Would Miller Have Left Dayton If They Were In The BE?

[Bill Marsh]

It appears that North Carolina ran up the score on their opponents more frequently (or by a bigger margin) than Marquette did in the 1970's, or perhaps North Carolina had a tougher Strength of Schedule than Marquette did during the 1970's. It could well be a combination of all three of these factors.

The ESPN/Sagarin All-Time Rankings

We know what you’re thinking: How in the world did UCLA not come out on top? Well, as dominant as the Bruins were under John Wooden, they didn’t even rank as a top-40 program in the 1940s. Meanwhile, Kentucky hasn’t finished lower than 10th in any decade. We’re guessing you’re nearly as shocked by Northwestern’s No. 77 ranking—pretty remarkable for a team that’s never made the NCAA Tournament. But with eight Big Ten programs in the Top 20, the Wildcats have faced some of college basketball’s toughest conference slates for more than seven decades. Just goes to show how much Strength of Schedule matters.

ABOUT THE RANKINGS: CHESS (named for the system of rating chess players) considers only a school’s wins and losses. PREDICTOR considers
only its scoring margin. RATING is a combination of the two.

The Top 40 Programs of Each Decade

The 1970's:

NO. TEAM • RATING • CHESS

1 UCLA • 96.31 • 96.79
2 North Carolina • 91.70 • 90.93
3 Marquette • 90.49 • 90.72
4 Kentucky • 89.80 • 89.78
5 Indiana • 89.16 • 89.03
6 NC State • 88.98 • 88.84
7 Maryland • 87.38 • 87.10
8 Notre Dame • 87.23 • 86.50
9 Louisville • 86.84 • 86.50
10 Purdue • 86.47 • 85.81

In any event, it appears that you are getting overly emotional about a very small difference in RATINGs, and drawing conclusions which you cannot prove.

What cannot be disputed is that Marquette and North Carolina had all-time great basketball teams during the 70's and that Al McGuire was a great coach.

Using scoring margin for a list of all times is a HUGE fallacy

Why? It's a standard power rating formula.

[Fieldhouse Flyer]

Please allow me to shed a bit more light on the ESPN/Sagarin RATINGs, which lack a full explanation of their methodology. Those of you who do not like numbers or analytics should give this post a miss.

UNC went 239-65 during the 1970s. During that same period Marquette went 251-41.

Outside of UCLA 70s and UK 50s no program has had a better decade win percentage than Marquette in the 70s.

Just goes to show how much Strength of Schedule matters.

ABOUT THE RANKINGS: CHESS considers only a school’s wins and losses. PREDICTOR considers only its scoring margin. RATING is a combination of the two.

NO. TEAM • RATING • CHESS
2 North Carolina • 91.70 • 90.93
3 Marquette • 90.49 • 90.72

No one is disputing that Marquette (.851) had a significantly better win percentage than North Carolina (.786) did during the 1970’s, but North Carolina had a very slightly higher CHESS value than Marquette for the 1970’s.

From this information, it can be logically deduced that CHESS incorporates an unspecified Strength of Schedule quantification, and that North Carolina had a tougher Strength of Schedule than Marquette during the 1970’s.

The ESPN/Sagarin Tables do not provide explicit values for PREDICTOR, but we know that each team’s PREDICTOR values are incorporated in their ESPN/Sagarin RATINGs. Next, let’s compare the differences between the two teams’ CHESS values and their RATING values:

CHESS: 90.93 – 90.72 = 0.21

RATING: 91.70 – 90.49 = 1.21

We know that CHESS does not incorporate scoring margin and RATING does include scoring margin.

From this information, it can be logically deduced that North Carolina had a greater scoring margin during the 1970’s than Marquette did, meaning that North Carolina ran up the score on their opponents more frequently (or by a bigger margin) than Marquette did in the 1970's.

[Scoring margin] is a standard power rating formula.

Correct. The Kenpom ratings, Sagarin ratings, ESPN's BPI ratings, and every college basketball team evaluation metric other than RPI and raw W-L records incorporate scoring margin in their formulas. In fact, the NCAA Tournament selection committee has explicitly stated that they are relying more and more on so-called advanced metrics than RPI Rankings, solely because RPI Rankings do not consider scoring margin.

[MUBoxer]

Which makes sense for formulas to do now because the style of play focuses on scoring. But let's take a team from the 70s or 60s that runs a four corner offense essentially taking the air out of the ball the whole game and naturally the scoring is going to be lower just based on possession count.

I don't claim to be an expert but if scoring margin is what the factor is that ESPN used to make this order then I'm not going to lose sleep over it and you can go on beating your chest about being the 7th best team for two decades on this list.

[Bill Marsh]

Which makes sense for formulas to do now because the style of play focuses on scoring. But let's take a team from the 70s or 60s that runs a four corner offense essentially taking the air out of the ball the whole game and naturally the scoring is going to be lower just based on possession count.

I don't claim to be an expert but if scoring margin is what the factor is that ESPN used to make this order then I'm not going to lose sleep over it and you can go on beating your chest about being the 7th best team for two decades on this list.

Taking the air out of the ball and running a 4 corner offense was the exception, not the rule, in the 60s and 70s. There were times when scoring was significantly higher than it is today. We had Pete Maravich scoring 45 ppg 3 years in a row for goodness sakes. And he wasn't unique in that era, just the best.

The shot clock is not the only factor in how the game is played. Defenses today are better and more sophisticated as a result of the defensive revolution led by Georgetown in the 80s. Scoring is down in the NBA Where the shot clock is nothing new. The game is just played differently at both levels.

Power ratings that use point differential were originally developed for the benefit of gamblers. If they weren't useful, they would have been quickly abandoned. The point spread differential is used to control for both SOS and style of play. It doesn't favor teams that play an up tempo style of play. Most have controls for games with exceptionally high scoring margins.

I'm wondering what the alternative is. W-L % in college is far more misleading because of different schedules with different SOS.

[Fieldhouse Flyer]

You can go on beating your chest about being the 7th best team for two decades on this list.

I wasn't beating my chest about anything. I posted factual information to refute this post, which is provably incorrect:

Dayton arguably just had their best 4 year stretch in school history.

[_lh]

Can't we just create a thread for all of the VCU, Dayton and Wichita State fans to talk to themselves and not continually hijacks threads about how the Big East is making a mistake by not inviting them?

You can't argue with crazy.

Agreed. The VCU and UD trolls got to go but if the admin won't ban them or delete their non sense off topic or redundant posts and threads, a separate thread where it can all be lumped is probably best.

The BE has never needed to add UD or VCU and won't have a need to add UD or VCU in the future so there is really no reason to discuss it except that UD and VCU fans keep brining it up. The BE passed on both programs and continues to pass, deal with it and move on.

[billyjack]

Marquette comfortably beat UNC in the National Finals in '77. So the most accomplished UNC team of the 70's lost head-to-head in their most important game of the decade, to Marquette. The game was basically over late in the first half.

Also, wasn't it 1970 that 26-3 Marquette chose the NIT cuz the NCAA was going to screw them in their bracket matchup? So Marquette made 10 NCAA's in each year of the 70's. They just decided not to accept all 10.

Also, Marquette was 4-2 vs the ACC in the 70's. Lost to NC State in the 74 Finals, and #6 Duke in 1979. Beat Virginia and #11 Clemson in the mid-70's. Beat Wake Forest and UNC in the 77 NCAA's.

[stever20]

Can't we just create a thread for all of the VCU, Dayton and Wichita State fans to talk to themselves and not continually hijacks threads about how the Big East is making a mistake by not inviting them?

You can't argue with crazy.

Agreed. The VCU and UD trolls got to go but if the admin won't ban them or delete their non sense off topic or redundant posts and threads, a separate thread where it can all be lumped is probably best.

The BE has never needed to add UD or VCU and won't have a need to add UD or VCU in the future so there is really no reason to discuss it except that UD and VCU fans keep brining it up. The BE passed on both programs and continues to pass, deal with it and move on.

So you don't think in 8 years when this TV deal is up that Fox will say to keep getting 4 million per school per year, we must have more volume? That's the biggest thing that folks here want to ignore. 10 may be great for Big East Fans but I'm not so sure about Fox liking having at the most only 5 games to choose from each game round. So I think that's something that really has got to be watched in about 6 years. And lets say VCU keeps on for 6 years- making tourney each year. That would be 13 straight tournament appearances with at least 3 coaches.

[Xavier4036]

So you don't think in 8 years when this TV deal is up that Fox will say to keep getting 4 million per school per year, we must have more volume? That's the biggest thing that folks here want to ignore. 10 may be great for Big East Fans but I'm not so sure about Fox liking having at the most only 5 games to choose from each game round. So I think that's something that really has got to be watched in about 6 years. And lets say VCU keeps on for 6 years- making tourney each year. That would be 13 straight tournament appearances with at least 3 coaches.

FOX is already selling multiple games per year to CBS. Why do you think they need more volume if they are already selling their current volume? Plus add in the addition of the Big 10 - FOX isn't going to need or want more volume.

Further, why do people think any of the teams that their fans come on here to bring up would move the needle AT ALL in terms of viewership? If the opportunity to add a UConn or Notre Dame were to materialize - yea, FOX would be all over that. To add a VCU or Dayton or SLU or Witchita State? None of those schools move the needle in terms of viewership.

[Bill Marsh]

So you don't think in 8 years when this TV deal is up that Fox will say to keep getting 4 million per school per year, we must have more volume? That's the biggest thing that folks here want to ignore. 10 may be great for Big East Fans but I'm not so sure about Fox liking having at the most only 5 games to choose from each game round. So I think that's something that really has got to be watched in about 6 years. And lets say VCU keeps on for 6 years- making tourney each year. That would be 13 straight tournament appearances with at least 3 coaches.

FOX is already selling multiple games per year to CBS. Why do you think they need more volume if they are already selling their current volume? Plus add in the addition of the Big 10 - FOX isn't going to need or want more volume.

Further, why do people think any of the teams that their fans come on here to bring up would move the needle AT ALL in terms of viewership? If the opportunity to add a UConn or Notre Dame were to materialize - yea, FOX would be all over that. To add a VCU or Dayton or SLU or Witchita State? None of those schools move the needle in terms of viewership.

Stever made an excellent point. Moreover, more members means more eyeballs interested in Big East games even when their school isn't directly involved. Even if they don't broadcast any more games, I expect that they'd like the games they do broadcast to get higher ratings than they have been getting. VCU, for example, has an enrollment of 30,000. That's a lot of potential viewers from students, families, and alums. They're the largest public university in a state with a population of 8 million.