Dec. 1 is hardly a definitive point in the season, but given the various early tournaments and a scattering of competitive games between major conferences, the results through Dec. 1 are at least suggestive of where the major conferences stand. The Big East is in good shape so far! Villanova is still undefeated and a clear favorite in the league. Xavier and Providence seem to be a bit better than expected and are now ranked in the top 25 in both major polls (AP and Coaches polls), while Butler is ranked in one poll and just outside the top 25 in the other. Georgetown has a somewhat disappointing record to date, but they've played a real meat grinder of a schedule (overconfidence, JTIII?), and have been competitive in their losses to nationally top teams. I expect all 5 of these teams to make the big dance come March, and FWIW, I'll now fearfully predict the order of finish as (drum roll please): Nova first, XU second, a 2 way tie for third, and Providence 5th.

As for the bottom half of the league, Marquette looks to be arriving on the national scene a year earlier than I thought, while Creighton, Seton Hall, and St. John's have all performed a bit better than I expected so far. Any one of those teams could easily upset one of the top 5 if they have a good game. Only lowly Depaul seems to be muddling along, but even they seem to be an above average Division I team.

Bottom Line: The Big East sure looks to me like a top-to-bottom very strong conference again this year. I can't wait to see the first conference vs. conference ratings from KenPom and Sagarin.

I think it's been a good start. I don't think the teams we've beaten this year quite stack up to the teams we beat last year early. Remember by this time last year we had beaten-
#26 VCU
#16 Michigan
#12 UNC
#36 Georgetown(as OOC)
#20 Oklahoma
#39 Stanford
#24 Florida
#42 Notre Dame

and you say well some of those teams weren't good by end of season-
UNC #14
Georgetown #24
Oklahoma #15
Notre Dame #8
VCU #26
SF Austin #30
Murray St #38

5 great wins, and then 2 other really solid ones.

now go to this year-
we have 3 wins against teams getting votes in the AP poll today-
Marquette vs LSU
Providence vs Arizona
Xavier vs Dayton

in the next 8 days- have a chance to get 4 huge wins-
Butler @ #17 Cincy
Seton Hall @ #29 George Washington
Georgetown vs #14 Syracuse
Villanova vs #6 Oklahoma

I will say though- the perception of what the Big East has done is phenominal.

nice win for Butler tonight. But Seton Hall with a tough loss, and Creighton in a war with Arizona St. And St John's got blown out by Fordham.

seeing something on RPI Forecast that is interesting. Right now for the league- they have the projected league OOC SOS being #15 this year. Compare this to last year where the Big East was the top one of all the power conferences- and only behind 5 conferences like the MEAC who do a ton of buy games....

Hopefully the projection is a bit inaccurate- because that could wind up costing the conference big time.

The other thing that has happened-
last year conference went 94-31 .7520 winning percentage OOC
this year conference is 50-17 .7463 winning percentage OOC

So a weaker winning percentage, and a worse SOS. Really need to win up a few of those games. Already have 6 teams with at least 2 losses, and 3 with 3 losses. You just do not want to have many if any teams going into conference play with 4 losses, because that means a 9-9 conference season will not get you into the tourney all that often.

(12-04-2015 02:04 AM)stever20 Wrote:  seeing something on RPI Forecast that is interesting. Right now for the league- they have the projected league OOC SOS being #15 this year. Compare this to last year where the Big East was the top one of all the power conferences- and only behind 5 conferences like the MEAC who do a ton of buy games....

Hopefully the projection is a bit inaccurate- because that could wind up costing the conference big time.

The other thing that has happened-
last year conference went 94-31 .7520 winning percentage OOC
this year conference is 50-17 .7463 winning percentage OOC

So a weaker winning percentage, and a worse SOS. Really need to win up a few of those games. Already have 6 teams with at least 2 losses, and 3 with 3 losses. You just do not want to have many if any teams going into conference play with 4 losses, because that means a 9-9 conference season will not get you into the tourney all that often.

Stever, again are you for real? Last years 94-31 winning percentage of .7530 rounds out to 75%. This years .7463 winning percentage rounds out to guess what? 75%! So your argument is that people should be sounding the alarm because the league has fallen by hundredths of a percentage point? Do you acknowledge the insanity of this, and understand why this is the type of nonsense that rubs people the wrong way. As far as SOS goes, how does this years schedule relative to the P5 stack up against last years numbers. I don't know the answer to that, but assume since you didn't address it, the numbers are similar, and don't promote the sky is falling argument you relentlessly profess.

Actually the winning percentage does translate into 1 fewer win.

The SOS this year projected is #15. The P5's OOC SOS is 1,2,3,5,8. A10 is #10 and MWC is #13. Only ahead of the AAC by 2 slots(they're #17)- by .5025 to .5001. Compared to last year where the BE was ahead of all 7 of those.

and just for the record- last years SOS number was .5145 to show how much lower projected the SOS is for us this year. .5145 would be #5

(12-04-2015 10:51 AM)stever20 Wrote:  and just for the record- last years SOS number was .5145 to show how much lower projected the SOS is for us this year. .5145 would be #5

It fluctuates greatly this time of year with expected results. MU was expected to go 4-14 in conference play 2 weeks ago, and now is expected to go 7-11. On MU's schedule, Wisconsin and LSU have seen expectations drop in 2 weeks from where they were. Granted, MU feasting on cupcakes 5 more times won't help.

(12-04-2015 11:21 AM)MUAvalanche Wrote:  

(12-04-2015 10:51 AM)stever20 Wrote:  and just for the record- last years SOS number was .5145 to show how much lower projected the SOS is for us this year. .5145 would be #5

It fluctuates greatly this time of year with expected results. MU was expected to go 4-14 in conference play 2 weeks ago, and now is expected to go 7-11. On MU's schedule, Wisconsin and LSU have seen expectations drop in 2 weeks from where they were. Granted, MU feasting on cupcakes 5 more times won't help.

There's a ton of cupcakes left for the entire conference...
Villanova- 3 games left 197 or worse out of 6 games.
Xavier- 1 game left 258 Wright St out of 5 games
Butler- 4 games 183 or worse out of 6 games
PC- 3 games 232 or worse out of 5 games
Georgetown- 3 games 178 or worse out of 7 games
Creighton- 4 games 238 or worse out of 6 games
Seton Hall- 4 games 235 or worse out of 5 games
Marquette- 5 games 299 or worse out of 6 games
DePaul- 2 games 207 or worse out of 6 games
St John's- 4 games 162 or worse out of 5 games

So outside of really Xavier, Georgetown, and DePaul- everyone else has at least half their games against cupcakes. I agree that the projections fluctuate some- but with 33 games left out of 57 against teams 162 or worse- that's going to take it's toll on the SOS.

So how do you rank overall conference strength? Is it determined by the number of teams a league has in the top 20, in the top 60 (dance hopefuls), the top 100, the top half of all D1 teams, the overall average rank of all the teams in the league? This AM I looked at the first 3 of these measures, using KenPom instead of RPI -- just because the former is so much better as a true measure of team strength.

The Big 12 clearly looks to be the top conference this year, with 5 top 20 rankings, 6 top 60s, and just 1 of its 10 teams outside the top 100 -- 90% of the league in the top 100! The ACC also has 5 top 20 rankings, and then 10 top 60s, and just 2 of its 15 members outside the top 100 -- 86% of the league in the top 100. Those two leagues have half of the top 20 teams!

After that, the Big 10 and the BEAST seem about equal as the 3rd and 4th best leagues; B10 has 3 top 20 teams, 7 top 60s, and 10 of its 14 members in the top 100 (71%), while we have 2 top 20s, 6 top 60s, and 8 of our 10 members in the top 100 (80%.) The B10/BEAST challenge also ended with 5 wins for each league, so take your pick as to which is the stronger conference this year.

After that, the SEC has more top 20 teams than the Pac12 (2 vs. 1), but the P12 also has 9 of its league members in the top 100 (75%), while the SEC has only 10 of 15 (67%.) So I see them as the the 5th and 6th strongest leagues -- in whichever order you prefer.

After that, the American has 1 top 20 team and 6 (54%) of its 11 members in the top 100, while the A10 has no top 20 teams, but 7 (50%) its teams in the top 100. No other league has more than a third of its members in the top 100.

Also, 55 of the top 60 KenPoms this morning were owned by just these 8 top conferences, so there may have been a lot of upsets this year, but there's also still a pretty clear separation between the haves and the have-nots, at least when comparing conferences and not individual teams.

So finally, NO, Stever, the sky is clearly not falling on the BEAST quite yet. We're still headed for 4-6 teams getting into the big dance next March. The fact that our cupcake victims have been collectively a bit worse than other cupcakes is pretty much irrelevant to analyzing conference strength.

true about the cupcakes, but where that can hurt is in getting teams in the tourney at the 5/6 line. I mean, if Marquette is on the bubble, they're going to get really hurt because they have such a poor OOC schedule. Same goes with Seton Hall.

Also, the weaker SOS as a whole for the conference does impact the RPI. Your opponents opponents count 25% to the RPI. So for someone playing Marquette, you are getting 25% of a pretty brutal OOC schedule. The RPI doesn't matter quite as much as it used to, but still it does have some impact.

It's going to be a real stretch to get 6 in. Creighton, Marquette, and Seton Hall- going to be a tough get in. All 3 have OOC SOS between 260-320. For any of the 3 to get in they're going to have to get at least 10 conference wins. With how tough the top 5 teams are(and the other 2 in the group)- going to be a really tough thing...
look at this-
Seton Hall. Goes 9-3 OOC(losing to Wichita). goes 9-9 in conference play. 18-12. 80 projected RPI
Creighton. Goes 9-4 OOC(losing to Oklahoma). Goes 9-9 in conference play. 18-13. 82 projected RPI
Marquette. Goes 10-3 OOC(losing to Wisconsin). Goes 9-9 in conference play. 19-12. 97 projected RPI

none of those 3 RPI's are anywhere near good enough to get in the tourney. Marquette may have to go 11-7, the others 10-8 to have a chance.

And then if they are winning- they can't take many wins from Georgetown. Georgetown has 3 losses already with a game left with UConn. If Georgetown is the one at 9-9, win over UConn and 19-12 pretty safe at 43 projected RPI. But a loss to UConn, and it's a projected RPI of 53.4.

Funny you should focus on those 3 teams. Both XU and Providence have been a bit better than expected so far, but those 3 (Creighton, Marquette, and Seton Hall) have all performed MUCH better than I thought they might at the beginning of the season. I do not think it at all improbable to think that at least one of them might make the tourney. All 3 are capable of upsetting one or more of the teams you and I think are the top half of the conference. My pick among them is Marquette -- Ellenson is the real deal, and he has a great front court partner in Fischer. I think they're gonna surprise a few folks after Xmas.

BTW, Villanova's big loss yesterday may not have meant much re KenPom (they went all the way down to #5 there), but it does indicate that Nova is very beatable, and I expect that the XU, Georgetown, Butler, and Providence teams are all pretty enthused about that today. Nova is good, but no longer a prohibitive favorite in my mind.

Creighton and Marquette both have poor OOC losses that could easily doom them. And both of them have such bad OOC schedules, that they really couldn't afford to lose those.

And sorry- pretty close to no way that more than 1 of them will get in the tourney. your 6th place team will be 9-9 almost certainly. 7th place team same thing, if not worse. None of those 3 at 8-10 would be even remotely close. Even if they steal a win.

You are right about what Nova's loss means. It'll be interesting if the teams in the BE can take what Oklahoma, and NC State, and UConn, and Syracuse 2 years ago did in beating Nova. I think Butler and Xavier match up better with Nova this year quite frankly. Georgetown beat them last year.

In Ken Pom, you can see where it's going to be harder to get 6 in this year....

comparing where teams are now vs where they were on Dec 31 last year.
Villanova 5 now vs 6 last year +1
Xavier 11 now vs 28 last year +17
Butler 27 now vs 37 last year +10
Georgetown 28 now vs 30 last year +2
Providence 41 now vs 50 last year +9
Seton Hall 53 now vs 41 last year -12
Creighton 67 now vs 79 last year +12
Marquette 80 now vs 103 last year +23
DePaul 130 now vs 204 last year +74
St John's 186 now vs 16 last year -170

last year had 7 top 50 teams entering conference play, then #79.
this year have only 5 top 50's plus 53 67 and 80.

top teams a bit more separated this year vs last year.

Also DePaul/St John's at total of 316 a bit worse than Marquette/DePaul were lasty ear at 307.

Stever, look at your own data! 8 of our 10 teams are currently ranked BETTER than they were last year. Don't worry; be happy. We may or may not get 6 teams into the dance next March; time will tell. In the meantime, try to enjoy the season occasionally; to repeat a comment I made to an earlier post of yours -- "...the sky is clearly not falling on the BEAST quite yet."

The thing is, IMO, this set up- with more separation- is actually a GOOD thing. I'm of the opinion that I'd rather have 5 teams get in with stronger seeds than 6 teams getting in, with not as strong seeds for the top teams and then PIG type seeds for the lower teams.

The more teams that get into the tournament, the better. More tournament credits, more opportunity for a school to make a run in March.

Six chances are better than five, five better than four, etc.

(12-14-2015 03:52 PM)GoldenWarrior11 Wrote:  The more teams that get into the tournament, the better. More tournament credits, more opportunity for a school to make a run in March.

Six chances are better than five, five better than four, etc.

I don't know that I agree with that. If I had a choice between say a team getting a 6 seed and another team not making it, or the other team making it, but the other team is now a 8 seed, I think I'd rather have the 6 seed.

More schools in the tournament = more $ for league members to share. I'll take more teams with lower seeds over fewer teams with better seeds.