Posted by mullycj on 8/4/2020 10:15:00 AM (view original):
Many of you including top sound like you are confusing pure math (ie projection report rating) vs. post season team preparedness.
Playing games "that test your team", or "gets them ready for the post season" don't mean squat for this discussion. This has nothing to do with real life teams like Gonzaga.

Its PURE math. Will an opponent with a better W/L record help your ranking vs. an opponent with a weak W/L record but better ranking. I've followed RPI and projection #s for my teams daily for several years and it would take someone with hard numbers to prove it otherwise.

Also - A 15-2 team with a 300 RPI?
The 15-2 record gets 50% weight to my RPI. His weak SOS (300 RPI) only gets 25% weight to my RPI, I'll take it!

How's 11 Championships for hard numbers? Haha. I'm kidding. Love ya mully!

And I agree that testing your team doesn't mean anything to this conversation. I'm not disagreeing there. I guess the best way i can honestly respond, and I mean this very nicely.... I guess I don't really care about the point of this conversation. And I'm sorry I've dragged it out this long.

Not much is clear after discussing this. It seems to be pretty evenly divided. 50/50.... my favorite! The only thing clear to me is that it's NOT clear. I rely on myself and only myself to succeed. I'm not worried about any other school in any conference of mine. I get the job done on my own regardless of what anybody else does. Whether I succeed or fail, I control that. So I choose to focus there.

The impact of other schools scheduling is so minimal that I don't understand why anyone cares. And in mully's defense, he made those statements to me, so I'm not really saying he's "worried about what I'm doing". He was just trying to make a point to me. It's just a point that I can't wrap my head around.

Posted by topdogggbm on 8/4/2020 10:54:00 AM (view original):

Posted by mullycj on 8/4/2020 10:15:00 AM (view original):
Many of you including top sound like you are confusing pure math (ie projection report rating) vs. post season team preparedness.
Playing games "that test your team", or "gets them ready for the post season" don't mean squat for this discussion. This has nothing to do with real life teams like Gonzaga.

Its PURE math. Will an opponent with a better W/L record help your ranking vs. an opponent with a weak W/L record but better ranking. I've followed RPI and projection #s for my teams daily for several years and it would take someone with hard numbers to prove it otherwise.

Also - A 15-2 team with a 300 RPI?
The 15-2 record gets 50% weight to my RPI. His weak SOS (300 RPI) only gets 25% weight to my RPI, I'll take it!

How's 11 Championships for hard numbers? Haha. I'm kidding. Love ya mully!

And I agree that testing your team doesn't mean anything to this conversation. I'm not disagreeing there. I guess the best way i can honestly respond, and I mean this very nicely.... I guess I don't really care about the point of this conversation. And I'm sorry I've dragged it out this long.

Not much is clear after discussing this. It seems to be pretty evenly divided. 50/50.... my favorite! The only thing clear to me is that it's NOT clear. I rely on myself and only myself to succeed. I'm not worried about any other school in any conference of mine. I get the job done on my own regardless of what anybody else does. Whether I succeed or fail, I control that. So I choose to focus there.

The impact of other schools scheduling is so minimal that I don't understand why anyone cares. And in mully's defense, he made those statements to me, so I'm not really saying he's "worried about what I'm doing". He was just trying to make a point to me. It's just a point that I can't wrap my head around.

to your earlier post - the 'you' was the team doing the choosing, i definitely said that confusingly. to restate - assuming i already have a decent schedule on my hands, i'd rather beat the 15-2 team. i know the 15-2 team has a garbage sos on account of their record/rpi.

i'm fine with the agree to disagree bit, and also, i was only considering the projection report impact - not testing your team - which IMO is very nebulous because based on those two performances, its extremely unclear which team is going to be better, it very much depends.

anyway, what i do have to call out is 'The impact of other schools scheduling is so minimal that I don't understand why anyone cares.'. again, 75% of your RPI is SOS, and about 2/3rds of that (so about 50% of your entire RPI) comes from your conf mates strength, and roughly the only variable part is their non conference schedule (setting aside the part where you play some conf teams 2x and some 1x). non conf schedules of your conf mates have a huge impact on the rpi and seeding of the rest of the conference. that is why some people care. i'm not saying like, you are obligated to do what is best for the conf, or any of that - and i'm fine with it getting put to bed with an 'agree to disagree' - but not a 'it doesn't matter anyway'.

Yes - I told Top we did that in D2 Naismith in the WVIAC. Everyone rolled in with 8-10 non-conf wins and anyone with weak SOS' after non-conf play would see that number improve steadily with conference play.

You just needed everyone to buy in.

(edited : D2 in Naismith). Shoe can share stories of our dominance.

Posted by mullycj on 8/4/2020 2:01:00 PM (view original):
Yes - I told Top we did that in D3 Naismith in the WVIAC. Everyone rolled in with 8-10 non-conf wins and anyone with weak SOS' after non-conf play would see that number improve steadily with conference play.

You just needed everyone to buy in.

Yep, really only works with a full conference and everyone on board.

Posted by emy1013 on 8/4/2020 2:20:00 PM (view original):

Posted by mullycj on 8/4/2020 2:01:00 PM (view original):
Yes - I told Top we did that in D3 Naismith in the WVIAC. Everyone rolled in with 8-10 non-conf wins and anyone with weak SOS' after non-conf play would see that number improve steadily with conference play.

You just needed everyone to buy in.

Yep, really only works with a full conference and everyone on board.

And full conferences and everyone on board is the key. We're an empty conference with no one on board. I'll rephrase for everyone.....

I've played this game for 3 long years now. With very good results. Not once have a concerned myself with others schedules. Just a choice of mine to not look. I've never "relied" upon others to get me in to the NT. I put in the work myself to get it done. So if I'm wrongfully overlooking a part of the game that could help boost my numbers, so be it. That's another choice. If anything I've said is incorrect along the way, regarding this topic, than I am incorrect. But I'm not gonna start saying "damn i missed the NT this season. You 11 guys around me suck! Step your game up!"..... I'd rather look at myself and ask what could I do better? Not others. Pretty much like i do in any other real life discussion.

So no agreeing or disagreeing from me. Just moving on to other topics. (If I can quit coming back and reading this thread!)

This is the reason why I didn't feel the question mattered at the moment it was asked, and that the entire body of work was important. Since the original question.....

Team A..... 4-4. Was 0-4 against the top 100. Rpi is 114, sos is 299. Overall record is now 18-6. Projection report decreased from 70 to 89

Team B..... 8-1. Was 2-0 against the top 100. Rpi is 51 sos is 49. Overall record is now 16-9. Projection report increased from 54 to 48

Team B also has 2 head to head wins over Team A since the original discussion.

Moral of the story, being the head coach of Team B myself, I felt like I had a grasp on what was going to unfold. And i expected things to level out in the manner in which they have.

Yet you still don't seem the understand the impact of your non-conference scheduling on OTHERS, which is the point of this thread.
This IS NOT about the success of Team A or Team B, its about the impact on Team C/D/E/F/etc that have to play them. Arghhhhhhhhhhh

The math earlier in the thread :
I ran the numbers through last night's games.
Current RPI .5797 (#60) (playing team B)

Substituting Cincinnati for Louisville on my schedule and assuming it was a win.
Hypothetical NEW RPI .5914 (#51) (playing team A)

.....doesnt change no matter what teams A and B do IN CONFERENCE.

Posted by topdogggbm on 8/9/2020 5:33:00 AM (view original):
This is the reason why I didn't feel the question mattered at the moment it was asked, and that the entire body of work was important. Since the original question.....

Team A..... 4-4. Was 0-4 against the top 100. Rpi is 114, sos is 299. Overall record is now 18-6. Projection report decreased from 70 to 89

Team B..... 8-1. Was 2-0 against the top 100. Rpi is 51 sos is 49. Overall record is now 16-9. Projection report increased from 54 to 48

Team B also has 2 head to head wins over Team A since the original discussion.

Moral of the story, being the head coach of Team B myself, I felt like I had a grasp on what was going to unfold. And i expected things to level out in the manner in which they have.

i totally get where you are coming from - but in essence, you yourself are stating 'look, my team is way better even though his team looked way better based on their non conf'. sure, i'll buy that - but that is what he is saying too! if one were to evaluate the non conf performance teams 'brought' to the conference, the only conclusion is that he 'brought' a lot more with a lot less.

i'm not saying anyone is obligated to plan their own team for the benefit of their conference mates, or anything close to that. all we are saying is, IF that is a thing one considers, the math is clear (at a macro level), there is a way to optimize your team's impact on your conference mates, and essentially what mully did is clearly more optimized for that than what you did.

carry on however you like. i am not even sure the 'let's all conference scheduling optimize as a conference to abuse scheduling math' is a thing we want to encourage or remember fondly. i think its a fun thing to do for a while, maybe to prove a point, or to get a leg up in a system that greatly disadvantages little conferences (low d1). but it would be rather annoying if everyone started doing it.

(and essentially what mully did is clearly more optimized for that than what you did.)
To be clear...Im Team C in this scenario.

But from a help-my-conference standpoint, if you’re not a top-100 RPI team by the end of the season, you can’t really say you’ve optimized your team’s impact, can you? Really you should aim to be at least top 50, so you’ve given your conference rivals opportunities at top 50 wins for their postseason resume. So if you use this approach, the goal is not really 10-0 in non conference, IMO, it’s get 7-8 *decent* wins non-conference.

And are we sure mully’s analysis is correct? Because the question (I thought) was how those mid season games impacted the Projection Report; but in his calculations, isn’t he focusing only on how those games affect his RPI?

Posted by beachhouse on 8/9/2020 6:50:00 PM (view original):
Mully,

Here are the current numbers. You’ll see by the end of the season whether you’re right; I have a feeling you won’t be. As team A loses games they will decrease, their sim controlled opponents in non-conference were horrendous. There is a reason why they aren’t an NT team.


***Currently***


Team A

37.5 out of 50 (Record)
7.08 out of 25 (Opponent Record)

44.58 out of 75


Team B

32 out of 50 (Record)
17.44 out of 25 (Opponent Record)

49.44 out of 75

I am just going to leave this here.

I agree that the focus here is about "how I'm supposed to help everyone else around me feel good about themselves and get a participation trophy for playing me".... not gonna happen tho.

My point, which is NOT the original point, is that I finished strong (well, we're almost finished). And that I don't care which kinda logic we want to break down to create the answer for this OP.... fact is, everyone in this game would rather beat Team B than Team A. And if you don't feel that way, you're lying to yourself. So I'm just adding in my own twist to the equation Haha

To be honest I hate that I have to be Team B because I sound like I'm rooting for myself to win at something. And I'm not. I just don't grasp the thought process of trying to worry about anybody but myself in this game. To an extent. Now I'm not gonna sabotage anything and make a SOS 1 team when I'm gonna end up 0-27. But the numbers involved in the point that is trying to be made in the OP is so small that i don't know why anyone would even consider thinking about it. I'm not saying Mully is wrong. Nor am I saying I'm right.

The numbers aren’t exact, I wasn’t going to go as deep as home and away wins, but the difference is big enough to see that a win or loss to Team B is ultimately worth more than a win or loss to Team A