Ride Captain

Yup. My bad. I wasn't paying close attention. Was scanning for SLU, DAY, CRE, RIC, VCU, STM etc. SJU threw me off.

Bill Russell

It's pretty clear that that the ghosts of Yinka Dare, Tom Stith, Skip Prosser, and Jameer Nelson's dad won't let the A10 crumble.

__________________
www.bonaalumni.com

MudFlap

nm

jpschmack

I like Nate Silver, he's a smart guy, even when talking about sports and not politics... but he should really understand that all of those numbers - Sagarin or RPI - are derived from WHO YOU PLAY, and 55% and 66% of who you play is determined by WHO IS IN YOUR CONFERENCE.

There's no doubt that the future A-10 will be weaker, the new BE7 Conference will be somewhere between the current A-10 and the current Big East; but using that type of metric to quantify it would be like him suggesting that the democratic party primary runner up could win the republican nomination. It's apples to oranges.


EDIT: after actually READING the article, I see that his made no reference to the future Atlantic 10, so sorry.

But to paul:

I don't think you need raw numbers to say that the BE7 is a better basketball league than the new BE FB conference with SMU, UCF, Tulane, etc; or better than the future A-10 after defections. The issue of HOW MUCH can't be determined using data that is a PRODUCT OF the old alignment.

letsgogdub

Love ya Bonaventure! Go Bonnies!

Seriously, let's put down the pitchforks and torches.

jpschmack

letsgogdub is a witch! Burn him alive!
(of if you're a Simpsons's fan) He's bring us peace and love, break his legs!

In all seriousness, it will be highly interesting if these conference changes mean more OOC games with those BE teams or fewer, if the A-10 schools that leave will still play those who stay or not.

paulxu

I just posted that link because I found the statistial comparisons he made interesting. It brought up one way of measuring the current conferences makeup performance over the last 10 years...and it was wildly different (at least as measured by Sagarin) then some of the impressions people have. Chris over at Pride posted an analysis based on RPI (which might be more in line with your comments) where he was arguing, I think, that the A10 is better than the BE. Not sure if that's the case...even as measured against the BE 7.

__________________
...he went up late, and I was already up there.

letsgogdub

Funny.

"You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to jpschmack again."

jpschmack

I think they are interesting... thanks for posting it.

Over the summer, I posted (ad nauseum, irritating all of you I'm sure) about how RPI can be manipulated through OOC schedule, because every conference is "The same" in the sense that they will go .500 against each other.

What makes a conference stronger than another is how many members each conference has that is racking up wins OOC.

Is their group more likely to win OOC games? If they have better teams, they'd be more likely to win than we would... if we were playing the same quality of opponents.

We could simply lower our OOC SOS to win more with them gone (but we'll probably panic and do the opposite).

jpschmack

Here's last season's OOC win percentages by team, after re-configuring the conferences:

Rk. CNF (Ch) Win% (Ch)
04. BEF (-1) .757 (-.008) UConn, CIN, USF, UCF, HOU, SMU, MEM, TEM, TUL
06. BEB (-3) .672 (-.093) Hoops and BUT, XAV, SLU
07. MWC (-3) .655 (-.108) +SJSU, USU, FS, NEV / -BSU, TCU, SDSU
08. MVC (--) .617 (+.000)
09. A10 (-2) .609 (-.010) +GMU, VCU / -CHAR, TEM, SLU, XU
09. CUS (--) .609 (+.004) +8 / -6
11. P12 (-1) .592 (+.000)
12. WCC (-1) .542 (-.019) +Pacific**
--
30. WAC (-18) .259 (-.291) -- just to say WOW.

*Notes and Flaws
#1 - No attempt was made to adjust records for OOC games that became conference games (i.e. Butler vs Xavier)
#2 - Realignment isn't done yet; and I anticipated some moves.
#3 - OOC schedules change every year, as do the teams (and the changes effect recruiting)

The WCC and MWC numbers are misleading.
Pacific (a founding WCC member) has been playing 4 WCC teams traditionally, since they're all in the Bay Area.
This season, they play Saint Mary's twice, and Gonzaga as well.
Next season, they'll be playing the only NorCal Big West team (UC Davis who was 4-26 last year) OOC instead.
So don't expect the WCC to drop much.

The MWC on the other hand… should drop even more than that. They have weaker teams in the league now.
They will play fewer OOC games than before (18 or 16, instead of 14)
Many of the OOC games that will disappear were against teams in the Great West and Independents, who had no one to play in early January. Those schools are in conferences now. The only Indy is NJIT.


So yeah, the conference changes hurt us.
They don't hurt Big East football as much as we thought they would. But then again, Tulane also was 11-1 OOC that season.

What's really funny is that everyone is going to change their OOC schedules to account for the fact that they are stronger or weaker, and it will probably have the OPPOSITE effect of what they desire.

squirrely

3 WCC are involved if they can agree on the specifics of the divisional split. San Fran in the picture to go along with Gonzaga, St. Mary's and Creighton.

Bill Russell

So, is the plan to have 12 or 14 teams? If it's 12 and the above is true, then the A10 could be minimally impacted.

__________________
www.bonaalumni.com

jdm2000

I cannot imagine both San Francisco AND St. Mary's being invited into whatever this league is. San Francisco has some truly great history, but they've been to one NCAA tournament in the last 30 years. And would they really take two Bay Area teams for this league?

URIrx

Here is the report of the official vote and press conference time
http://espn.go.com/college-sports/st...ball-framework

DukesDan

So the new conference will start in 15/16. Long time from now.

__________________
Duquesne Dukes: 2012 A10 tournament qualifier!!

2012-2013 Locks of the Day TBA
2011-2012 Locks of the Day NIT participant 29-26-0...... .527
2010-2011 Locks of the Day Regular Season Champion 31-20-4 ..... .600

#15 Cooper #11 Green #10 Nixon #12 Ricketts #24 Somerset