Houston #4

It will all work itself out in the end. We just need to win as many games as we can. A three seed is very possible.

I realize you don’t care about anything that doesn’t support UH being ranked #1 but AP voters do. I was explaining to you why other people and models taking a more objective look think teams like UNC and Nevada have performed better this season (also MOV) since you said to compare their resumes. Do with it what you will. If we had a win over Gonzaga like UNC we might be in the top 5.

If we go 30-3 or whatever and North Texas doesn’t lose again and finishes with only 1 loss do you think they should be seeded ahead of us?

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My point with UNC is they do have that one good win but nothing else and 3 losses. Just because those 3 losses are to good teams doesn’t make that a positive for them. Also I just don’t get why Nevada gets the benefit of the doubt. Their resume is not as good as ours, clearly the voters are using the eye test and preseason rankings way more than they should be. I’m not saying we should be #1, I’m saying #19 is ridiculous, we should be a top 10 team

UNC’s win @ Wofford is basically as good as any of our wins as well. RPI was garbage and as we know NET replaced RPI as the committee’s primary ranking system for use. While I do love being #4 in it, NET looks pretty questionable in general so far and most statisticians and traditional analysts seem to agree. The other two respected and recognized modeling systems the committee uses are BPI and Kenpom. We’re 30 in BPI and 32 in Kenpom. UNC is 6 in BPI and 8 in Kenpom. Nevada is 9 in Kenpom and 16 in BPI.

Everyone can use whatever system or criteria they want to rank someone (hence NJIT having an AP vote before they lost to us), but MOV and quality of opponent have been proven to have greater predictive power than just looking at wins. For example UNC losing by 3 to a solid Texas team on a neutral court is a better performance than us beating UTRGV by 5 at home or Rice by 11 at home. Though, the committee doesn’t really give a ton of credit for good performances in losses, other than to the extent it helps a team’s Kenpom or BPI ranking.

In football everyone thought we were getting hosed by the playoff committee when we were 7-1, but if you dug into our schedule and scores it was pretty obvious we weren’t really a top 25 team and that proved to be correct.

When I think we are getting hosed I call it out too. I thought we should have been a 4 or 5 seed last year and probably unfairly got dropped due to the early season Drexel loss and probably not having a recent track record of success.

If you think we’ve proven we’re better than Nevada and UNC this year based on results thus far, that’s fine and I think you can make a reasonable case since purely based on opponent our 2nd through 5th best wins are for the most part better than both. I don’t really agree and definitely don’t think we’re getting hosed. I think we can hang with those teams for sure though and may be better than them by the time the tourney rolls around.

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