2024-25 Men's College Basketball Rankings #3 - Thru 11/28/24

A little bit of a shakeup with Gonzaga losing in the first round at the Battle 4 Atlantis, and UConn somehow going 0 for 3 in Maui. Kansas beat Duke in a high profile game in Vegas, and the rankings get jumbled quite a bit.

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 11/28/2024. 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. I expect UConn, the two time champions to get back in the field but they are 4-3, and that can't be unseen - at least for now.

Bored by Parentside - On Being Thankful and the 11/24/24 College Football Rankings

An Annual Tradition

Happy Thanksgiving to all who celebrate. Of course, who doesn't? For me, this has been a chance to visit my parents. One of the perks of being a first generation is that we have not been particularly tethered to any specific Thanksgiving tradition - well besides going to my parents' house. We have done more traditional Indian Food, we have tried interpretations of Thanksgiving. Fortunately, my mom is a terrific cook - in almost all forms she chooses to mess around.

I wish I had something profound to say about the annual experience. Frankly it is boring. When you are in a house in the exurbs - or suburbs (if the orienting city is Worcester) - it is just a hassle to drive to anything hopping. But it is hard to sit there in the house mostly focused on what is on television or doomscrolling or board-gaming or whatever people do. We have broken the cycle a couple of times - a trip to Hawaii was most notable - but for the most part, it's family. This year was a particular ordeal, with an ill timed case of the flu popping up and then my car deciding to not work just when I was trying to get an early start.

But I've also been thinking about the boring predictability. Yeah some of these trips feel like something I could sleep through, but at the same time is the boring predictability a bad thing? My parents can drive me crazy but that just makes me like any person who has had parents. It is a version that I have a lot of experience with. So, can I be thankful for it? Heck, even sitting here blogging while watching HBO? When I think about times away, attempting to be a parent, wondering whether I am good at anything - sometimes whether I am worthy of, well, anything, it is nice to just be in a place where I can just have the assurance of not having to BE anything or to prove anything. There is also of course, the joy I see in them to see us, or their grandbabies, and a real sense that these occasions are more finite. This feels like home. You can be at home in more than one place, right.

The Rankings and the Bracket for the Week

Football heads into rivalry week. Alabama's face plan against Oklahoma puts their season into serious peril. First, the 134. The method is here.

Turning the Rankings into Playoffs

Of course the rankings matter to a point. What does that mean bracketwise?

Automatic Bids

• Big Ten: Oregon (1)

• SEC: Texas (2)

• ACC: SMU (4)

• Group of Five: Boise State (6)

At Large Bids

• Ohio State (3)

• Penn State (5)

• Indiana (7)

• Georgia (8)

• BYU (9)

• Notre Dame (10)

• Miami-FL (11)

First 4 teams out

• Alabama (12)

• Tennessee (13)

• Ole Miss (14)

• Clemson (15)

It is weird to consider a 12 team bracket without Alabama, but here we are. Heading into rivalry week, Texas/Texas A&M is the game of the week for a spot in the SEC title game. Texas A&M shocking the world and winning the SEC would move a team off the bubble. In real life, Notre Dame is not on the bubble. It is funny how bad losses can matter less in some cases than other.

2024-25 Men's College Basketball Rankings #2 - Thru 11/21/24

The rankings were not shaken up ALL that much. The Thanksgiving holiday tournaments next week will create some fun churn. But until then, here we are.

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. 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 11/14/2024. With so few games, this is genuinely hilarious. 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.