The Cygarin Basketball ratings have been updated. Woweee! Is this a fun year to be doing this stuff! Let's take a look...
First of all lets take a look at the conference comparison, and most notably the Big-12. It shows five teams that are in a virtual dead heat in the power rankings. Iowa State, West Virginia, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas are all within 1.16 points of each other.
Keeping in mind that home court advantage is about 3.5 points, one can start to appreciate that for all practical purposes any game between these five teams is going to be a virtual toss-up home or away.
As I have mentioned in a couple of posts, I expected to see conference play start to sort things out. But they haven't. Indeed, conference play have tightened the race in the power rankings, and actual conference play is following suit.
What is noteworthy is that Kansas State is the conference leader right now, and they are not one of the five above. And that just goes to show you how tight things really are when home court advantage is factored in.
It also worthy to note how far behind the entire Big-10 conference is in comparison to the Big-12, with the exception of the Wisconsin.
Iowa State.....
Iowa State is currently 3-2 in against top-25 equivalents. And from a margin standpoint are above their rating in four of the five games. And the one game they are not is Maryland earlier in the season.
Generally speaking, Iowa State's current ranking is validated (so far) by their performance against the strength of schedule, as well as their current trend as the season progresses.
There is just one huge caveat to that, and that is that Iowa State appears to be rather inconsistent. So until that settles out, the Clones are prone to really screwing the pooch....not just against good teams, but teams we would be expected to beat. (Like Kansas State at home.)
Conference comparison....
The conference comparison page speaks for itself. Not only do the power rating suggest a slobberknocker race....but the actual results of games is backing that up.
Not only are we seeing battles in the top half of the conference, be were seeing all kinds of spoiler situations, as well. As Kansas State has shown.
Kansas State.....
The Wildcats are sitting alone at the top of the conference race right now, but there is a solid explanation for that. Kansas State has played the easiest conference strength of schedules to date, and three of their four wins have come in the lower half of their SOS, almost lower third.
But there is no taking away their win over Oklahoma. And it stands right now as the highest power rated in the conference to date. So clearly Kansas State is a team that cannot be ignored. It just goes to show what the spoiler roll capability is in the conference, and how much it will probably influence the conference race.
The game.....
Holy smokes! The Cygarin Ratings have Iowa State as 13 point favs over the Wildcats! Do you buy that?
This is one of those games where the point spread is less issue than the probability, and the Cygarin Ratings have Iowa State as having a 88% chance of winning.....which even that sounds a little staggering.
Perhaps another way to look at it is that Iowa State has had only one game where they performed (point spread-wise) bad enough to lose to Kansas State, and that was Southern U.
The only two games against top-100 teams where Iowa State performed badly enough to make it close, was Maryland and South Carolina.
But.....the concern I have is that Kansas State's power rating may not be representing their current level of play. And there is indeed some evidence of that.
Personally, I would bump up their power ratting by about five or six points. And that suggests a game in which Iowa State has about 70% chance if winning.
If anything, I am glad that we are playing them when they are at the top of the league. KSU is clearly a team with huge spoiler capability, and can beat a team (like Oklahoma) that looks past them. I don't think Hoiberg will let these guys take KSU too lightly.
(In my opinion.)
Disclosure: I'm in a hurry, so a apologize for any errors or lack of proof reading.
This post was edited on 1/19 2:33 PM by Cygarin
Cygarin Basketball Ratings
First of all lets take a look at the conference comparison, and most notably the Big-12. It shows five teams that are in a virtual dead heat in the power rankings. Iowa State, West Virginia, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas are all within 1.16 points of each other.
Keeping in mind that home court advantage is about 3.5 points, one can start to appreciate that for all practical purposes any game between these five teams is going to be a virtual toss-up home or away.
As I have mentioned in a couple of posts, I expected to see conference play start to sort things out. But they haven't. Indeed, conference play have tightened the race in the power rankings, and actual conference play is following suit.
What is noteworthy is that Kansas State is the conference leader right now, and they are not one of the five above. And that just goes to show you how tight things really are when home court advantage is factored in.
It also worthy to note how far behind the entire Big-10 conference is in comparison to the Big-12, with the exception of the Wisconsin.
Iowa State.....
Iowa State is currently 3-2 in against top-25 equivalents. And from a margin standpoint are above their rating in four of the five games. And the one game they are not is Maryland earlier in the season.
Generally speaking, Iowa State's current ranking is validated (so far) by their performance against the strength of schedule, as well as their current trend as the season progresses.
There is just one huge caveat to that, and that is that Iowa State appears to be rather inconsistent. So until that settles out, the Clones are prone to really screwing the pooch....not just against good teams, but teams we would be expected to beat. (Like Kansas State at home.)
Conference comparison....
The conference comparison page speaks for itself. Not only do the power rating suggest a slobberknocker race....but the actual results of games is backing that up.
Not only are we seeing battles in the top half of the conference, be were seeing all kinds of spoiler situations, as well. As Kansas State has shown.
Kansas State.....
The Wildcats are sitting alone at the top of the conference race right now, but there is a solid explanation for that. Kansas State has played the easiest conference strength of schedules to date, and three of their four wins have come in the lower half of their SOS, almost lower third.
But there is no taking away their win over Oklahoma. And it stands right now as the highest power rated in the conference to date. So clearly Kansas State is a team that cannot be ignored. It just goes to show what the spoiler roll capability is in the conference, and how much it will probably influence the conference race.
The game.....
Holy smokes! The Cygarin Ratings have Iowa State as 13 point favs over the Wildcats! Do you buy that?
This is one of those games where the point spread is less issue than the probability, and the Cygarin Ratings have Iowa State as having a 88% chance of winning.....which even that sounds a little staggering.
Perhaps another way to look at it is that Iowa State has had only one game where they performed (point spread-wise) bad enough to lose to Kansas State, and that was Southern U.
The only two games against top-100 teams where Iowa State performed badly enough to make it close, was Maryland and South Carolina.
But.....the concern I have is that Kansas State's power rating may not be representing their current level of play. And there is indeed some evidence of that.
Personally, I would bump up their power ratting by about five or six points. And that suggests a game in which Iowa State has about 70% chance if winning.
If anything, I am glad that we are playing them when they are at the top of the league. KSU is clearly a team with huge spoiler capability, and can beat a team (like Oklahoma) that looks past them. I don't think Hoiberg will let these guys take KSU too lightly.
(In my opinion.)
Disclosure: I'm in a hurry, so a apologize for any errors or lack of proof reading.
This post was edited on 1/19 2:33 PM by Cygarin
Cygarin Basketball Ratings
