + 1 = 3
8 Dayton 1 + 1 + 1 = 3
5 Gonzaga 1 + 0 + 1 = 2
4 Wichita 0 + 1 + 0 = 1
4 George Mason 0 + 0 + 1 = 1
2 Richmond 0 + 0 + 0
2 Saint Louis 0 + 0 + 0

I feel like Xavier should be higher, and VCU should be lower, but Xavier will rack up points in the "Last 10 years" section. VCU is obviously benefiting from their win % since 1970. Gonzaga seems low, until you remember that their first tournament appearance is 1995.

(01-04-2013 03:26 PM)JPSchmack Wrote:  I love the data threads.

This may sound silly, but I think overall win percentage might just be overrated.

Me too, and I agree if for no other reason than time series comparison issues. Same with Final Fours from 16 team NCAA tournaments. I respect the tradition and the history, but including wins outside of a 10, 20, or even 30 year time horizon isn't really telling anyone a whole lot.

(01-04-2013 04:32 PM)thegalen Wrote:  

(01-04-2013 03:26 PM)JPSchmack Wrote:  I love the data threads.

This may sound silly, but I think overall win percentage might just be overrated.

Me too, and I agree if for no other reason than time series comparison issues. Same with Final Fours from 16 team NCAA tournaments. I respect the tradition and the history, but including wins outside of a 10, 20, or even 30 year time horizon isn't really telling anyone a whole lot.

VCU's 62% winning percentage over 40 years or so would surprise and impress a lot of people who'd never heard of VCU before 2011. It indicates that VCU basketball didn't start and end with Shaka Smart, which is important.

(01-04-2013 04:32 PM)thegalen Wrote:  I respect the tradition and the history, but including wins outside of a 10, 20, or even 30 year time horizon isn't really telling anyone a whole lot.

Well, you'll enjoy the Last 10 Years post, later on.

(01-04-2013 04:44 PM)johnbragg Wrote:  VCU's 62% winning percentage over 40 years or so would surprise and impress a lot of people who'd never heard of VCU before 2011. It indicates that VCU basketball didn't start and end with Shaka Smart, which is important.

True. I mean, it's good to enlighten those people who haven't been paying attention to VCU, so I do appreciate the data being provided for those posters who don't really follow things from a realignment perspective.

But that's what I meant by the "we don't need exact measurements to know Victoria's Secret models have nice bodies" comment.

I'd imagine the PRESIDENTS might ask their ADs: "Are we taking VCU just because they made the Final Four two years ago?"

But the response is "We wouldn't be asking you to vote on them if they weren't a good overall basketball program."

At the end of the day, the question is "Are we better off with them or without them?" and I don't think "well, historically, their win percentage is 3 points better than ______" is going to be the overriding factor in asking that question.


I don't mean to sound like a jerk here, but the difference between 57% and 54% is ONE game a season. We're talking about changing 16-20 games on each team's schedules.

If THAT is the C7's deciding factor, please call Steve Watson at St. Bonaventure so we can stop losing to NC State, Va Tech, and Illinois; beat UNC Asheville, VMI and Western Illinois instead, increase our win pct by 9% a season the next five years and get invited when you expand.

(01-04-2013 05:46 PM)JPSchmack Wrote:  

(01-04-2013 04:44 PM)johnbragg Wrote:  VCU's 62% winning percentage over 40 years or so would surprise and impress a lot of people who'd never heard of VCU before 2011. It indicates that VCU basketball didn't start and end with Shaka Smart, which is important.

True. I mean, it's good to enlighten those people who haven't been paying attention to VCU, so I do appreciate the data being provided for those posters who don't really follow things from a realignment perspective.

But that's what I meant by the "we don't need exact measurements to know Victoria's Secret models have nice bodies" comment.

I'd imagine the PRESIDENTS might ask their ADs: "Are we taking VCU just because they made the Final Four two years ago?"

But the response is "We wouldn't be asking you to vote on them if they weren't a good overall basketball program."

At the end of the day, the question is "Are we better off with them or without them?" and I don't think "well, historically, their win percentage is 3 points better than ______" is going to be the overriding factor in asking that question.


I don't mean to sound like a jerk here, but the difference between 57% and 54% is ONE game a season. We're talking about changing 16-20 games on each team's schedules.

If THAT is the C7's deciding factor, please call Steve Watson at St. Bonaventure so we can stop losing to NC State, Va Tech, and Illinois; beat UNC Asheville, VMI and Western Illinois instead, increase our win pct by 9% a season the next five years and get invited when you expand.

I would tend to agree, except that the list sorted by winning percentage looks pretty similar to the list sorted by NCAA tournament appearances, with the exception of VCU, who obviously didn't have any tournament appearances before they started playing Division I in 1970 or so. Butler's and Gonzaga's percentages are lower than you may expect, but that makes sense when you think back 15 years and they had one tournament appearance each.

And it's not winning percentage over five seasons, it's percentage over your Division I history. It's not the be-all and end-all, but I'd say it's as relevant as Dayton having a dusty, faded Final Four banner and Xavier not.

The trick is to start beating NC State, VT and Illinois now and then, which the tournament committee will notice, and then it will pay off in these kinds of rankings in your # of bids.

(01-04-2013 04:44 PM)johnbragg Wrote:  

(01-04-2013 04:32 PM)thegalen Wrote:  

(01-04-2013 03:26 PM)JPSchmack Wrote:  I love the data threads.

This may sound silly, but I think overall win percentage might just be overrated.

Me too, and I agree if for no other reason than time series comparison issues. Same with Final Fours from 16 team NCAA tournaments. I respect the tradition and the history, but including wins outside of a 10, 20, or even 30 year time horizon isn't really telling anyone a whole lot.

VCU's 62% winning percentage over 40 years or so would surprise and impress a lot of people who'd never heard of VCU before 2011. It indicates that VCU basketball didn't start and end with Shaka Smart, which is important.

Not denying that at all, just saying that segmenting the data is helpful. It sounds like you're already on the case! Really what you want is a quick way to visually assess an entire body of work, but still have some context. Example: if you're looking at per-team counts over time of Championships, Final Fours, Sweet 16s, or tourney appearances, plotting a moving total of DI/competing NCAA tourney teams on an alternate vertical axis would give you a better sense of the relative "value" of whatever it is you're comparing...

Tell you what, let's do a collabo track and come up with some hot hot chart$...

(01-04-2013 06:47 PM)thegalen Wrote:  

(01-04-2013 04:44 PM)johnbragg Wrote:  

(01-04-2013 04:32 PM)thegalen Wrote:  

(01-04-2013 03:26 PM)JPSchmack Wrote:  I love the data threads.

This may sound silly, but I think overall win percentage might just be overrated.

Me too, and I agree if for no other reason than time series comparison issues. Same with Final Fours from 16 team NCAA tournaments. I respect the tradition and the history, but including wins outside of a 10, 20, or even 30 year time horizon isn't really telling anyone a whole lot.

VCU's 62% winning percentage over 40 years or so would surprise and impress a lot of people who'd never heard of VCU before 2011. It indicates that VCU basketball didn't start and end with Shaka Smart, which is important.

Not denying that at all, just saying that segmenting the data is helpful. It sounds like you're already on the case! Really what you want is a quick way to visually assess an entire body of work, but still have some context. Example: if you're looking at per-team counts over time of Championships, Final Fours, Sweet 16s, or tourney appearances, plotting a moving total of DI/competing NCAA tourney teams on an alternate vertical axis would give you a better sense of the relative "value" of whatever it is you're comparing...

Tell you what, let's do a collabo track and come up with some hot hot chart$...

What you're suggesting would give a more accurate picture of the objective value of the accomplishments. I'm actually more interested in the perceived value--we're going to be fighting the perception that we're not a "real power conference", so it's going to be important at the launch to have sound-bite justifications for the new members.

On the subject of winning percentage, I'm willing to experiment. Including winning percentage as one of the three metrics before, the tiers were Butler VCU; Xavier Creighton Dayton; Gonzaga; WSU GMU; Richmond SLU.

That's not a very obvious order for those programs to be in, so let's see what happens if we drop winning percentage. Let's give a point for each Final Four, and a point for every five tournament bids.

Xavier 23, 0 = 4 points
Creighton 17, 0 = 3 points
Gonzaga 15, 0 = 3 points
Dayton 14, 1 = 3 points
Butler 11, 2 = 4 points
VCU 11, 1 = 3 points
Wichita St 9, 1 = 2 points
Richmond 9, 0 = 1 point
Saint Louis 7, 0 = 1 point
George Mason 6, 1 = 2 points

So that makes the tiers
4 points Xavier, Butler--10 points in the overall standings
3 points Creighton, Gonzaga, Dayton, VCU--8 points
2 points WSU, GMU--4 points
1 point Richmond, Saint Louis--2 points

I think that looks more like what we'd expect. We'll save VCU's Top 25 all-time winning percentage for the press conference re-launching the league.

Ok, here are the numbers for the last 10 years, number of bids, NCAA wins, and those numbers added together.

School Bids Wins Total
Xavier........9 + 14 = 23------------10 points
Butler .......6 + 15 = 21-------------9 points
Gonzaga.....10 +10 = 20------------8 points
Villanova.....7 + 12 = 19
Marquette...8 + 10 = 18
Georgetown. 6 + 8 = 14
VCU............5 + 7 = 12-------------7 points
George Mason 3 + 5 = 8------------6 points
Richmond 3 + 2 = 5---------------5 points
Creighton 4 + 1 =5----------------4 points
Wichita State 2 + 2 = 4-------------3 points
Dayton..........3 + 1 = 4-------------3 points
Seton Hall......2 + 1 = 3
DePaul...........1 + 1 = 2
Saint Louis......1 + 1 = 2-------------1 point
Providence......1 + 0 = 1
St John's ........1 + 0 = 1

Here are the standings so far, with "History" and "Last 10 Years" completed.

School
Xavier........10 + 10 = 20 points
Butler .......10 + 9 = 19 points
Gonzaga.....8 + 8 = 16 points
VCU...........8 + 7 = 15 points
Creighton...4 + 8 = 12 points
Dayton..........3 + 8 = 11 points
Geo. Mason 6 + 4 = 10 points
Richmond....5 + 2 = 7 points
Wichita State 3 + 4 = 7 points
Saint Louis......1 + 2 = 3 points

With Resources(Enrollment, Endowment, Market Size) and Spending (Revenue, attendance) still to come.

Here is an interesting stat (not really a thing to make final rulings on, just a fun fact):

Road Winning Record (last 3 seasons):

Big East:
1. Georgetown (12-10)
2. Villanova (12-15)
3. Marquette (9-14)
4. Seton Hall (9-16)
5. St. John's (8-19)
6. DePaul (7-17)
7. Providence (5-20)

Expansion Candidates:

1. Wichita State (24-4)
2. VCU (21-9)
3. Gonzaga (15-8)
4. Creighton (15-13)
5. Xavier (14-13)
6. Butler (15-15)
7. Richmond (16-17)
8. Dayton (10-15)
9. Saint Louis (9-15)

It doesn't mean much, but Wichita State's road record is truly remarkable. Every single program I looked at had as many losses in one of those seasons as Wichita State has had over the entire period, and no school was really anywhere close. Of course, that is because the road record happens to be the best in the nation over that time period (until KU beat Ohio State, which put them at 25-4 in the same time period).

Again, this just supposed to be a fun fact, not something to completely compare schools by. Different conference affiliations, scheduling priorities, and other factors make it hard to use a measurement (along with the short time period used). However, it does give a glimpse of a way a team has played in a hostile environment in recent years.

(01-04-2013 07:10 PM)johnbragg Wrote:  What you're suggesting would give a more accurate picture of the objective value of the accomplishments. I'm actually more interested in the perceived value--we're going to be fighting the perception that we're not a "real power conference", so it's going to be important at the launch to have sound-bite justifications for the new members.

True. Certainly there's at least some alignment between the objective value and the perceived value here.

Keep the good data coming! Also, if you put it all in a publicly accessible Google Fusion Table, you'll be my hero!

(01-04-2013 08:08 PM)College Basketball Fan Wrote:  Different conference affiliations, scheduling priorities, and other factors make it hard to use a measurement (along with the short time period used).

Very true. If someone has a Kenpom 'scrip we can weight these results by SOS/NCSOS Pyth. Someone pony up!

I don't really have a dog in this fight, I just enjoy the topic; so I don't want you to think I'm crafting arguments to show why MY school should get in over someone else.

A formula assigning a raw number to bids, NCAA wins, Final Fours, is NOT objective data, it is flawed methodology because wins and NCAA bids are "curved grades."

NCAA bids are the outcome of seasons, seasons is determined by wins. Wins are the outcome of games. Games are the result of scheduling. 40% of scheduling changes year-to-year OOC and the other 60% of scheduling is what we are trying to completely change by deciding who's in the conference.

I mean zero disrespect to anyone, regardless of their conference, so let's say after the C7 raids the A-10, the A-10 gets two applications:

Team A has a .561 win percentage and 3 NCAA bids.
Team B has a .483 win percentage and 0 NCAA bids.

Team A going to be more successful in the league, right?

Not necessarily.
Team A went 23-63 vs Top 100 of the RPI; 153-74 vs 101+ of the RPI.
Team A went into their conference tournament, beat Iona, Fairfield, and Canisius and won three auto-bids.

Team B went 39-121 vs Top 100 of the RPI; 106-34 vs 101+ of the RPI.
Team B went into their conference tournament, and lost to Michigan State, Ohio St, Indiana, Wisconsin, etc and has never made the dance ever.

If in the A-10, each school would play 10 Top 100 teams and 20 teams 101+, Team A would be expected to be a 16-14 team on average and Team B a 18-12 team on average.

Siena has NCAA Tournament bids because they play a MAAC schedule/tournament; Northwestern has none because they play a Big Ten schedule/Tournament. But since we're changing the teams on their schedule, the teams in the conference tournament what they did in the MAAC/Big Ten doesn't tell you how would they do in the Atlantic 10, does it?

(01-04-2013 09:07 PM)JPSchmack Wrote:  I don't really have a dog in this fight, I just enjoy the topic; so I don't want you to think I'm crafting arguments to show why MY school should get in over someone else.

A formula assigning a raw number to bids, NCAA wins, Final Fours, is NOT objective data, it is flawed methodology because wins and NCAA bids are "curved grades."

What you're saying makes sense if we're designing a simulation, or trying to determine who the best team is/was on the court. That's not exactly what I'm doing. I'm trying to model the decision making in the room.

They're going to decide based on some mix of 1) historic reputation, 2) current and near-current reputation, 3) current levels of support for the basketball (and other) program(s), meaning athletic budget, basketball budget, attendance 4) potential levels of support, meaning endowment, enrollment, and market size.

Almost all of the candidates have a track record of success and have established some level of local support for the program, so the "Big East" tag and the increased revenue should boost them to the next level, from tournament semi-regulars to Sweet Sixteen semi-regulars. I'm looking for surprises in the data--I was surprised at VCU's Top 25 winning percentage.