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| A10 BY THE NUMBERS Recent Articles 02/11/10: 2/11 A10 Postseason Odds Report 01/09/10: 1/9 A10 Postseason Odds Report 01/05/09: The Effect of the Unbalanced Schedule on the 2010 A10 Conference Season 12/30/09: A10 Postseason Odds Report 12/23/09: The Effect of Melquan Bolding's Absence on Duquesne 12/22/09: A10 Postseason Odds Report 12/18/09: A10 Postseason Odds Report 12/11/09: Quantifying the Rebounding Problems of St. Joe's Basketball Links NIT-ology Ken Pomeroy Mid-Majority Yoco Hoops Bracket Board College Hoops Net A10 Forum Storming the Floor College Chalktalk Villanova by the Numbers Valley Ledger March Madness All Season Contact mikebscullin@gmail.com | 2/11 A10 Postseason Odds Report February 11, 2010 by Mike Scullin As you can see, the bottom 7 teams have been lopped off of the report because the formula gives all of them a 0% chance of making the NCAA or NIT. Barring an unexpected run by one of those seven to bring themselves back into contention, this will remain a 7 team report (at least until St. Louis fades out of NIT contention). Clearly, there are two tiers of at large contenders in the A10 right now: Temple, Xavier and Richmond all come in at above 80% due to being comfortably projected to win 12 games in conference and having nice sets of quality wins. Dayton, Rhode Island, and Charlotte are in a dogfight that, if I had to guess, will result in 2 of 3 of those teams ending up with bids. Atlantic City is going to be a lot of fun this year... READ THE FULL ARTICLE 1/9 A10 Postseason Odds Report January 9, 2010 by Mike Scullin A little bit of a change in the way I calculate the odds starting with this edition. Instead of assuming a team has a 75% chance of receiving an NCAA bid if they reach exactly their target record, I now have it broken down by 3 confidence levels: 60%, 75%, and 90%. I think this will provide a little more accuracy; for instance, Richmond and URI are clearly better bets to make it at 11-5 than Dayton is at 10-6, and the odds now reflect that. Also: Xavier's inflated odds, skyrocketing conference-wide bid projection. READ THE FULL ARTICLE The Effect of the Unbalanced Schedule on the 2010 A10 Conference Season January 5, 2010 by Mike Scullin As we prepare to enter into the Atlantic 10 conference schedule once and for all, the focus has turned to projecting where teams will end up in the standings and what they can do in the postseason. A number of factors will combine to determine the teams' fates this conference season: how well they play on any given day, how well their opponents play on any given day, injuries, coaching, plain dumb luck, and countless others. One of the most important factors in that last category that sometimes goes unnoticed: the unbalanced schedule. What follows is an attempt to quantify the effect of the unbalanced schedule on the upcoming season, and to determine the potential winners and losers created by it. In addition to its obvious effect on A10 seeding, I will also take a look at the equally important but less obvious effect it can have on a team's chances for an NCAA at large bid. READ THE FULL ARTICLE 12/30 A10 Postseason Odds Report December 30, 2009 by Mike Scullin A couple of adjustments in target records drive the numbers down a bit this week. The more I look at things, the more I think that Xavier will have to get to 12 wins (previous target was 11) in conference and Richmond will have to get to 11 (previous target was 10) to feel good about their at large chances. Both of these teams still have opportunities to post out of conference wins that would drive these target values back down to where I had them before, but I think the odds make a lot more sense this way. The conference continues to look good for 3 bids. Expect these numbers to get shaken up A LOT one way or another on the next postseason odds report -- pretty much all of the NCAA contenders have huge opportunities to improve their resumes in the next week or so. READ THE FULL ARTICLE The Effect of Melquan Bolding's Absence on Duquesne December 23, 2009 by Mike Scullin  A subject of interest as we gear up for the Atlantic 10 Conference season is how to peg the expected performance of Duquesne. Duquesne has been one of the most difficult teams to judge for two reasons: one, they have played a weak schedule, racking up 8 home wins against dreadful teams. Perhaps more importantly, they have been without sophomore guard Melquan Bolding since the first game of the season, who seemed to be quickly moving towards star status as his freshman season progressed.The numbers are the numbers, and Duquesne without Bolding is struggling mightily on offense. Their 0.928 points per possession adjusted efficiency ranks 277th in Division 1, a far cry from the 1.147 ppp adjusted efficiency (23rd in D1) they sported in 2009 with star guard Aaron Jackson still in the fold. The question at hand, then, is how will they likely perform once Bolding returns from injury? We can make a pretty good estimate of his expected effect on Duquesne's on-court performance. READ THE FULL ARTICLE 12/22 A10 Postseason Odds Report December 22, 2009 by Mike Scullin Another tremendous weekend for the conference results in skyrocketing NCAA odds for a couple of the most likely at large contenders. The numbers currently say that the A10 has a 97% probability of getting 3 or more bids, 37% for 4 or more, and 11% for the elusive 5. It's important to note that these at large chances are being looked at as independent events in this simulation while they probably aren't truly so -- it is possible that even with biases aside, the committee will find it difficult to allow a fifth team in. Still, these results are extremely encouraging. READ THE FULL ARTICLE 12/18 A10 Postseason Odds Report December 18, 2009 by Mike Scullin As a fan of multiple sports, I've always very much enjoyed attempts to project the probability of postseason berths, such as those of Baseball Prospectus and Football Outsiders. It's relatively easy to develop a system for calculating the odds for these sports -- playoff spots are determined wins and losses, so by using relatively reliable win probability metrics, these sites can provide a very accurate picture of things. Postseason forecasting for college basketball is a whole different animal -- in addition to nailing down a team's likely future performance, one must also nail down how a very human committee is going to look at things. For quite some time now, numerous bracketologists have done a good job of predicting who most deserves to go to each tournament "if the season ended today," or "if the season ends how we think it's going to end." My goal is to develop a reliable way estimate the probability of postseason berths, rather than just finding the most worthy 65 ncaa teams and 32 nit teams and calling them "in". What follows is my first attempt at accomplishing this. READ THE FULL ARTICLE Quantifying the Rebounding Problems of St. Joe's December 11, 2009 by Mike Scullin I took a look at the statistics so far to pinpoint exactly how the poor rebounding of Saint Joseph's has hurt the team's overall performance this year. For those who haven't been counting, they rank worse than 300th among all Division I schools in terms of both offensive and defensive rebounding percentage. My goal is to express in numbers how severe of a downward effect this lack of success on the glass has had on the offensive and defensive ends of the floor for St. Joe's. READ THE FULL ARTICLE |