2014-15 National Rankings

[Shock Top]

With another 20+ point road win, how far does WSU drop in the rankings next week??

[Dave Stalwart]

With another 20+ point road win, how far does WSU drop in the rankings next week??

Hard to say at this point. It could really get away from us when we beat Drake by 30 at home.

[Shock Top]

Hard to say at this point. It could really get away from us when we beat Drake by 30 at home.

True.

18th sounds about right!

[ShockerFever]

I think we're gonna lose some ground to Illinois State.

[ShockerPrez]

UNI pulls out the W over Indy St.

They may jump us.

[Shock Top]

UNI pulls out the W over Indy St.

They may jump us.

It was a close, gritty, home win vs a .500 team.

It's almost a certainty!

[jocoshock]

Another ranking where we drop a spot for getting better. 13 -> 14.

http://www.si.com/college-basketball/2015/01/22/power-rankings-kentucky-virginia-arizona-gonzaga-duke

[jocoshock]

Another ranking where we drop a spot for getting better. 13 -> 14.

http://www.si.com/college-basketball...a-gonzaga-duke

CBS Top 25 and 1 - #15

Seems pretty apparent that we will fall between and 11 and 15 on most polls/rankings unless we lose a game or run the table in the Valley wiining every game by 15-20 pounts.

Personally, I am fine with that. I feel great about this team and its prospects all the way through April.

[DUShock]

CBS Top 25 and 1 - #15

Seems pretty apparent that we will fall between and 11 and 15 on most polls/rankings unless we lose a game or run the table in the Valley winning every game by 15-20 points.

Personally, I am fine with that. I feel great about this team and its prospects all the way through April.

It does suck but I like the overall message of your post. We will slip without a loss or rolling through the Valley BUT this team seems to be finding its sea legs at the proper time.

Go Shocks!

[Perezident]

Those are exceptions to the rule, not the rule itself. We can always make unique exceptions as needed, but it only makes sense to start from a point of view that more games played equals a better sample to evaluate from. If special adjustments then need to be made due to major changes in the make-up of a team, I'm fine with that.

I understand your point JH4P, and I agree to an extent. Your perspective seems to be that a team has a fixed level of performance for the duration of the season and the further the season progresses the more information we have to gauge that level. But there is also something to be said for a team's performance fluctuating throughout the season, for a variety of reasons. To me, this perspective is also reasonable, and maybe more plausible than the notion that a team's performance level is fixed. Thus it does make at least some sense to consider a team's ranking at the point in time when the game was played as opposed to using the current ranking, when any number of variables could have changed in the meantime.

[shockmonster]

The law of averages would actually say that most teams stay the same or digress. The key is to be one of the teams who is pointing upward. The Shockers are doing that even if you can't statistically prove it by who they are playing. The last item of success is something that we don't know until March. Teams who are shooting well in March go farther in the tournament.

[Jamar Howard 4 President]

I understand your point JH4P, and I agree to an extent. Your perspective seems to be that a team has a fixed level of performance for the duration of the season and the further the season progresses the more information we have to gauge that level. But there is also something to be said for a team's performance fluctuating throughout the season, for a variety of reasons. To me, this perspective is also reasonable, and maybe more plausible than the notion that a team's performance level is fixed. Thus it does make at least some sense to consider a team's ranking at the point in time when the game was played as opposed to using the current ranking, when any number of variables could have changed in the meantime.

First off, I appreciate your post. Thoughtful. Fair. Willing to express general agreement while simultaneously mentioning specific areas of disagreement. Some of the other posters on Shockernet should take note.

I wouldn't say that all teams have fixed levels of performance. In fact, most don't. However, I think trying to evaluate how well a team was playing when you beat/lost to them opens up so many variables that it would be almost impossible to accurately analyze. Seriously, how do you even start to calculate and adjust for that type of thing? A team playing poorly one night can be their own doing, or it can be more due to the opponent playing well and having a good gameplan to shut them down. Adjusting for how well a team was playing at certain times of the year is just not something I would ever want to even attempt.

Also, I believe that the errors in computer rankings during the first few months of the season are greater than the normal ups and downs a team experiences. What I mean by that is I see numerous teams bounce around a bunch in the RPI over the course of the first few months. I don't think most of those teams got significantly better or worse. Some may have, but I think more often than not, fluctuations are more due to sample size increasing than due to teams' level of performance changing over time.

Look at Radford for example.

12/29: RPI of 97, 6-4 vs DI opponents, 0 wins vs the top 200
Since then, they have gone 4-3 with 2 of those 3 losses in double OT. 2 nights ago they beat RPI #97, far and away their best win of the year.

I don't see any reason to say that Radford is suddenly playing significantly worse basketball, yet their RPI is now 167, a drop of 70 spots. They should have never been ranked in the top 100, and I think this is a great example of the RPI needing a larger sample size to produce an accurate ranking.

[Jamar Howard 4 President]

The law of averages would actually say that most teams stay the same or digress.

Huh? Stay the same or digress? For every team that digresses, you would think there would be at least an equal number of teams that improve.

Actually, I would say that if anything, more teams improve than digress. It is just a matter of some teams improving at a faster rate than others. Improving at a slow rate might lead to the appearance of digression as the average opponent has gained ground faster over the course of the year.

[shockmonster]

Huh? Stay the same or digress? For every team that digresses, you would think there would be at least an equal number of teams that improve.

Actually, I would say that if anything, more teams improve than digress. It is just a matter of some teams improving at a faster rate than others. Improving at a slow rate might lead to the appearance of digression as the average opponent has gained ground faster over the course of the year

You are quite dismissive of others and I have a feeling it is due to you being only willing to look at numbers.
If you are using a 50/50 percentile bell curve, you are correct. However, if you look at a long season of basketball and the mental grind it requires, I submit (although from purely statistical viewpoint it may be difficult to prove) that a very small percentage of basketball teams actually are going to trend upward enough to peak at the right time. Most teams trend up and the n down and are inconsistent at best.

[Jamar Howard 4 President]

shockmonster, I'm open for listening to all opinions. Please don't call me dismissive. I wasn't trying to be. You post just didn't make any sense to me, especially without your next post where you went into more detail. Thus the "huh?" in my first post.

Your last post better explained where you were coming from. Your opinion that more teams wear out and trend downward than improve consistently and trend upward is an interesting one. I disagree, but like I said, it is an interesting opinion that I haven't heard before.

In regard to "the law of averages", I still don't see how that lends any support to your argument about most teams trending downward.