FWIW - Lawrence

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UltimateVUFan
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Re: FWIW - Lawrence

Post by UltimateVUFan »

Never said VU played well in November and December. But they played a more challenging OOC schedule (98, according to kenpom) than several SEC teams that made the cut ahead of them who I argue shouldn’t have (particularly MSU with their #277 OOC schedule, head-to-head loss, and 4 fewer SEC wins).

I also don’t recall you ever explaining why UK (#142 OOC schedule) — who, like VU, also had 1 Q4 and 2 Q3 losses, and went 1-2 against VU on the season — finished 55 spots ahead of VU in the NET. I know you understand it so much better than I do, so why don’t you enlighten me? Was it all that one lopsided Bama road loss? The one that woke the team up and arguably led them to become one of the hottest teams in conference down the stretch?

Sorry, man. I just don’t believe the NET is the end-all-be-all selection criteria. Numbers only tell part of a story. If you omit the human element, what are you left with? It’s the same reason so many people are up in arms over AI and its potentially negative consequences on humans’ ability to do and think for themselves.
If VU had scheduled an easier OOC schedule last season, they likely make the tournament.


Jason94
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Re: FWIW - Lawrence

Post by Jason94 »

UltimateVUFan wrote: Tue May 23, 2023 10:22 pm Never said VU played well in November and December. But they played a more challenging OOC schedule (98, according to kenpom) than several SEC teams that made the cut ahead of them who I argue shouldn’t have (particularly MSU with their #277 OOC schedule, head-to-head loss, and 4 fewer SEC wins).

I also don’t recall you ever explaining why UK (#142 OOC schedule) — who, like VU, also had 1 Q4 and 2 Q3 losses, and went 1-2 against VU on the season — finished 55 spots ahead of VU in the NET. I know you understand it so much better than I do, so why don’t you enlighten me? Was it all that one lopsided Bama road loss? The one that woke the team up and arguably led them to become one of the hottest teams in conference down the stretch?

Sorry, man. I just don’t believe the NET is the end-all-be-all selection criteria. Numbers only tell part of a story. If you omit the human element, what are you left with? It’s the same reason so many people are up in arms over AI and its potentially negative consequences on humans’ ability to do and think for themselves.
If VU had scheduled an easier OOC schedule last season, they likely make the tournament.
So what is your beef then? You admit we played poorly during a time that the committee pays attention to, so how would that be a comment on our schedule strength? We played 5 bad teams in OOC, lost to 1 of them, but played poorly in two more games (Wofford and Bama A&M) How would playing 13 games against bad teams, losing to 2 or 3 and playing poorly in 5 or 6 more help our tournament chances?

You are asking me to explain many different things. Do you want me to explain NET or the quadrant systems, because they are related, but not the same thing. Perhaps this is the difficulty you are having in understanding how teams are ranked in efficiency type metrics vs how the selection committee uses those metrics to determine quadrants and how to compare teams that didn't play the same competition.

And your belief that the NET isn't the be-all, end-all is similar to what the committee thinks. If they did believe it was, then UConn would have had a #1 seed. You are conflating NET with the selection process, which isn't NET. And which human is watching every single one of each team's 30+ games? I know a lot about VU, but cannot say I watched every game of every team in the tournament and on the bubble - is that what you expect? If not, then how do you know how good a team is relative to another in a completely different conference playing a completely different schedule?

So you admit we played poorly for the first two months (and even up until the Bama game where we got destroyed). then we picked it up over the last 14 games or so, but were not dominant during that stretch - we won a bunch of close games at home for the most part. I'm not following why the NET is such a mystery to you. How is playing good basketball for the last 1/3 of the season overcoming the other 2/3 in a algorithmic that doesn't have any recency bias?

At this point I think you are intentionally not understanding, assuming you graduated from Vanderbilt. This isn't rocket science.

1) We played poorly for a large portion of the season
2) We played well at the end, but were not dominant
3) Ratings systems that look beyond wins and losses see us as a pretty good team overall on average.

What is the mystery?
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mathguy
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Re: FWIW - Lawrence

Post by mathguy »

Jason94 wrote: Tue May 23, 2023 11:31 pm
So you admit we played poorly for the first two months (and even up until the Bama game where we got destroyed). then we picked it up over the last 14 games or so, but were not dominant during that stretch - we won a bunch of close games at home for the most part. I'm not following why the NET is such a mystery to you. How is playing good basketball for the last 1/3 of the season overcoming the other 2/3 in a algorithmic that doesn't have any recency bias?
Just saying that even before the 'Bama debacle we...

Won (by 33) against a Morehead State team that finished 1st in their conference.
Beat a Pitt team that finished 3rd in the ACC and made the NCAA tourney
Beat a ranked Arkansas team that made the NCAA tourney

Plus had 2 other SEC wins.

So while we were certainly paying (substantially and dramatically) better at the end of the season than the beginning, I don't think its fair to say that we only played good basketball at the end of the year.

I realize that NET was always going to underrate us because of the number of close games we won, but this is why I've constnatly railed about it. We had worthwhile wins before and after the Alabama debacle.

The NET des what the NET does ... the committee hosed us. Nothing has convinced me otherwise.
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Re: FWIW - Lawrence

Post by Jason94 »

mathguy wrote: Wed May 24, 2023 7:47 pm
Jason94 wrote: Tue May 23, 2023 11:31 pm
So you admit we played poorly for the first two months (and even up until the Bama game where we got destroyed). then we picked it up over the last 14 games or so, but were not dominant during that stretch - we won a bunch of close games at home for the most part. I'm not following why the NET is such a mystery to you. How is playing good basketball for the last 1/3 of the season overcoming the other 2/3 in a algorithmic that doesn't have any recency bias?
Just saying that even before the 'Bama debacle we...

Won (by 33) against a Morehead State team that finished 1st in their conference.
Beat a Pitt team that finished 3rd in the ACC and made the NCAA tourney
Beat a ranked Arkansas team that made the NCAA tourney

Plus had 2 other SEC wins.

So while we were certainly paying (substantially and dramatically) better at the end of the season than the beginning, I don't think its fair to say that we only played good basketball at the end of the year.

I realize that NET was always going to underrate us because of the number of close games we won, but this is why I've constnatly railed about it. We had worthwhile wins before and after the Alabama debacle.

The NET des what the NET does ... the committee hosed us. Nothing has convinced me otherwise.
The win against Morehead moved us up 12 points in the kenpom ratings - so efficiency ratings took into account that result. The win against Pitt was a 1 point game where we were favored by 3. This wasn't some great accomplishment in beating a bubble team by one at home. The win against Arkansas bumped us up 9 points in kenpom - again the efficiency rankings saw this win as a very good win. However, ignoring our losses to Grambling and So. Miss, we have a 3 point win against a Wofford team that went 8-10 in the SoCon; an 8 point home win against a really bad Bama A&M team (as a 27 point favorite) and we beat a very bad USC team at home but it took OT.

So one of the games we were played well was a game that we should have won, and just barely won. The other two were accounted for in the system. But there were three more wins that we played very poorly in and only won because 1) the games were at home and 2) our opponents were not good teams by any measure. This is not including additional losses that were by larger margins than they should have been such as Memphis and St Mary's, as well as games that we should have won by large margins and ended up losing (So Miss and Grambling). So for the three games you identify up to the Bama game there are four games where we played above what we should have played (I'll throw in at UGA and SELA to be fair) but
eight games where we played well below what we should have played - Memphis, So Miss, Wofford, Grambling, Bama A&M, USC, and UK at home.

Kenpom tracks the game by game team rankings and you can see how each win or loss affected our overall ratings

Memphis - drop 8 spots; So Miss - down 13 spots; Temple - up 1; Morehead - up 12 spots; st marys - down 3; Fresno - up 1, VCU - down 2; Wofford - down 8; PItt - flat; Grambling - down 10; NCSU - down 3; Bama A&M - down 9; SELA - up 13; USC - down 4; MIssou - up 1; UT - up 1; Ark - up 9; Bama - down 2; UGA - up 6; UK -down 7; aTm - down 1; Bama - down 8; So of the first 22 games, our play caused our ranking to go down by more than 3 spots 8 times; up more than 3 spots just 4 times. The other 10 games we played about what would have been expected based upon respective ratings and location of the game. When you look at the entire season, our efficiency ranking is no mystery, and it is frustrating to see so many vandy fans not pick up on this - this isn't some UT board.

What followed was a lot more good wins, but also wins that were adding to the previous 22+ games of data, which saw us drop from the 66th ranked team to the 100th ranked team; no surprise they weren't moving the needle much - our ranking might have only gone up a small amount after a win against Auburn, but it only dropped 1 spot after a loss to LSU.

The only thing the NET did was underrate us based on our play late, but we were not a good team through the first 22 games of the season. Yes we played some good games during that stretch, but on the whole we did not play good basketball. The disagreement was in how much that should matter. We can argue the committee is wrong to consider it at all, but they did not surprise us with their criteria. The fact that UConn won in the manner it did is also reason to not dismiss their consideration out of hand either. Early games aren't meaningless.
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Re: FWIW - Lawrence

Post by UltimateVUFan »

Valid enough critique, but I still stand by the assertion that had VU played an easier schedule (say, on par with MSU’s abysmal preconference slate), they likely wouldn’t have suffered as many OOC losses. And they would’ve been fine come selection Sunday.
Still waiting for that UK discrepancy explanation, by the way.

Also, as I’ve said repeatedly Jason, I really appreciate your well-reasoned posts. You’re a great contributor to the board. However, I feel compelled to point out that questioning others’ intelligence isn’t a great look and is the reason why many other fan bases look down on VU fans. For the record, I hold my B.S. and M.Ed. from VU. I understand your logic and why you—as a data/numbers guy—support the NET. But it isn’t an infallible system.
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Re: FWIW - Lawrence

Post by buffy »

I hate the NET, but it does exactly what the Tourney Committee wants. It assesses the whole season. We were garbage in Nov./Dec. That's why we didn't go to the tournament. Jason has explained the mechanics of the NET countless times on this board, and yet, people keep going down the same inane rabbit holes regarding the season. I don't recall Jason "supporting" the NET. If Jason has called someone hindered, then perhaps the shoe fits. I'm pretty sure Stack knows how he wants to handle this "math reality" next season.
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