A fun experiment with WSU vs Louisville

[Jamar Howard 4 President]

Many WSU fans have had a little extra interest in Louisville this year after the Final Four run-in a year ago. Nobody is arguing that Louisville deserves to be ranked ahead of the Shockers (or at least they shouldn’t be) but I thought it would be fun to do a little comparison just to see how the two teams stack up against each other.

I started with each team’s full resume. I then picked off games, one at a time, from each team’s schedule. Both beat Missouri State at home? Yep, toss that game out. WSU beat RPI #163 on the road, Louisville beat #162 on the road? Yep, toss them both out.

As I continued to toss out games where each team had beaten a team of roughly equivalent ability, the list of remaining games got shorter and shorter. In an effort to get the list as short as possible, I tossed out some pairings where the difference was 20, 30, or even 40 spots in the RPI, but in each of these cases, I did so favoring Louisville. For example, Louisville’s worst win was #329. WSU’s was #308. I paired these together despite a 21 spot difference in Louisville’s favor.

So, what did I come up with at the end of all this? Drumroll…

WSU’s remaining wins: @72, 72, @95, @96, @103, 103, @104
Louisville’s remaining wins: @26

WSU’s remaining losses: none
Louisville’s remaining losses: 17, @19, N20, @30, 30

After reducing WSU to 7-0 and Louisville to 1-5, try comparing those two resumes and tell me that WSU shouldn’t be lightyears ahead of Louisville come selection Sunday! Hopefully this is just added fuel for your arguments as silly fools start to come out of the woodwork and start making stupid comments about all the teams that deserve a better seed than the Shox.

[Rosewood]

It's a fun little experiment but it doesn't really tell me anything. I can compare two businesses like oracle and Microsoft and using a selective approach make oracle look better. To totally Godwin your thread, if you compare hitler to the United States and cross out the holocaust compared to the native Americans and the conquering of Poland to westward expansion then Hitler put on a pretty good Olympics!

[Kung Wu]

It's a fun little experiment but it doesn't really tell me anything. I can compare two businesses like oracle and Microsoft and using a selective approach make oracle look better. To totally Godwin your thread, if you compare hitler to the United States and cross out the holocaust compared to the native Americans and the conquering of Poland to westward expansion then Hitler put on a pretty good Olympics!

LMAO

[RoyalShock]

It's a fun little experiment but it doesn't really tell me anything. I can compare two businesses like oracle and Microsoft and using a selective approach make oracle look better. To totally Godwin your thread, if you compare hitler to the United States and cross out the holocaust compared to the native Americans and the conquering of Poland to westward expansion then Hitler put on a pretty good Olympics!

I think you misread the OP. He said Louisville, not Kentucky.

[Jamar Howard 4 President]

It's a fun little experiment but it doesn't really tell me anything. I can compare two businesses like oracle and Microsoft and using a selective approach make oracle look better. To totally Godwin your thread, if you compare hitler to the United States and cross out the holocaust compared to the native Americans and the conquering of Poland to westward expansion then Hitler put on a pretty good Olympics!

Not even close on your analogy, but 1,000,000 points for posting a response that I never in a million years would have seen coming.

[Jamar Howard 4 President]

It's a fun little experiment but it doesn't really tell me anything. I can compare two businesses like oracle and Microsoft and using a selective approach make oracle look better. To totally Godwin your thread, if you compare hitler to the United States and cross out the holocaust compared to the native Americans and the conquering of Poland to westward expansion then Hitler put on a pretty good Olympics!

Rosewood, I'd be curious to hear back from you because I just don’t understand your logic whatsoever. If you want to compare the USA and Hitler and make it into a basketball analogy (good acts = wins, bad acts = losses), the USA is 978-53 while Hitler is 1-53. They have both done some terrible things, but the USA has played a bazillion more “games” and has a bazillion more “wins” on its resume. You are out of your mind to say that you could go one by one down the list for each, crossing off similar items, and be left with anything positive to say about Hitler.

I stand by my analysis and think it is a very useful way to compare 2 teams’ resumes.

Disclaimer: This was not meant to be a political post. Yes, I know some of you are thinking 978-15 is too favorable for the USA. Some of you think it is not favorable enough. Same with the 1-15 mark I picked for Hitler. Please don’t turn this into an argument about the numbers I choose. They were just there to illustrate a point. Pick your own numbers, the point will still remain the same.

[Rosewood]

The only reason I brought in Hitler was to Godwin the discussion from the get-go.

My whole point was that your comparison approach was flawed -- flawed like any argument that brings up Hitler. The elimination of similar games based on RPI or anything else really doesn't tell me anything. The end results don't tell me anything.

[Jamar Howard 4 President]

You say it doesn't tell you anything, but I still don't have a clue why. Eliminating similar games should be a great way to get down to the true differences, and I haven't heard you give a single valid reason why that doesn't work well.

I guess we just agree to disagree on this one unless you can present your argument as something other than "because I say so".

[Rosewood]

It should ... or at least one would think it should, but it doesn't.

For example, you toss both Mo St games out as if somehow those have equal weight. They don't. One was a non-conf warm up game and the other was our senior night. Hell, when we played Mo St the SECOND time it was after we ripped their hearts out almost two months prior. They just aren't comparable games. You then get even deeper in your 'comparisons' that aren't really comparisons at all. You are using a singular statistic and a neighborhood comparison. That doesn't tell me anything.

From there you are committing the fallacy of a false attribution. Because your initial data is meaningless you can't draw any kind of real conclusion from it. Like I said to start my original reply, it is a fun little thought experiment. You get a cute little result but it means nothing.

[Jamar Howard 4 President]

I'll give you that sometimes, pairing #161 and #163 might not be as balanced as first thought. Your example of Missouri State in the non-conf vs Missouri State on Senior night seems fair enough. However, I bet these unbalanced pairings balance themselves out considering they were decided based on an unbiased factor (RPI). There is just as much chance in any pairing that WSU benefited as there is that Louisville did. Wait, check that, I actually built in some pairings that would seemingly benefit Louisville, so if anything, the odds say this analysis was skewed in Louisville's favor. Considering I'm arguing that WSU comes out much better, I don't see that as a reason to discount my argument. If anything, I stacked the deck against WSU and WSU still won.

I appreciate your explanation but just don't agree with it.

[Perezident]

I enjoyed the comparison a bit more than Rosewood I think, but also don't see the value. In fact, if anything, it could easily be used to support the nay-sayers position that we don't deserve recognition because of our "weak" schedule. At the end of your analysis it comes down to Louisville playing tougher opponents, whom they lost too. But again, the nay-sayers would just say WSU would have likely also lost several games if they'd played tougher opponents...

[Rosewood]

I'll give you that sometimes, pairing #161 and #163 might not be as balanced as first thought. Your example of Missouri State in the non-conf vs Missouri State on Senior night seems fair enough. However, I bet these unbalanced pairings balance themselves out considering they were decided based on an unbiased factor (RPI). There is just as much chance in any pairing that WSU benefited as there is that Louisville did. Wait, check that, I actually built in some pairings that would seemingly benefit Louisville, so if anything, the odds say this analysis was skewed in Louisville's favor. Considering I'm arguing that WSU comes out much better, I don't see that as a reason to discount my argument. If anything, I stacked the deck against WSU and WSU still won.

I appreciate your explanation but just don't agree with it.

You're right in that you stacked the selective comparison away from WSU but you started off with a good idea that WSU would come away favorably when looking at this factor. Again, this is one comparison with one selective set of data and I can't draw any real conclusions from it. If this were a science experiment I would be begging for more data before I could come to any real conclusion. All I have here are the results of one particular comparison AND I don't think the comparison was a good one to begin with.

But I'm glad you realize that I was just taking the piss out of you with the whole hitler thing.

[Jamar Howard 4 President]

But I'm glad you realize that I was just taking the piss out of you with the whole hitler thing.

Consider my piss taken. Whoa, that just sounded weird.

[Jamar Howard 4 President]

I enjoyed the comparison a bit more than Rosewood I think, but also don't see the value. In fact, if anything, it could easily be used to support the nay-sayers position that we don't deserve recognition because of our "weak" schedule. At the end of your analysis it comes down to Louisville playing tougher opponents, whom they lost too. But again, the nay-sayers would just say WSU would have likely also lost several games if they'd played tougher opponents...

If someone wants to argue that 1-5 against top 50 competition is better than 7-0 against RPI 70-110, let them. Stupid is as stupid does. There comes a point at which all the necessary arguments have been made and you just have to stop and let people be dumb. For anyone with half a brain, the 7-0 team has a better resume.

[WSUwatcher]

Just out of curiosity, when did "Godwin" become a verb? And what does it mean in this new form?

I've heard and read a lot of English words in my time, and this is a new one on me.