Ranking Tracker

[Quattro]

And that doesn't mean you are going to beat every team worse than KU at home even with Spencer -- teams do have good and bad nights. By the other side of the coin, had they lost to KU, would that mean we couldn't beat a better team at home, not necessarily.

I understand that, but given our past success at home and the teams we've played this year at home along with the odds being in our favor with a healthy Spencer I would have been shocked to lose to UCLA at home. It took a crazy amount of missed layups for them to beat us without Spencer, add in his likely FT attempts, overall points, and defensive ability and it'd be real tough for us to be beat at home by UCLA.


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[cubuffs85]

I understand that, but given our past success at home and the teams we've played this year at home along with the odds being in our favor with a healthy Spencer I would have been shocked to lose to UCLA at home. It took a crazy amount of missed layups for them to beat us without Spencer, add in his likely FT attempts, overall points, and defensive ability and it'd be real tough for us to be beat at home by UCLA.


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They beat us pretty steadily. They didn't kill us, but we didn't have much of a chance at the end. Yeah, sure with Spencer that's a much closer game. Guess we'll be playing the "if Spencer was healthy" game all year.

 

[jcatcher]

Does KenPom take into account players who get hurt like Spencer? I know he weighs returning players and highly rated recruits at the beginning of the season, but I thought that washed out after 15 games or so. Dropping from 31 to 55 in two games is quite a fall, especially since UCLA is highly ranked (27). Wisconsin lost two in a row and only dropped from 2 to 9, with one loss coming at home.

I am a big fan of analytics, but I've always had my issues with Pomeroy. His strength of schedule seems to put too much negative weight on a schedule with low ranked teams even if it is also sprinkled with highly rated teams. I think CU's schedule (ranked 58) with Harvard, KU, Baylor, Okie State, and Oregon is better than Wisconsin's, which is full of teams ranked 20-100 but very few ranked below 150.

D1 basketball is D1 basketball, should you really be expected to be so much more efficient against UNC Greensboro (315) than you would be against Drake (153)?

 

[jgisland]

Does KenPom take into account players who get hurt like Spencer? I know he weighs returning players and highly rated recruits at the beginning of the season, but I thought that washed out after 15 games or so. Dropping from 31 to 55 in two games is quite a fall, especially since UCLA is highly ranked (27). Wisconsin lost two in a row and only dropped from 2 to 9, with one loss coming at home.

I am a big fan of analytics, but I've always had my issues with Pomeroy. His strength of schedule seems to put too much negative weight on a schedule with low ranked teams even if it is also sprinkled with highly rated teams. I think CU's schedule (ranked 58) with Harvard, KU, Baylor, Okie State, and Oregon is better than Wisconsin's, which is full of teams ranked 20-100 but very few ranked below 150.

D1 basketball is D1 basketball, should you really be expected to be so much more efficient against UNC Greensboro (315) than you would be against Drake (153)?

Does KenPom take into account injuries - not in his game predictions, becasue he calculates those based off of offensive and deffiensive efficiency on a points per possession standpoint - as CU plays without Spencer those number will naturally adjust overtime.

The critique of strength of schedule and margin of victory has always been a strong one against KenPom and he adjusted to cap this now (started this year). You can read all about it here, but he's also studied that scoring margin does matter.

D1 basketball is not D1 basketball IMO, yes you should expect to be more efficient against one of the worst teams in college basketball vs an average one. If you look at CU's schedule, that's like asking if CU should be expected to be more efficient against Tennessee Martin than Georgia. IMO - yes. One has lower level recruits and plays against terrible competition, the other is in real conference and recruits decent players.

 

[jgisland]

I understand that, but given our past success at home and the teams we've played this year at home along with the odds being in our favor with a healthy Spencer I would have been shocked to lose to UCLA at home. It took a crazy amount of missed layups for them to beat us without Spencer, add in his likely FT attempts, overall points, and defensive ability and it'd be real tough for us to be beat at home by UCLA.


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We'll never know the answer to this, but is there a possibility that CU was overrated before Spencer went down?

The coaches and AP polls were the highest ratings CU had, all of the "computer rating systems" ie, sevenovertimes.com, Massey, Sagarin, KenPom never had CU in the top 25 outside of LRMC (24th).

If you look at the wins there are some question marks

Baylor - the last week the loss to Baylor is looking bad, first games of the year are always tough, but Baylor isn't doing CU any favors
USCB - close win and close game and they were missing their best player
Harvard - had to come back late and Harvard was missing a couple of guys
CSU - winning on the road in a rivalry game is always a good win, but CSU isn't what they were last year
Georgia - not a great team, but CU always in control
Oregon - they just aren't good
OSU - close game at home, it never really felt like CU was going to lose, but still a 6 pt win to an average team isn't anything to write home about
KU - obviously a big win, but as Goose stated above you can even pick some holes in that win.

Outside of KU there aren't any games that scream "that was a great win"

I'm a big fan of saying you can only beat the teams that walk through the door. And it isn't CU's fault some of these teams aren't as good as they were supposed to be and without players when we played them. It's just if you start to look at each of the games there's a chance that CU was overrated b/c of the competition they'd played and CU could have been exposed like Oregon has.

 

[jcatcher]

Does KenPom take into account injuries - not in his game predictions, becasue he calculates those based off of offensive and deffiensive efficiency on a points per possession standpoint - as CU plays without Spencer those number will naturally adjust overtime.

The critique of strength of schedule and margin of victory has always been a strong one against KenPom and he adjusted to cap this now (started this year). You can read all about it here, but he's also studied that scoring margin does matter.

D1 basketball is not D1 basketball IMO, yes you should expect to be more efficient against one of the worst teams in college basketball vs an average one. If you look at CU's schedule, that's like asking if CU should be expected to be more efficient against Tennessee Martin than Georgia. IMO - yes. One has lower level recruits and plays against terrible competition, the other is in real conference and recruits decent players.

I have noticed the changes this year. There seems to be a lot more movement in the rankings. It used to be that if you had a high ranking in a good conference, almost nothing but utter collapse could make you drop out of the Top 20 once conference games started.

Someone needs to tell Pomeroy that CU's defensive fingerprint has been "mostly man" since Tad Boyle arrived. He still has it as "inconclusive."

 

[cubuffs85]

We'll never know the answer to this, but is there a possibility that CU was overrated before Spencer went down?

The coaches and AP polls were the highest ratings CU had, all of the "computer rating systems" ie, sevenovertimes.com, Massey, Sagarin, KenPom never had CU in the top 25 outside of LRMC (24th).

If you look at the wins there are some question marks

Baylor - the last week the loss to Baylor is looking bad, first games of the year are always tough, but Baylor isn't doing CU any favors
USCB - close win and close game and they were missing their best player
Harvard - had to come back late and Harvard was missing a couple of guys
CSU - winning on the road in a rivalry game is always a good win, but CSU isn't what they were last year
Georgia - not a great team, but CU always in control
Oregon - they just aren't good
OSU - close game at home, it never really felt like CU was going to lose, but still a 6 pt win to an average team isn't anything to write home about
KU - obviously a big win, but as Goose stated above you can even pick some holes in that win.

Outside of KU there aren't any games that scream "that was a great win"

I'm a big fan of saying you can only beat the teams that walk through the door. And it isn't CU's fault some of these teams aren't as good as they were supposed to be and without players when we played them. It's just if you start to look at each of the games there's a chance that CU was overrated b/c of the competition they'd played and CU could have been exposed like Oregon has.

Great post IMO, as you said with these we'll never truly know with or without Spencer how great CU would've been. Also, fair or unfair, you're judged by how you finish in the Tourney, if they lost in the second (well technically, third) round with Spencer which is possible, things don't look so good.

 

[Shldr2Shldr]

It has been a few weeks, but the buffs are back on the national radar.

AP: NR 0 Votes
Zona #2
Kansas #7
UCLA NR (#28 43 votes)
OK. State NR (#30 10 votes)
ASU NR (#34 1 vote)

Coaches: NR #35 5 Votes
Zona #3
Kansas #7
UCLA NR (#30 15 votes)
OK. State NR (#33 10 votes)

Road sweep this week would gain us a lot of favor with the coaches. Maybe even the AP poll.

 

[cubuffs85]

It has been a few weeks, but the buffs are back on the national radar.

AP: NR 0 Votes
Zona #2
Kansas #7
UCLA NR (#28 43 votes)
OK. State NR (#30 10 votes)
ASU NR (#34 1 vote)

Coaches: NR #35 5 Votes
Zona #3
Kansas #7
UCLA NR (#30 15 votes)
OK. State NR (#33 10 votes)

Road sweep this week would gain us a lot of favor with the coaches. Maybe even the AP poll.

I posted this elsewhere but I think we need to win our next four games to get ranked. I could us possibly getting ranked beating UCLA(then USC) but other things would have to fall our way.

 

[SECOBuffsFan]

Our great win is coming...Arizona on Feb. 22nd

 

[Medford M.]

It has been a few weeks, but the buffs are back on the national radar.

AP: NR 0 Votes
Zona #2
Kansas #7
UCLA NR (#28 43 votes)
OK. State NR (#30 10 votes)
ASU NR (#34 1 vote)

Coaches: NR #35 5 Votes
Zona #3
Kansas #7
UCLA NR (#30 15 votes)
OK. State NR (#33 10 votes)

Road sweep this week would gain us a lot of favor with the coaches. Maybe even the AP poll.

AP poll has jumped the shark IMO. American got a vote last week with a 14-7 record.