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Really have to question KenPom methodology

There are some other examples that are weighted towards margin of wins or defeats that somehow get measured. The more Virginia Tech wins, the more that win holds up their Kenpom.

PSU also played Minnesota to the wire on the road and they're coming off an NIT championship that started them way higher than they should be. I would be curious how high RU would jump with a win at Ohio State.
 
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It doesn't help that our signature OOC win was Miami, who is ranked lower than us at #100 right now (and the third lowest ranked team in the ACC).
 
“Well it’s early in the season so they have to use data from last year to rank this year’s teams. Wait until July and then Kenpon will be really accurate” .. or something . Smh
 
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RUChoppin said:
The loss to #250 Fordham is an anchor around our rating at this point in kenpom. Plus the fact that our best OOC win is #100 Miami.
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Yep -- the worst team Penn State played OOC is Bradley at #214, which they lost. But we played six teams worse than that, including a loss to Fordham and OT against Columbia.

The 35-point loss at Purdue also kills our efficiency margin. Penn State's worst loss was by 19, that's a huge gap.

KenPom measures exactly what it says it does. It's not the end all be all. It's not going to throw the Purdue and Minnesota games out because Omoruyi wasn't playing.
 
It is ridiculous if our Kenpom SOS is at # 79. Segarin I think has it at # 23 or # 24. That is a huge difference. We are playing 20 league games which no other league in the country does and we are playing in probably the toughest league in the country.
 
knights1212 said:
It is ridiculous if our Kenpom SOS is at # 79. Segarin I think has it at # 23 or # 24. That is a huge difference. We are playing 20 league games which no other league in the country does and we are playing in probably the toughest league in the country.
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From what I can see, Kenpom's SOS for us is 24th and for PSU is 5th. And Sagarin also has us at an overall rank of 93 with a SOS of 23, 24 places behind PSU at 69 (with a SOS of 6).

Both are fairly in line with one another.
 
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knights1212 said:
It is ridiculous if our Kenpom SOS is at # 79. Segarin I think has it at # 23 or # 24. That is a huge difference. We are playing 20 league games which no other league in the country does and we are playing in probably the toughest league in the country.
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FDU 10-11 but 2nd in their league

Columbia 6-10 bottom half of Ivy

Maine 4-18 near bottom of their league

Fordham 9-12 bottom of A-10 standings

Eastern Michigan 9-12 thought to be MAC darkhorse, under .500 in MAC play.

Drexel 10-13....

Miami bottom 1/4 with 1 ACC win...9 -12

Seton Hall 13-8 & very much on the current bubble but trending down in a very balanced but weakened Big East.

St John's is really the only notable OOC that the final margin of defeat takes into account.

Add to that Minnesota, Purdue and Maryland and PSU has a smaller margin of defeat across the board.

Do i think PSUs freshman will get better in February....i do and so will RUs.

I know there's a ton of momentum for RU but it's only going to matter with KenPom if RU continues to not just win, but close the gap in losses. If RU is a 10 point underdog to Ohio State and loses by 18, KenPom isn't going to look at the league standings, like we are...

If RU is a 10 point underdog at OSU and wins, then those are trendlines that crush the prior data in place and requires an adjustment.

The only thing that matters is RU is better in January than November. February is the toughest month for all teams...players get tired, nicked up....and the competition is better.

RU to me, has 1 goal in the next 24 hours or so...get through the 1st half of OSU in the game or close, without a bunch of silly unforced turnovers. If they can get to halftime with a lead, then we can worry about KenPom afterwards.....i think if we play a crisp 1st half and get a lead at halftime, RU has a real chance to win 4 straight.
 
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Kenpom (and Bart) has limitations and MUST be taken for what it is.

For my (MINE AND NOT YOURS!) evaluation of the team kenpom is an even better barometer than record. Essentially it is looking at every possession as a win or a loss and every possession is the same (after being adjusted for opponent). It doesn't always equate in to W and L, but this year really was never about wins and losses. I want to exit this year and enter next year with a better confidence of where the program is headed in the S,M and long term.

Looking at bart...
end of 2017 131
end of 2018 127
now 95

what does it say about offense
2017 221
2018 283
2019 216

defense
2017 70
2018 22
2019 31
 
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Our non conference schedule is 291.....can't get around that...its why the nymbers are dragging down and why RU isnt in bubble discussion while OSU, Nebby,and Indiana are projected in the NCAA tourney
 
Greene Rice FIG said:
we weren't there before beating IU
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350.png
 
I thought after kenpom calculated it's ratings it then automatically subtracted 10 points from Rutgers because, you know, it's Rutgers. No?
 
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The ratings should make more sense after we play them head to head at their place ... oh, wait
 
stop using kenpom....the NET ratings are what will be relied on more for the tourney selections and seedings.

Penn State is 84....RU is 110...it has everything to do with SOS. PSU has a sos of 4, RU is 76 and its non conference sos is now 296
 
bac2therac said:
stop using kenpom....the NET ratings are what will be relied on more for the tourney selections and seedings.

Penn State is 84....RU is 110...it has everything to do with SOS. PSU has a sos of 4, RU is 76 and its non conference sos is now 296
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Really doesn't matter, because they're all saying basically the same thing.... yes, PSU has a worse record and we beat them at their place, but they're also still ranked ahead of us because of SOS.

A few guys are just salty that we're behind them when we beat them on their court and they're at the bottom of the conference, and don't want to hear about other circumstances of schedule.
 
I wouldn't say that I'm salty exactly, it's more that I'm amused by the silliness of the whole thing. We are now far enough into the conference season that the fact that we are 4-6 in one of the toughest conferences in the country and they are 0-10 in the same conference, which includes us beating them head to head at their place, and most of those games were the respective teams' most recent results, would somehow have been reflected more realistically into the ratings formula. I get that strength of schedule can be an important factor other things being equal or where there isn't a basis for direct comparison, but at a certain point other things just aren't equal anymore and there is a basis for direct comparison.
 
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Skull83 said:
I wouldn't say that I'm salty exactly, it's more that I'm amused by the silliness of the whole thing. We are now far enough into the conference season that the fact that we are in 4-6 in one of the toughest conferences in the country and they are 0-10 in the same conference, which includes us beating them head to head at their place, and most of those games were the respective teams' most recent results, would somehow have been reflected more realistically into the ratings formula. I get that strength of schedule can be an important factor other things being equal or where there isn't a basis for direct comparison, but at a certain point other things just aren't equal anymore and there is a basis for direct comparison.
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Would you also then put us ahead of Ohio State and Nebraska? We have a better conference record than both and beat them head to head.

Of course, neither of them lost to Fordham, either.

Tournament selection takes into account the whole resume - and all these ranking services do, too. Can't just ignore losing to Fordham or getting our doors blown off by SJU at home. That was as much part of this team's resume as going 4-6 to start conference play.
 
That's not to say that we shouldn't be ahead of Penn State, because I think we should be - I don't think their 7 wins are better than our 11 wins, and they have a bad loss to Bradley on their resume, too. But just trying to take a couple of data points in a vacuum isn't how any ranking system works.
 
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All I'm saying is that if the season ended today and Penn State was picked over us for some mythical tournament we were both eligible for because of their strength of schedule and because we lost to Fordham in their band box of a gym before our first year players had started to come on, I would be pretty pissed off.
 
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Skull83 said:
I wouldn't say that I'm salty exactly, it's more that I'm amused by the silliness of the whole thing. We are now far enough into the conference season that the fact that we are 4-6 in one of the toughest conferences in the country and they are 0-10 in the same conference, which includes us beating them head to head at their place, and most of those games were the respective teams' most recent results, would somehow have been reflected more realistically into the ratings formula. I get that strength of schedule can be an important factor other things being equal or where there isn't a basis for direct comparison, but at a certain point other things just aren't equal anymore and there is a basis for direct comparison.
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This is very well said, and exactly how I feel (and why I started the thread).

I get that KenPom and other sites are all about 360 degrees of data analytics. But at some point, if you're trying to "rank" teams on an overall basis, you need to look at the conference record (games played more recently), not to mention head to head matchups.

We are now TWO-THIRDS into the season, and more than HALF of the way through the conference schedule. There has to be some emphasis placed on the more recent conference games as opposed to what happens in the early part of the schedule before teams really "settle in". I can guaran-f'n-tee PSU would not be beating VaTech if the game were played today, and I can guaran-f'n-tee we wouldn't be losing to Fordham.

Sorry, but 7-14 (0-10) is hugely meaningful, and it's ridiculous that PSU gets 20 places higher in the rankings than RU at 11-9 (4-6) merely because PSU had ONE good win early in the season, before VaTech settled in, and RU had ONE bad loss early in the season.
 
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Degaz-RU said:
Sorry, but 7-14 (0-10) is hugely meaningful, and it's ridiculous that PSU gets 20 places higher in the rankings than RU at 11-9 (4-6) merely because PSU had ONE good win early in the season, before VaTech settled in, and RU had ONE bad loss early in the season.
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It's not about one win, or one loss, in either direction. We played a really weak OOC slate - it is what it is, and it was needed, imo, to get this crop of freshman ramped up to speed.

And even then, 70th vs. 90th aren't too far apart, since most of the teams in the middle are pretty close to one another. It works out to just a 2 point advantage on a neutral court in the adjusted efficiency model.
 
I prefer to use the team's record as an indicator of where we are.
I think a lot of BIG teams are not all that high on playing us anymore.
 
KenPom is looking at the whole year. Big Ten standings are only looking at the Big Ten part of the year.

Here are the 14 teams ranked by efficiency margin in Big Ten play only:

Michigan State +18.8
Michigan +16.3
Purdue +9.9
Wisconsin +9.8
Maryland +6.9
Iowa -0.6
Minnesota -2.1
Nebraska -2.3
Ohio State -3.9
Illinois -7.6
Rutgers -10.1
Indiana -10.5
Northwestern -11.6
Penn State -12.2

There, that looks a lot more like the standings do. Still has us lower than the standings because of the Purdue and Minnesota blowouts, and the Omoruyi injury is a compelling reason to slightly discount those wide margins.

If Purdue beat us, say, 80-64 and Minnesota beat us 79-70 then we'd be -6.2 and ahead of Illinois. But that's not how the KenPom model works.
 
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Rutgers non conference schedule was absolute trash.....I MEAN IT WAS ABOMINABLE how low ranked some of the schools were.

while RU was losing to Fordham, PSU beat a top 10 team in Virginia Tech..so combine that with the SOS and thats what you get.

Do I think RU should be higher..yes but not sure why everyone is worked up over this because its not like either school is in the running for the NCAA tourney
 
bac2therac said:
Rutgers non conference schedule was absolute trash.....I MEAN IT WAS ABOMINABLE how low ranked some of the schools were.

while RU was losing to Fordham, PSU beat a top 10 team in Virginia Tech..so combine that with the SOS and thats what you get.

Do I think RU should be higher..yes but not sure why everyone is worked up over this because its not like either school is in the running for the NCAA tourney
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on paper before the season our ooc looked much better than last year......that is until those teams played games
 
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