Posted by pseudochamp on 4/7/2014 1:45:00 PM (view original):
Going into the final night of the regular season, we still have two undefeated teams and there are six un-victoried teams.  That's not a real word, but it should be.

Last Night
#10 Whittier 83   Occidental 76
Despite shooting only 40% from the floor including 25% from 3, Whittier was still able to grab a 2 point lead at the half.  Home team Occidental made a run midway through the second half and pushed a lead up to 8, but Whittier wouldn't go away.  They closed the gap after a few minutes and then went on a 10-0 run to close out the final three minutes of the game for the key road win.  Whittier and windixies stayed tied for first place thanks to the win and held steady at the edge of the top ten rankings.

Also considered: #3 Wittenberg got past Kenyon on the road 71-57, Millsaps got two free throws with one second remaining to secure an exciting home upset over #9 Dallas 66-64, #6 Hardin-Simmons opened up a huge halftime lead over Texas Lutheran and held on for a 112-94 victory, #7 Ozarks took care of Sewanee at home 81-71, #15 Calvin cruised past Eureka 90-61, #17 Johnson and Wales shamed W. New England's starters 81-49, Trinity pulled away from Emory 57-44, and #22 Allegheny downed Wabash 65-51.

Sim blowout watch: Roanoke made it two covers in a row as they fell to #20 Lynchburg 50-103.

GotN
#1 Piedmont (25-0)(bunkerbuster) at #13 Oglethorpe (23-2)(getiguy)
Undefeated and top-ranked Piedmont will attempt to finish off a perfect regular season in the USA South as they visit divisional rival Oglethorpe.  Oglethorpe stayed within 7 in the first game between these two so they have to feel pretty good about the rematch at home.  bunker leads the series 14-4 and his team is favored by 3 on the road.

Also considered: #24 Wooster at #3 Wittenberg, Howard Payne at #6 Hardin-Simmons, #7 Ozarks at Louisiana, #9 Dallas at Stillman, Chapman at #12 Willamette, #17 Johnson and Wales at Emmanuel, and #22 Allegheny at Earlham

Sim blowout watch: Ironically named Hope is getting 66 points as they visit #15 Calvin.

Going undefeated is a bad idea.  One of those teams is currently projected as a 2 seed and the other is a 7(!).

As we all know, it is better to lose a couple of games than to win them all.

Final GotN recap for the season, thanks for reading along again.  Good luck to everyone in the conference tournaments.

Last Night
#1 Piedmont 97   #18 Oglethorpe 86
Our top-ranked team was down 40-39 after the first half and the home fans were dreaming of a huge upset and ruining an undefeated season.  But Piedmont stayed close and then went ahead for good about four minutes into the second half.  They heated up on the offensive end and grinded out the double digit road victory despite a couple Oglethorpe comeback attempts down the stretch.  Piedmont and bunker finished off the undefeated regular season and go into the post-season ranked #1.

Also considered: Wooster took one for the N.Coast team and let #2 Wittenberg win 64-53, #6 Hardin-Simmons also finished undefeated with a big 125-83 win over Howard Payne, #7 Ozarks couldn't get a winning shot to go in regulation but pulled away in OT to beat Louisiana 84-74, #8 Dallas got by Stillman 75-65, #12 Willamette made a huge defensive stand to deny two game winners and survived with a 60-59 win over Chapman, #13 Johnson and Wales took care of business on the road and downed Emmanuel 63-48, and Earlham upset Allegheny 66-53.

Sim blowout watch: All hope was not lost as Hope successfully covered against #16 Calvin 47-76.

Enjoy the post-season everyone.

Thanks pseudochamp! Great write-ups all season.

Posted by phalla on 4/8/2014 1:37:00 PM (view original):
Thanks pseudochamp! Great write-ups all season.

+1

I just updated my predictions with actual wins and a variance column.  I have come to a few conclusions: 1) Good coaches can make a big difference on mediocre teams, but as they ramp up their talent and join the elite programs, I think the coaching factor minimizes -- I think talent wins out over game-planning in the top 50. 2) The worst performing teams are noobie coached or ghost shipped.  3) The predicted wins were within +/- 2 about 50% of the time.

onedrive.live.com/redir

You are awesome Pseudo buddy, loved reading them all! Wish I could have stayed alongside ya with the MVPs.

Bullman, you were dead-on with your prediction for Allegheny, 19 wins for the season. Nice!

zeke, my first thought was "man, he's gonna burn himself out doing that EVERY game."  I hated to say that and discourage you, but I think it might be better to do what you were doing on a smaller scale.  Personally I'd love to see it at the end of the season so we could vote on POY..maybe even an update once a week or something during the season?  Just thinking out loud.  I did a daily writeup thing a bunch of seasons ago and I stopped about halfway through one season.  Just too much for me personally.  Extra kudos to pseudo for keeping up the GotN all this time!!

bullman, does your model consider FR starters in some way right now?  Personally I tend to do that a lot and then bench them for the postseason, which can definitely make the team perform a little worse in the regular season compared to the 'ideal' lineup.  I suspect that might be predictive in some form..maybe even just "any FR starters, yes or no?"  Thinking out loud again.

Definite props to pseudo for the writeups...I know firsthand how hard it is to keep those things going day after day, and that was when I wasn't doing any of the extra stuff on secondary games and such. I also don't know how bullman finds the time for all this wonderful statistical analysis he graces us with throughout the season, but I'm glad he does. Rupp D3 is just an awesome community to be a part of thansk to so many of you.

Thanks pseudo for the GotNs, I enjoy looking at them every day. Also, the SotD should be back next season. Just trying to build up the hype!

Spasticity you are totally right buddy. The truth is I had to work a couple 12 hour days and got sick the same exact time, paired with some events and birthdays, and just could not find the time for 3 days in a row. I kept telling myself as soon as I could I would pick it up again, otherwise everything I had done so far would have been wasted. But when I had the time again, I just couldn't get back into it. I think I was putting too much into it every morning, and even thought that at the time. It made me appreciate that much more what Pseudo and Bullman and rednu all do and Carson last season. It also made me feel like a loser who couldn't stay true to his word. ;)

Since I stopped doing it, I wanted to do something big in the Rupp world before the season ended. I'll post on each of your CC's hopefully within a couple of days, maybe it'll be something that interests you.

Love to see the SotD us coming back!

+7 wins in Bullman's stats.  With the pile of crap that I had this season I thought his numbers were right.

Posted by bullman17 on 4/9/2014 12:09:00 AM (view original):
I just updated my predictions with actual wins and a variance column.  I have come to a few conclusions: 1) Good coaches can make a big difference on mediocre teams, but as they ramp up their talent and join the elite programs, I think the coaching factor minimizes -- I think talent wins out over game-planning in the top 50. 2) The worst performing teams are noobie coached or ghost shipped.  3) The predicted wins were within +/- 2 about 50% of the time.

onedrive.live.com/redir

Interesting to see that we're slightly underperforming based on expected win total and overperforming based on expected seed line. Strength of schedule, y'all. 

Posted by spasticity on 4/9/2014 2:47:00 PM (view original):
zeke, my first thought was "man, he's gonna burn himself out doing that EVERY game."  I hated to say that and discourage you, but I think it might be better to do what you were doing on a smaller scale.  Personally I'd love to see it at the end of the season so we could vote on POY..maybe even an update once a week or something during the season?  Just thinking out loud.  I did a daily writeup thing a bunch of seasons ago and I stopped about halfway through one season.  Just too much for me personally.  Extra kudos to pseudo for keeping up the GotN all this time!!

bullman, does your model consider FR starters in some way right now?  Personally I tend to do that a lot and then bench them for the postseason, which can definitely make the team perform a little worse in the regular season compared to the 'ideal' lineup.  I suspect that might be predictive in some form..maybe even just "any FR starters, yes or no?"  Thinking out loud again.

No, it does not take freshman starters into account.  I am sure it would have predictive value but the problem with accounting for that is that it requires me to sift through lineups and that is too much work:)  It is all automated right now and I just need to tell it to go and it spits everything out for me -- very simple.  The next time I get motivated I will probably take a look at homecourt advantage.  I know that in D3 it is almost a complete non-factor but I would be interested in seeing what difference it makes at D1.

On another subject, are we going to vote for MVP's and coach of the year?  If so, should we have nominations and when should we do the vote?

Bullman, what does the chart show?  Not sure I understood what that was about....

Posted by brianxavier on 4/10/2014 12:29:00 PM (view original):
Bullman, what does the chart show?  Not sure I understood what that was about....

I was just fooling around in Excel and it generated it for me.  The y axis is the win variance and the teams are on the x axis.

Essentially it is meaningless is what I am trying to say.