2014-15 National Rankings

[shoxtop]

Who missed out on the top 25 that deserved it more than Iowa?
Who in the top 5 is not an obvious choice to rank ahead of WSU?

I don't see much separating us and nova even before last night. And I'd have to go with Sdsu over iowa. Although admittedly I will always choose the mid.

[Rlh04d]

Your comparing scores leaves important information out so I'll give you some more comparative scores. You evidentially think that KU is deserving of their lofty ranking, but they lost to RPI 88 (ken Pom)Temple by 25. Temple lost to atulsa team who we beat by 20 pts. One Loyola bad game/loss should not negate a good win for the Shockers.

You evidently (?) think that I'm arguing my opinion. I'm not. I'm arguing the perception this conference creates for voters. When top teams in the conference take buy games and get annihilated, it makes it extraordinarily difficult to expect voters to take those teams seriously. Our games against UNI WILL be taken seriously because UNI, even in losses, proved their respectability (OT @ VCU). But then look at the other potential top-half Valley teams: Loyola and their ridiculous buy-game loss @ Michigan State that they NEVER should have played, Indiana State's wonderful 4-8 record against a bad SOS, Evansville playing the #223 noncon SOS, etc. UNI and Illinois State were the only two Valley teams that could be taken seriously as credible opponents for us, regardless of RPI, and Illinois State has done everything to damage that since the conference season started.

Pointing back to Tulsa is irrelevant, since that was months ago, and I have absolutely no clue where you got Kansas from, other than just making it obvious that some fans here obsess over KU WAY more than could ever be judged healthy. KU was not mentioned in my post and there is no conceivable way anyone could pull even a vague reference to KU out of what I said.

My point is entirely that we all know the majority of our games in the Valley won't be taken seriously by voters, and it's because the teams we're playing in the Valley continuously, year after year, shoot themselves in the foot, so that even when they ARE good teams (Loyola this year), they've already found a way to be written off by the national media as legitimate opponents.

(As for KU, I don't know if they deserve their current ranking, but 15-3 against D1 comp with 6 top 50 RPI wins, the #2 noncon SOS, and the #1 overall SOS? Yeah, I'm cool with a pretty "lofty" ranking for them.)

[Rlh04d]

Unfortunately, that's largely true.

I suspect if anyone actually saw WSU smother Evansville, they'd have to be a little impressed, but how many did who write or comment nationally, or who vote? And if all you see are the scores and what some of the teams do -- like Loyola losing at Drake, for example -- it's not a very good look.

WSU (and the UNIs even more so) are going to have to provide their own best PR via what they do on the court.

Unfortunately, what has Evansville done to make anyone outside of the Valley take them seriously enough to be impressed by us smothering them?

Their win over UNI is all I can think of, and that just brings most voters back into a circular logic loop where they're more likely to devalue UNI than value Evansville.

Ultimately, they were 2-2 against RPI top 150 competition, with no top 100 RPI wins and a pathetic SOS, out of conference. That's not the kind of performance that makes national media take them seriously.

[shockmonster]

My point was not to defend the MVC, but to point out that there is a Power 5 bias, even by supporters/apologists of our league that has gotten worse because of modern day football and espn. This bias seeps into thoughts without you and JHFP even knowing it. And I think that all wins/losses should matter, not just recent ones b

[jdshock]

Who missed out on the top 25 that deserved it more than Iowa?
Who in the top 5 is not an obvious choice to rank ahead of WSU?

I think Iowa is a reasonable pick to be in the top 25. I think I might rank Stanford and San Diego St over Iowa. In particular San Diego St has played well. Other than their loss to Arizona they have only lost on the road. They played Arizona close and beat Utah and Wyoming at Wyoming. I think it'd be tough to rank Wichita State much higher than 9 or 10 right now. Caveat: If you rank based on "eye-test" type metrics, Wichita State is playing really well right now and I could see an "eye-test" argument for higher than that.

The good news is that no matter how weak the MVC is, if we were to get through it with another gaudy record, I think we are going to be happy with our seed in the NCAA tournament.

[Jamar Howard 4 President]

I don't see much separating us and nova even before last night. And I'd have to go with Sdsu over iowa. Although admittedly I will always choose the mid.

What argument could there possibly have been for ranking WSU ahead of Nova in yesterday's poll?

Villanova had:
better KenPom ranking
better RPI ranking
better W/L record
better SOS
better quality wins

Villanova was a road OT loss to a top 50 team away from being undefeated when the voters submitted their ballots.

San Diego State and Iowa is a fair comparison. I'll admit that fair minded folks could go either way there. Like I said, I didn't necessarily agree Iowa should have been top 25, but it is at least a defensible position to take. Saying WSU should have been above Villanova is 100 times less defensible.

[Jamar Howard 4 President]

Caveat: If you rank based on "eye-test" type metrics, Wichita State is playing really well right now and I could see an "eye-test" argument for higher than that.

I liked most of the rest of your post, but this quote stood out to me. I know wins at Loyola and Evansville are nice, but neither is a top 100 KenPom team. I'm pretty sure most of this board would laugh at me if I tried to say that a BCS team was playing really well recently and used wins like that as my evidence.

Yes, the Shox are playing better of late, but wins over teams that may very well not even make the NIT, even if they were indeed road wins, have not suddenly convinced me that they deserve top 10 consideration. Instead, they simply eased my concerns about the Shox being a top 20 team.

One final comment. I've seen a lot of bashing of North Carolina recently on this board as being overrated. They have beaten a top 10 team at home and a top 50 team on the road in just the last 2 weeks. If WSU did that, this board would be clamoring about how WSU is on a roll, playing well, and totally deserving of a better ranking than they currently have. The double standard becomes evident when a team like North Carolina does that yet it gets completely dismissed as insignificant.

[Rlh04d]

My point was not to defend the MVC, but to point out that there is a Power 5 bias, even by supporters/apologists of our league that has gotten worse because of modern day football and espn. This bias seeps into thoughts without you and JHFP even knowing it. And I think that all wins/losses should matter, not just recent ones b

That's a weak argument that lets you basically say "I'm right and you're wrong because you're biased and I'm not. And I don't have to prove it, so there."

I'm a numbers guy. Always have been, always going to be. Have been since I was a kid evaluating baseball statistics, got my degrees in economics, and it's what I do for a living now. You can argue against the value of the stats I use all you want, but if you're just going to argue that I'm "biased," you damn well better back that up with something. Numbers are a hell of a lot less biased than your gut feelings, or selective use of transitive property.

I can just as easily, if not more easily, argue that you have an anti-P5 bias that seeps into your thoughts without you even knowing it, because of jealousy.

Loyola, BTW, also has losses to KenPom's #145 and #238 teams. Would you be more comfortable if I used those reasons to discredit Loyola? My interest isn't in discrediting them, it's pointing out the obvious reason why national media pundits who don't particularly value advanced statistics would see Loyola's performance against a name brand that's struggling and naturally discredit them as such.

Absolutely all wins should matter. Our win over Tulsa is a big win and is very relevant. But it has very little relevance to our movement up or down this week because it happened in NOVEMBER. The discussion here is about rankings NOW not rankings in November. It will again be evaluated fairly during the NCAA selection time. A point where we will absolutely receive a lower seed than Kansas, because the numbers favor Kansas over us. Don't like it? We should have beaten GW. That's what happens when you get limited opportunities against top teams and fail to capitalize.

[Cdizzle]

One final comment. I've seen a lot of bashing of North Carolina recently on this board as being overrated. They have beaten a top 10 team at home and a top 50 team on the road in just the last 2 weeks. If WSU did that, this board would be clamoring about how WSU is on a roll, playing well, and totally deserving of a better ranking than they currently have. The double standard becomes evident when a team like North Carolina does that yet it gets completely dismissed as insignificant.

I agree. Though you did conveniently leave out the part where UNC also lost during that time.

[jdshock]

I liked most of the rest of your post, but this quote stood out to me. I know wins at Loyola and Evansville are nice, but neither is a top 100 KenPom team. I'm pretty sure most of this board would laugh at me if I tried to say that a BCS team was playing really well recently and used wins like that as my evidence.

Yes, the Shox are playing better of late, but wins over teams that may very well not even make the NIT, even if they were indeed road wins, have not suddenly convinced me that they deserve top 10 consideration. Instead, they simply eased my concerns about the Shox being a top 20 team.

One final comment. I've seen a lot of bashing of North Carolina recently on this board as being overrated. They have beaten a top 10 team at home and a top 50 team on the road in just the last 2 weeks. If WSU did that, this board would be clamoring about how WSU is on a roll, playing well, and totally deserving of a better ranking than they currently have. The double standard becomes evident when a team like North Carolina does that yet it gets completely dismissed as insignificant.

Eye-test rankings are dumb and have no meaning.

I just meant there isn't a way to rank us much higher than top 10 unless you are using the eye-test. We looked good against Evansville. Evansville may not be a good team but some of the elite teams this year have struggled against bad teams. There might be a sports critic out there who thought based on their instincts-or whatever it is eye-tests are based on-that Wichita State has recently been playing better than Notre Dame, Wisconsin, or Iowa State. Like you said, though, we laugh at people who use the eye-test to justify high rankings of BCS programs. I was trying to say that there might be people on here who think we are playing like close to a top 5 team. If they believe that, it isn't based on any metric other than their eye-test. If it is based on that, it's so subjective that I can't argue against it. I put the caveat in there because I know I can't argue against it.

I'm a pretty big sunshine pumper. I think I'd rank us around 9-10. I believe our ceiling is much higher than that. I believe we wouldn't get run out of the gym if we played tonight by anybody right now other than Kentucky.

Edit about my run out of the gym comment: I don't even think it would be a blow out. We keep games close. I think if the game were played 100 times today we'd lose 95.

[Fozzy]

I was watching sports on various Wichita news stations last night and they were all talking about the rankings and they all sounded surprised that K-State wasn't ranked. Their reasoning was basically they were at the top of the Big 12 standings, which they said was the toughest conference in the country. I guess they failed to overlook the bad non-conference losses of KSU or the fact that maybe some of the teams in the Big 12 are overrated. However, if KSU can beat Iowa State tonight in Ames I imagine they may get some votes next week.

[Play Angry]

One final comment. I've seen a lot of bashing of North Carolina recently on this board as being overrated. They have beaten a top 10 team at home and a top 50 team on the road in just the last 2 weeks.

Prior to that stretch, UNC was 0-4 against the RPI Top 50. It's not that the recent wins don't matter, it was the failure to adequately punish the Heels for their repeated failures early in the season. The fact that they were still ranked in the top 20 at the time with an 0-4 record against quality opponents (their best win to that point had been a neutral court victory over Davidson) speaks volumes about the benefit of the doubt they were receiving from AP voters.

Sometimes, teams do get a little extra bump because of the name on their jersey. Duke's top 10 streak was utterly incredible, but there were certainly weeks during that period where almost any other team not named Duke would have fallen further and dropped out of the top ten.

There is always going to be a double standard on this board, just like there is on every single board out there. Because they are all filled with fans. It is actually a great irony that you expect otherwise in such settings.

[Dan]

To me, the polls mean really one thing, national recognition/free advertising. Top 25 teams get top billing in sports pages and highlights on Sportcenter, which is recognized by our recruits. So long as we stay in the Top 25, I'm not going to nitpick whether we should be #12 or #15. We're in a comfortable position right now, unlike past years where we teeter on the #25 ranking and jump in and out of the polls every other week.

[Jamar Howard 4 President]

I agree. Though you did conveniently leave out the part where UNC also lost during that time.

Maybe I should have said "last 10 days" instead of "last 2 weeks". I was just intending to point out that they are "playing well" having won their last 3 with 2 being impressive wins.

Sorry for the lack of clarity.

[Jamar Howard 4 President]

I was watching sports on various Wichita news stations last night and they were all talking about the rankings and they all sounded surprised that K-State wasn't ranked. Their reasoning was basically they were at the top of the Big 12 standings, which they said was the toughest conference in the country. I guess they failed to overlook the bad non-conference losses of KSU or the fact that maybe some of the teams in the Big 12 are overrated. However, if KSU can beat Iowa State tonight in Ames I imagine they may get some votes next week.

The "they" that you refer to watching... well, "they" sound like fools. Anyone with the opinion that K-State should've been ranked this week is crazy. The logic of "well, they are at the top of the Big 12 standings right now, and it is the toughest in the country" just boggles my mind. Absolutely horrendous logic.