2024-25 Men's College Basketball Rankings #13 - Thru 02/16/25

Auburn wins the first Iron Bowl of the season over Alabama. Seton Hall defeating UConn - at least for me - keeps this very perilous. But all season the industry has ranked UConn higher than I have. Their team strength numbers are good but you gotta win the games to me.

The Method

Basically this is the same as what I am doing for football. The components.

1. Bradley-Terry model using a small margin of victory component. This is more or less a logistic regression. A team gets 1 point for having a better rating than a competitor.

2. Head to Head record. A team gets as many points as net wins over a competitor. (no negative points for a team with a losing record)

3. Record vs Common Opponents. A pairwin here is worth 1 point.

4. Regular season leader. During the season we will use the highest rated team with the fewest conference losses (then the team with most pairwins based on criteria 1-3 as a tiebreaker). A pairwin here is worth 0.5 points. Based on how the committee seeded teams last year, 0.5 points fit the data better than 0 or 1.

   
   

For each component, a team is compared to the other 365 teams (all non D1 are treated as a single opponent) and points are awarded. Whichever head to head has more points counts a pairwin.

For example: Team A has a better rating than Team B, but they had no head to head, Team B did better against common opponents, and Team A was the regular season champ of its conference. In this example Team A has 1.5 points (1 for rating, 0.5 for reg season champ). Team B has 1 point for common record. Team A would get the overall pairwin.

Half pairwins are used for ties. The team with the most pairwins is the #1 overall team. If there is a tie in pairwins, the Bradley-Terry rating is used as a tiebreaker.

The Field of 68

Through the games of 02/02/2025. Now with some good teams playing each other, at least the field is looking like a plausible tournament field. The SoS is based on the perspective of a .500 team (using the Bradley-Terry rankings as weights)

The Bubble

The first 4 teams are in the field with byes to the Round of 64. Teams 5-8 are the play-in teams. The others are out in order. As you can see, the model is pretty dumb right now, but it is fun to watch it get smarter.

2024-25 Men's College Basketball Rankings #12 - Thru 02/09/25

No big preamble - but Saint John's taking a hold in the Big East is the obvious big story. Clemson had a real whiplash week losing to Georgia Tech in a triple OT thriller but then taking down Duke. They still look like a tough out in March.

The Method

Basically this is the same as what I am doing for football. The components.

1. Bradley-Terry model using a small margin of victory component. This is more or less a logistic regression. A team gets 1 point for having a better rating than a competitor.

2. Head to Head record. A team gets as many points as net wins over a competitor. (no negative points for a team with a losing record)

3. Record vs Common Opponents. A pairwin here is worth 1 point.

4. Regular season leader. During the season we will use the highest rated team with the fewest conference losses (then the team with most pairwins based on criteria 1-3 as a tiebreaker). A pairwin here is worth 0.5 points. Based on how the committee seeded teams last year, 0.5 points fit the data better than 0 or 1.

   
   

For each component, a team is compared to the other 365 teams (all non D1 are treated as a single opponent) and points are awarded. Whichever head to head has more points counts a pairwin.

For example: Team A has a better rating than Team B, but they had no head to head, Team B did better against common opponents, and Team A was the regular season champ of its conference. In this example Team A has 1.5 points (1 for rating, 0.5 for reg season champ). Team B has 1 point for common record. Team A would get the overall pairwin.

Half pairwins are used for ties. The team with the most pairwins is the #1 overall team. If there is a tie in pairwins, the Bradley-Terry rating is used as a tiebreaker.

The Field of 68

Through the games of 02/02/2025. Now with some good teams playing each other, at least the field is looking like a plausible tournament field. The SoS is based on the perspective of a .500 team (using the Bradley-Terry rankings as weights)

The Bubble

The first 4 teams are in the field with byes to the Round of 64. Teams 5-8 are the play-in teams. The others are out in order. As you can see, the model is pretty dumb right now, but it is fun to watch it get smarter.

2024-25 Men's College Basketball Rankings #11 - Thru 02/02/25

UConn gets a much needed win and Duke-Carolina looked like the sort of mismatch you'd expect.

The Method

Basically this is the same as what I am doing for football. The components.

1. Bradley-Terry model using a small margin of victory component. This is more or less a logistic regression. A team gets 1 point for having a better rating than a competitor.

2. Head to Head record. A team gets as many points as net wins over a competitor. (no negative points for a team with a losing record)

3. Record vs Common Opponents. A pairwin here is worth 1 point.

4. Regular season leader. During the season we will use the highest rated team with the fewest conference losses (then the team with most pairwins based on criteria 1-3 as a tiebreaker). A pairwin here is worth 0.5 points. Based on how the committee seeded teams last year, 0.5 points fit the data better than 0 or 1.

   
   

For each component, a team is compared to the other 365 teams (all non D1 are treated as a single opponent) and points are awarded. Whichever head to head has more points counts a pairwin.

For example: Team A has a better rating than Team B, but they had no head to head, Team B did better against common opponents, and Team A was the regular season champ of its conference. In this example Team A has 1.5 points (1 for rating, 0.5 for reg season champ). Team B has 1 point for common record. Team A would get the overall pairwin.

Half pairwins are used for ties. The team with the most pairwins is the #1 overall team. If there is a tie in pairwins, the Bradley-Terry rating is used as a tiebreaker.

The Field of 68

Through the games of 02/02/2025. Now with some good teams playing each other, at least the field is looking like a plausible tournament field. The SoS is based on the perspective of a .500 team (using the Bradley-Terry rankings as weights)

The Bubble

The first 4 teams are in the field with byes to the Round of 64. Teams 5-8 are the play-in teams. The others are out in order. As you can see, the model is pretty dumb right now, but it is fun to watch it get smarter.