I was off doing the tour of fall foliage in southeastern New Mexico and west Texas, and I didn't have time to make a post after the Louisiana Tech game. The news wasn't good in any case. The late-game 42-28 loss to Tech yielded a Massey performance rating of 29.11, while the turnover-plagued 52-21 loss to UAB produced a 12.03, the second-lowest game of the season. Here's how the season has gone so far:
vs.Stanford: 7.61
@Texas El-Paso: 42.04
@Houston: 25.13
Florida International: 34.62
@Pittsburgh: 30.24
Army: 13.06
@Texas-San Antonio: 32.24
Louisiana Tech: 29.11
@Alabama-Birmingham: 12.03
Here are the numbers for all Conference USA members:
Team, Median, Mean, Standard Deviation:
1.
Florida Atlantic 60.31 58.32 14.47
2.
Marshall 49.40 53.32 13.52
3.
Southern Mississippi 46.22 43.33 11.47
4.
North Texas 44.81 43.64 12.44
5.
Louisiana Tech 43.34 43.62 9.37
6.
Texas-San Antonio 41.85 44.77 8.15
7.
Alabama-Birmingham 41.65 39.86 14.28
8.
Western Kentucky 41.29 39.80 9.41
9.
Middle Tennessee 41.03 42.53 16.20
10.
Old Dominion 36.61 33.93 11.18
11.
Charlotte 34.48 28.62 13.18
12.
Florida International 32.34 38.69 15.28
13. Rice 29.11 25.12 11.69
14.
Texas-El Paso 18.80 22.10 11.76
FAU beat Marshall 30-25 to stay on top of the East with a 5-0 record, the only team left unbeaten in C-USA play. The Burrowing Owls have to play at Louisiana Tech before their final showdown for the East title against neighbor FIU. In the west, North Texas has all but wrapped up the West crown with only the two worst teams in the division, UTEP and Rice, left on the C-USA schedule. The Mean Green have managed to tightrope their way through C-USA play, going 5-1 despite being outscored by nine points in those six games.
This week is Homecoming for Rice, although it's not likely to end on a happy note. The opponent is Southern Miss, who beat the Owls 65-10 the last time it was the Homecoming opponent two years ago. The numbers don't suggest a different outcome of the game this year. The Golden Eagles have shown themselves to be vulnerable this year, registering sub-30 games at home against UNT and UAB, but overall their numbers are higher than Rice's. A U-test shows a significant difference at the 5% level, so it looks like the Owls' chance for another win this season will have to wait for next week.
(10-28-2017 02:03 AM)WRCisforgotten79 Wrote: With C-USA teams, Massey is an outlier when compared with other computer ratings, such as mine. You'd be better served by using Massey's composite rankings.
Making the calculations that I do requires a system which can produce an expected margin of victory in a matchup between two teams. The Massey composite is a simple ordinal ranking incapable of doing this.