Experts?

by longhorn543 on Dec 20, 2007 4:09 PM CST Comment 18 comments

Looking around ESPN's site earlier and saw their "Power 16" poll. The experts have the Longhorns at 4th.

I love these so-called experts that ESPN employs. These polls are supposed to reflect the best team at the current time...not where they'll end up. We've all seen these same experts call Texas' wins against Tennessee & at UCLA the two best wins of the year so far. So, if the same team has the two best wins of the year, how can they be ranked behind three other teams? Special props to Jay Bilas for having the Bruins two spots ahead of the Horns in his poll.

Just a little venting at the experts and their warped sense of perception. Hope everyone has a great holiday.

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It's power poll

Not a resume ranking. 4th sounds about right to me.

In Mack We Trust.

by Cyrus on Dec 20, 2007 4:46 PM CST reply actions 0 recs

Bilas

I believe his reasoning was that he thought UCLA was a final four team and he hasn't seen anything that would make him think otherwise. He said Texas isn't deep enough, and thus he still thinks UCLA is better.

by Texas Wahoo on Dec 20, 2007 6:33 PM CST reply actions 0 recs

Listening to Bilas

cream himself everytime Duke scored a basket last night was incredibly annoying.

His silence when the Pitt point gaurd scored the winning basket made me giggle. I thought for a second his mic had been turned off, but I guess he was picking his jaw back up. Duke looked like they had that game sewn up and Pitt delivered some nasty body blows, despite their two best players sitting on the bench.

He gave fake lip service to Pitt's effort, but you could tell he was wounded by the Duke loss.

Jay Bilas sees things threw skewed eyes. He plays the part of the analyst who knows something the rest of us don't -- and shuns non-traditional programs.

If he thinks UCLA is better, fine. When Texas gets Gary Johnson back Texas will be plenty deep.

Cats and dogs sleeping together.

by EYESofBEVO on Dec 21, 2007 8:38 AM CST reply actions 0 recs

Bilas and the Horns

I don't follow college hoops nearly as much as football, but it has been my experience the past few years that among analysts, Bilas has been one of the biggest voices for the Horns. Most of you have watched much more closely than I have. Is there anything to this, or have I just been sneaking a peak at the right times?

by ArcticLonghorn on Dec 21, 2007 8:52 AM CST reply actions 0 recs

Who needs proof?

UCLA is not better than UT. I have proof, the horns beat UCLA and on their home court. Until UCLA beats UT, UT is better. That's the logic of playing games. In all sports wins trumps stats or opinions for that matter.
Every thing else is sour grapes from those who don't like to be proven wrong.

by Xerxes on Dec 21, 2007 9:16 AM CST reply actions 0 recs

that's not exactly true

this is an extreme example, but based on this logic, we have PROOF that the Stanford football team was better than the USC football team, right? Stanford beat USC on their home turf. So, you would say, until USC beats Stanford, Stanford is better.

Obviously that's not true because Stanford finished the season 4-8 and USC finished 10-2. And of course, the Texas basketball team is quite different than that Stanford team because they're actually, you know, good. But my point is just that there's way more that can very reasonably go into a judgment of how good teams are relative to each other than "who beat who."

by billyzane on Dec 21, 2007 9:47 AM CST up reply actions 0 recs

Home court win + better record = better team

Is what I think he is saying, but left out the last part. ....or maybe not.

Bilas is basing his "they are deeper" argument on one guy, Mata-Real. He came in and scored a few crucial points late in the game. But that was really more of a fluke, because they couldn't get Kevin Love off the bench in the final minutes. Serendipity kept a hot-handed bench player on the court.

The UCLA bench outscored the Texas bench by 4, but the Texas bench outrebounded UCLA's 7 to 3. I'd say it was pretty much a draw. In fact Love was a non-factor late in the second half, because of Chapman and Wangmene.

Cats and dogs sleeping together.

by EYESofBEVO on Dec 21, 2007 10:35 AM CST up reply actions 0 recs

not saying i agree with Bilas

just saying that there's more to it than "we beat them once therefore we're better."

by billyzane on Dec 21, 2007 10:45 AM CST up reply actions 0 recs

youre right to a degree

At the point Stanford beat USC they were the better team(maybe only for that day) but as the season went on Stanford couldn't sustain that level of play. I would say USC improved it's play to a point where based on both teams win/loss record at the end of the season showed USC to be a better team than Stanford.

So a team record at any one point is only a reflection of how good the are at the part of the season.

Using that logic UT is the best team in the country up until it's peers actually beat teams as highly ranked or UT loses.

by Xerxes on Dec 21, 2007 1:16 PM CST up reply actions 0 recs

Disagree

There is randomness in the outcome of each game. That's why they play 7 games in NBA or world series. There is always the factor of luck!

If Stanford and USC play 100 times, USC will win 99 times, Stanford wins 1 time. It does not mean Stanford was better in the day they won, it means they were lucky on that day.

In Mack We Trust.

by Cyrus on Dec 21, 2007 2:13 PM CST up reply actions 0 recs

all or none

Yes there is luck for and against both teams. But just saying something is luck, is an excuse. Even in a series of games there are random factors that effect the outcome so what. All kinds of things effect the outcome, in fact an infinite number of random events take place during a game and none if any count as part of the score.
You could argue that during any competition luck will affect the outcome, if thats the case you could say that the NFL, NBA, College Football champion was nothing more than the luckiest team that year. It ends up you either give luck all the credit or none, you can't just pick one kind of luck and not another and say that was the reason one team won. We could then all find fault with every game and use some type of lucky event to prove the team we wanted to win did.

From your example I would say Stanford was the better team in 1% of the games and give them their due for being the winner in one game. USC may have been the better team 99 times but not that one time.

by Xerxes on Dec 21, 2007 3:00 PM CST up reply actions 0 recs

Sample Size

The more times two teams play each other, the more definitive the conclusions one can make about their relative merits. If the loan sample is a close game between two similarly talented teams, then it's likely that they are roughly equivalent. It wouldn't be unreasonable to say that the team that won is slightly better than the other. The lone data point would support that assertion. In the Stanford-USC example, those teams aren't similarly talented. The Stanford win is likely an extreme outlier. The better proxy for comparing those two teams is to look at how they fared in their other games. Like Cyrus said, the NBA and MLB try to increase the sample size to prevent an outlier series so that it is more likely that the winner of a series is, in fact, the better of the two teams.

The other issue directly related here is that early season polls are still projection. Bilas apparently believes that after more games have played out, UCLA will better than Texas. Later in the season, if things don't change significantly, and he has Texas below UCLA, that would be unreasonable. Personally, I think a Texas team that will be getting a post presence soon stands to improve much more than a team whose point guard is going to be more into the rythem of the game.

by Bob LaBlog on Dec 21, 2007 4:33 PM CST up reply actions 0 recs

This has been a good discussion...

for me because it made something clear. All stats have a temporal component. It creates misunderstanding if you don't qualify when your applying your stats. If a sportswriter thinks UCLA is a better team and it will have a better record and get deeper into the tournament, that is not talking about this week stats, that's a prediction for the end of the year stats.
In a lot of cases we may be talking about different situations. Some are using stats to build up case for who will be the best team or to read into them other predictive qualities, no problem as long as you make that understood. Some of the sportswriters and poll voters are not clear on the basis of their votes.

I would say the less confusing way to deal with it is leave out the predictive aspect because simple unanalyzed stats may not be to predictive.
And that case based on games played up until I write this UT has the best record against the better quality opponents of all the unbeaten teams which up till this point in time means that UT is the best team in the country. After todays games that may change. And what is known today will certainly be different by the end of the season.

by Xerxes on Dec 22, 2007 10:15 AM CST up reply actions 0 recs

That's a reasonable way to look at it

I agree with what you're saying. A sportswriter still has to ignore an event that has actually occurred up to this point because they have more faith in their assumptions than they do in the events that actually took place on the court. I don't have any problem with wildly fluctuating polls if they reflect what is actually happening. Ranking UCLA ahead of Texas today is silly. Currently, Texas does have the best argument at number 1. If they beat Michigan State in East Lansing, then I don't think there is any argument for keeping Texas behind anybody.

by Bob LaBlog on Dec 22, 2007 10:44 AM CST up reply actions 0 recs

clarification

It should say "to rank UCLA ahead of Texas right now, a sportswriter still has to ignore an event that has actually occurred up to this point because they have more faith in their assumptions than they do in the events that actually took place on the court."

by Bob LaBlog on Dec 22, 2007 10:45 AM CST up reply actions 0 recs