Rankings are volatile at the start of the season. Relax.

Yep. Extremely. I haven't covered any of my ridiculous spreads late in the season in Phelan and I've stayed steady at #1 though I did drop briefly to #2 after beating a 2-20 team.

Rankings have importance as they hold at least some level of weight when determining program prestige changes at the end of a season. They do not affect, as far as I'm aware, things like seeding.

Before the season, rank is strictly "talent" based. As the season goes on, "game results" are added in which include opponent difficulty, score margin, and if you won or loss. Early non-conference will see heavy fluctuation as the "game results" will be added to the rankings. Although you won and by a heavy margin, the HD equation probably values your win as low as the team you beat wasn't any good. If your team and your resume is that of a top 25 team, your ranking will show it come season's end.

Does the "spread" impact rankings? I have heard conflicting things on this

Posted by vegaskevin on 9/22/2020 1:18:00 PM (view original):

Posted by upsetcity on 9/22/2020 11:52:00 AM (view original):
Rankings have importance as they hold at least some level of weight when determining program prestige changes at the end of a season. They do not affect, as far as I'm aware, things like seeding.

Before the season, rank is strictly "talent" based. As the season goes on, "game results" are added in which include opponent difficulty, score margin, and if you won or loss. Early non-conference will see heavy fluctuation as the "game results" will be added to the rankings. Although you won and by a heavy margin, the HD equation probably values your win as low as the team you beat wasn't any good. If your team and your resume is that of a top 25 team, your ranking will show it come season's end.

No offense, but that is crap.

The very same "voters" who felt like I had the #9 ranked team in the country, on the heels of only winning by 41 when not a single starter even hit 20 minutes, now feel that I have the #17 ranked team in the country. How is that remotely realistic? Its not like my team barely held on.

Sorry, that doesn't add up. The rankings program needs tweaking. We should not have to leave our starters in to cover 50 point spreads, when I believe a 41 point win evidently states is was an overwhelming blowout.

Was my opponent, Missouri, great? Nope. Should Clemson blow them out? Yep. Did Clemson blow them out? Overwhelmingly.

I don’t think beating the spread matters. If it does, it’s marginal. What matters this early in the season is how good the system thinks your opponent is. Since there is no RPI or SOS yet, it’s all just based on that weighted scale it uses to determine initial rankings. So if the system thinks Missouri is the 150th best team in the country to start the season, it doesn’t matter if you beat them by 41 or 55 points. A ranked team is probably going to drop, if it’s playing them right off the bat. If you play them after 4 or 5 games, and they‘ve won a few of them, then they’ll have a different effect. That’s just how the system works.

You can think the system is crap, that’s fair. But it is what it is.

In the early days of HD, rankings only updated every other day. There was general consensus among users we'd rather have more frequent updates and could accept that the early season rankings would appear particularly screwy as a result.

Posted by A_B_G on 9/22/2020 1:40:00 PM (view original):
Does the "spread" impact rankings? I have heard conflicting things on this

Spread definitely matters. A key component is if you cover the spread of not. I'm not even debating this, because plenty of times I have won and not covered and moved down.

Posted by vegaskevin on 9/22/2020 2:38:00 PM (view original):

Posted by A_B_G on 9/22/2020 1:40:00 PM (view original):
Does the "spread" impact rankings? I have heard conflicting things on this

Spread definitely matters. A key component is if you cover the spread of not. I'm not even debating this, because plenty of times I have won and not covered and moved down.

Feel free to not debate, but moving down after not covering is not evidence of the spread affecting the ranking, certainly not to a significant degree.

Posted by vegaskevin on 9/22/2020 1:18:00 PM (view original):

Posted by upsetcity on 9/22/2020 11:52:00 AM (view original):
Rankings have importance as they hold at least some level of weight when determining program prestige changes at the end of a season. They do not affect, as far as I'm aware, things like seeding.

Before the season, rank is strictly "talent" based. As the season goes on, "game results" are added in which include opponent difficulty, score margin, and if you won or loss. Early non-conference will see heavy fluctuation as the "game results" will be added to the rankings. Although you won and by a heavy margin, the HD equation probably values your win as low as the team you beat wasn't any good. If your team and your resume is that of a top 25 team, your ranking will show it come season's end.

No offense, but that is crap.

The very same "voters" who felt like I had the #9 ranked team in the country, on the heels of only winning by 41 when not a single starter even hit 20 minutes, now feel that I have the #17 ranked team in the country. How is that remotely realistic? Its not like my team barely held on.

Sorry, that doesn't add up. The rankings program needs tweaking. We should not have to leave our starters in to cover 50 point spreads, when I believe a 41 point win evidently states is was an overwhelming blowout.

Was my opponent, Missouri, great? Nope. Should Clemson blow them out? Yep. Did Clemson blow them out? Overwhelmingly.

If you're saying my statement is crap, it's pretty much word for word from the article on WIS's HD Ranking system.

If you're saying the ranking process is crap, I'd say it could be better but rankings don't matter in the grand scheme so why even sweat it? The 'voters' are just a made up equation to help provide a rank and the equation can be pretty influenced when there's little statistical input. I understand you want realism but it's a text-based basketball game simulator at the end of the day.

It's the first game of the season. It's not the end of the world one way or another.

Posted by shoe3 on 9/22/2020 2:43:00 PM (view original):

Posted by vegaskevin on 9/22/2020 2:38:00 PM (view original):

Posted by A_B_G on 9/22/2020 1:40:00 PM (view original):
Does the "spread" impact rankings? I have heard conflicting things on this

Spread definitely matters. A key component is if you cover the spread of not. I'm not even debating this, because plenty of times I have won and not covered and moved down.

Feel free to not debate, but moving down after not covering is not evidence of the spread affecting the ranking, certainly not to a significant degree.

I should have been more specific. Covering the point spread is obviously a factor, not what the actual spread is.

I have dropped in the rankings countless times after not covering the spread.

How about the other teams that pass you? Maybe they performed better than expected (so even if you were #9, maybe #10 beat a ranked team which would make them vault over you). I agree that failing to cover the spread does impact "Top 25" rankings but other than NCOY considerations, the Top 25 has zero impact on the post season. Playing poorly rated Non-conference schedules will definitely impact your SOS and therefore how good a game score you receive for each game.

Posted by vegaskevin on 9/22/2020 3:48:00 PM (view original):

Posted by shoe3 on 9/22/2020 2:43:00 PM (view original):

Posted by vegaskevin on 9/22/2020 2:38:00 PM (view original):

Posted by A_B_G on 9/22/2020 1:40:00 PM (view original):
Does the "spread" impact rankings? I have heard conflicting things on this

Spread definitely matters. A key component is if you cover the spread of not. I'm not even debating this, because plenty of times I have won and not covered and moved down.

Feel free to not debate, but moving down after not covering is not evidence of the spread affecting the ranking, certainly not to a significant degree.

I should have been more specific. Covering the point spread is obviously a factor, not what the actual spread is.

I have dropped in the rankings countless times after not covering the spread.

I've anecdotally noticed this too, but never tracked it super hard. It's always a little frustrating to beat a team by, like, 28 and then drop in rankings a bit because spread said it should be by 35 -- as if that is an actual major difference.

My follow up question would be: does the spread impact the projection report at all?

I see your point but you can't just look at this one game in a vacuum. Other teams are playing games too and their results matter. If there is a team that is ranked #15 and beat the #2 team, that's more impressive than beating the #300 team by 50.

It doesn't really work that way in real life, I agree, but maybe it should. Typically in real college bball the pollsters won't drop a team if they win, even if it's against a ****** team. Which is debatable if that makes sense or not.