RE: 247sports "College Team Talent" ranking
Great concept from 24/7 and thanks for posting.
A couple things come to mind:
1) Since the AAC as a conference typically attracts about 4 overall 4-star recruits a year, which would translate to an expected total of about 15 for any bloc of full four-year rosters, but has about 30 on this list, this suggests that the transfer portal is working for us, not against us. More talent is trickling down to the G5, or at least to the AAC, than is being siphoned up to the P5 via the portal.
2) The highest-rated G5 team in these talent rankings is Houston at #55. Yet we have seen that a large number of G5 teams are being ranked well above that. For example, eight G5 or G5-Indy were ranked in the final AP top 25 this year.
This suggests one of two things: Either (a) the G5 just has much better coaches on average than the P5, or (b) rather than being an impediment to being ranked higher, G5 status is actually a benefit for teams of our talent profile, not a disadvantage.
Since (a) kind of beggars belief**, I think (b) is far more likely. And, this doesn't just apply with human voters. E.g., in the final 2019 Massey Composite rankings (I'm disregarding 2020 because of too few data points), we see that seven G5 teams were ranked in the final top 25, while fifteen G5 teams were ranked in the top 55, again the level of the highest G5 talent team, Houston.
This suggests that being G5 isn't just an advantage with respect to human voters, it also is an advantage in terms of computer calculations as well.
My speculation about computers? For all the talk about computers frowning on G5 because of Strength of Schedule, probably the biggest factor in their calculations is the same thing human voters value most, just plain old wins and losses. And a G5 team with say Boise or UCF's talent profile is likely to have a significantly better record playing a G5 schedule than a similarly, or even significantly more talented P5 team will playing a P5 schedule. It will therefore finish higher-ranked than even many P5 teams with significantly better talent, not just the same talent. A Mississippi State might have more 4-star players than App State and Tulsa combined, but if the G5 teams each go 10-2 and M-State finishes 6-6, it likely is just not going to be ranked as high as they are.
Of course, talent alone isn't everything, we know that by variances within the G5. Houston is #1 in talent but has not finished high in the AAC at all despite playing the same basic schedule that other AAC teams do. But across G/P categories, we can see the impact.
** You can actually think of an argument for it, but .... on balance not a likely one.
(This post was last modified: 02-02-2021 09:31 PM by quo vadis.)
|
