Up from 67 pre-tournament. We still arent as good as #44 North Carolina though. The Iowa State blowout canceled out the Duke blowout so we finished where we started the ACC Tournament. NET loves blowouts.
Pitt finished #56 in NET
- Thread starter Sean Miller Fan
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Iowa State remained in the top 25 lol. I have no clue how they won games with that shooting.
We beat UNC twice, but actual games matter the least when judging who's "better".
Identical finish in final Sagarin ratings at #56--except in Sagarin's "Recent" rating where it was #53.
In the ACC ratings Sagarin had Pitt finish in 6th place behind--
# 13 Duke; # 18 Miami; #32 Virginia; #37 North Carolina and #49 NC State--
this is despite the fact that we were 1-1 vs Miami; 1-0 vs Virginia; 2-0 vs UNC and 1-0 vs NC State.
It's almost as if losing to teams like Florida State and Notre Dame counted against us.
Who knew?
Its a flawed system since margin of victory plays such an important role. Once a game reaches a certain win probability (I dont know, lets say 95% or something), the offensive and defensive efficiency tracking should be turned off. For example, if Duke plays St. Francis, when the score is 8-2 and Duke has a 95% win probability, no more stats. If Duke is up 18 on Pitt with 10 minutes left, turn them off. They won. Whether they finish strong and win by 30 or Pitt makes a meaningless late run and loses by 8 shouldnt matter.
You keep arguing that it's a flawed system, but that is because you want it to measure something different than the NCAA wants it to measure. The NCAA has other rankings that they use to measure what you want them to measure. The fact that you either can't or won't allow yourself to understand something that is so simple isn't a mark in your favor.
And "turning off" efficiencies when the game gets to a 95% win probability is a moronic idea even by your standards. I mean you understand that teams with a 95% win probability lose 5% of the games, right? I mean by definition. Your system would exclude hundreds, and yeah, that's plural, hundreds of comebacks over the course of the season.
For example, Eastern Illinois' win probability when they played Iowa got as low as 0.1%. It didn't rise above 5% until Eastern hit a shot just before the ten minute mark of the second half. Final score, Eastern Illinois 92, Iowa 83. In your system, literally none of that counts. Which would be great if you were an Iowa fan, I suppose. Lose a game to an inferior opponent and have it not count at all.
Some other random games that a team lost but under your system would not have counted as a loss but would have actually looked like a win include Florida State's win over Miami, Iowa's win over Michigan State in that crazy overtime game they played, Sam Houston State's win over Oklahoma, FGC's win over USC, Loyola Marymount's win over Wake Forest, Texas Tech's win over Iowa State, Morehead State's win over Clemson, both Vanderbilt's and Central Michigan's wins over Michigan, Maine's win over Boston College, Stetson's win over Florida State, and, well, at this point you probably get the point. Or, well, at least most people do, maybe not you.
But I'll just throw two more in there to show the absurdity of what you propose. If the FDU - Purdue tournament game happened in the regular season under your system it basically wouldn't have counted at all. And the Princeton - Arizona tournament game would have stopped counting early in the first half when Arizona took a 14-6 lead (similar to your Duke example). Something tells me that Arizona would have loved it had the NCAA decided not to just stop counting the stats then, but to just save everyone's time had declared them the winners.
I am smarter than the NCAA. Everyone knows scoring margin and Vegas metrics shouldn’t be taken into account for picking a tournament.
And I said 95% of an example. I dont know what the number is. That's for the math nerds. At SOME point, we all agree that the possession metrics have to be turned off. There could be mechanisms in place that if a team comes back, then the entire game counts. Somehow, some way, they cannot keep counting possessions in blowout games. Those possessions after the game has been decided dont tell you about a team. Coaches are really dumb, by and large, but eventually they are going to have to start coaching for running up the score and not resting guys. And I cant wait for the coaches who start fouling down 20 with 2 minutes left to cut into the lead and hopefully lose by 12. Announcer will lose their shit
You can't even figure out what the NCAA is doing, let alone have figured out how it's flawed.
At this point it's pretty clear why you were never a contestant on "Are you smarter than a 5th grader".
Nobody agrees with you that they should be measuring scoring margin. I am right.
The NCAA agrees with me.
And they are the only ones that matter.
And the notion that the person who thinks that FDU's win over Purdue shouldn't count is right is laughable.
Nobody said FDU's win shouldn't count. Everyone agrees with me that scoring margin shouldn't matter except you and the idiots at the worst-run, most corrupt organization in the US. Congratulations
And the people in Las Vegas. You know, the ones who put their money where their proverbial mouths are when they tell you the relative strengths of two teams. They absolutely use margins of victory when assessing the strengths of teams. And not just in college basketball. In literally every team sport.
And YOU absolutely said that FDU's win shouldn't count. YOU said that once a game gets to a more than 95% win odds that they should stop tracking it. And at the opening tip off of the game FDU's win odds were less than 5%. So right from the tip off, under YOUR plan the rest of the game wouldn't have counted for ratings purposes.
Think about this for a second. YOUR plan is so moronic that even YOU think it's dumb.
Priceless.
And YOU absolutely said that FDU's win shouldn't count. YOU said that once a game gets to a more than 95% win odds that they should stop tracking it. And at the opening tip off of the game FDU's win odds were less than 5%. So right from the tip off, under YOUR plan the rest of the game wouldn't have counted for ratings purposes.
Think about this for a second. YOUR plan is so moronic that even YOU think it's dumb.
Priceless.
Dude, I dont know when you would shut it off. I used it as an example and said that. The nerds can figure that part out. Some of the game clearly has to count. But we all agree you have to stop counting possessions at some point. Aiden's Fisch's bucket shouldn't have played any role in Pitt's NCAAT chances. Neither should the last 10 minutes of the Duke game.
And you are right about Vegas and I dont care. Vegas rates "best teams." I dont care about best teams. The tournament should be most deserving teams. If 2 teams played the same schedule and one was 22-11 with 22 30 point wins and 11 1 point losses and the other had 22 1 point wins and 11 30 point losses, the 1 team would have a NET of 20 and would get a 6 seed. The other of 80 and not even be close to making the tournament. All because of scoring margin.
Once again, for the 4,279th time, the NCAA does not select teams for the tournament based on their NET ranking, and it does not seed the field based on their NET rankings. The fact that you simply cannot understand such a simple concept, especially after a year when we got in the tournament when if they went by the NET rankings like you keep saying we wouldn't have been anywhere near getting in the tournament, isn't a point in favor of your argument. It's just more evidence that you have no idea what you are talking about.
The NCAA uses the NET to determine the "best" teams so that it can sort the teams. And then it uses the team's resumes to select the field and seed the tournament. It is such a simple concept that someone who went to college ought to be able to understand that.
And in your example, one of those two teams is, in fact, a lot better than the other one. The fact that you want to stick up for the lesser team is certainly a choice that you can make, but you should at least be honest about what you are doing. YOU might not care about the best teams getting in the tournament, but the NCAA does, in fact, want to reward better teams rather than lesser ones.
Had Pitt lost by 1 to Duke, Mich, and WVU, their NET rank would have been 30 spots better and would have been a 9 or 10.
Well first of all, no, it wouldn't have. If that was all there was to it then Pitt wouldn't have been in the tournament in the first place, because of how bad our NET was.
But on the other hand, if we had only lost to Duke, Michigan and West Virginia by one that would have obviously meant that Pitt was a better team than the one that lost those games the way that they did. That is absolutely unquestionable.
Except maybe by someone who doesn't understand this stuff, like, for instance, you.
So you are saying if our NET was 37 instead of 67, we would have been the 3rd to last team in?
I'm saying that if our NET was 37 instead of 67 we'd have been a much better team, which would have been reflected in our record, which would have meant that we'd have had a better resume, which means that we would have been seeded higher.
You, on the other hand, are just making stuff up based on the fact that you have no idea what you are talking about, thinking that somewhere along the line it will produce some sort of gotcha moment. But since you really don't have any idea what the NET is and what the NET is used for and what the NET is not used for you're like the guy fishing in a pond with no fish who can't understand why he can't catch anything.
You, on the other hand, are just making stuff up based on the fact that you have no idea what you are talking about, thinking that somewhere along the line it will produce some sort of gotcha moment. But since you really don't have any idea what the NET is and what the NET is used for and what the NET is not used for you're like the guy fishing in a pond with no fish who can't understand why he can't catch anything.
And I am saying that lets keep everything the same except we lose those 3 games by 1 and have a NET of 37. Still 3rd to last team in? You wont answer because you know Im right.
I won't answer because you are just making shite up. You have absolutely no knowledge that changing any one or two or ten results by any particular amount will change any team's NET by any specific amount. You are, literally, just making something up.
Whereas I don't need to make anything up. The NCAA does not, and never has, select teams for the tournament based on their NET rankings, and the NCAA does not, and never has, seeded teams based on their NET rankings.
The sooner that you admit that you have been wrong about this all along the sooner we could, at least theoretically, have a real discussion about the NET rankings. As long as you continue to espouse nonsense with regards to what the NET is and how the NET is used there can't be any real world discussions about it.
Whereas I don't need to make anything up. The NCAA does not, and never has, select teams for the tournament based on their NET rankings, and the NCAA does not, and never has, seeded teams based on their NET rankings.
The sooner that you admit that you have been wrong about this all along the sooner we could, at least theoretically, have a real discussion about the NET rankings. As long as you continue to espouse nonsense with regards to what the NET is and how the NET is used there can't be any real world discussions about it.
The NET determines quad records and when a conference has high rankings in mid-December, that can make almost every conference game a Q1 or Q2. Clearly the tournament performance did not justify the quad records of many conference teams like Big 12 or Big 10. And these quad records were based on NET rankings which becomes a closed system once conference play begins. It’s flawed to base an entire conference schedule of games on a months worth of pre-conference games with no ability to recalibrate.
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I've never argued that the NET does not have flaws. Which is why it is fortunate that the NCAA does not select teams for the tournament based on their NET rankings and they don't seed the tournament based on a team's NET ranking. Fortunately for all us Pitt fans.
I have said on numerous occasions that I think the way that they split up the quads doesn't make any sense. Heck, one time I even proposed what I thought would be a better way to do it. But one thing that we have to understand is that the NCAA is not going to discount early season games as some here have proposed, because doing that only helps the P6 and hurts everyone else. And there are a lot more of "everyone else" than P6s. You just can't, and they aren't going to, tell a mid-major that sure, you beat a top P6 school in December but we aren't going to count that as much as when a team in that P6's conference beat them in February. It just isn't going to happen. It shouldn't happen.
Now that doesn't mean that the members of the committee shouldn't be looking at things like who is getting better and who is getting worse as the season goes on. But if they are going to have a ranking system, and they pretty much have to have a ranking system given how many teams there are in D1 basketball and the relatively few number of games that schools play, then the ranking system has to count a December win the same as it counts the exact same win that happens in February.
Early season games SHOULD be counted. The Big 12 and Big 10 won those. The ACC lost them so that does prove, to a point, which leagues are better. However, it absolutely cannot be as drastic as it was. Clemson, UNC, Wake, Syr, etc would have done no worse in the Big 12 than WVU. So you cant have WVU as a 9 and Wake and Syr not even making the NIT simply because the Big 12 was better so WVU got to play more Q1 games. The gap between a WVU and a Wake was far too large. The gap between an Iowa State and Pitt was far too large. Those teams were rewarded for showing up. Give Wake and Syr 8 Q1 home games and they are going to win some and steal 1 or 1 on the road.
That said, I am basically OK with leaving the quad system for ranking wins. But I think they should leave every other metric completely off the team sheet. So when the committee evaluates, they have absolutely no idea what WVU's NET is, what Pitt's NET is, etc. Ok, well they may memorize it from evaluating wins but their individual NET rank shouldn't be considered officially at all, not AT ALL. Neither should Pomeroy or any other Vegas metrices. Vegas and those metrices do do a really good teams at taking comparatives scores and seeing who is better but winning by 1 is all that HAS to matter. As Steve Forbes said, he gets paid to win by 1, not beat the spread. It is anticompetitive to reward and penalize teams based on scoring margin. A win by 1 should count the same as a win by 50.
