The Cygarin Ratings has been updated for the final regular season game against West Virginia.
Even though we have had an abbreviated season, we now have some pretty good information to be able to analyze teams. And as far as data goes, considering the population sample of a round robin schedule for the teams we are evaluating, it’s pretty decent data. It’s not just a population “sample”, but rather the entire population of a conference, albeit still small. That is something not available in other conferences.
WEST VIRGINIA
Overall for the season, I have West Virginia ranked 5th in the conference and power ranked about 27the in the country….that’s a pretty respectable national ranking.
The Mountaineers have had the misfortune of having most of the toughest part of their schedule on the road: @Iowa State, @ Texas, and @ Oklahoma State, and only Oklahoma at home.
From a conference schedule ranking perspective, WVU had the toughest “upper” schedule in the conference, playing four of the five toughest home/away venues of it. To compare, OSU played only one. (Iowa State played three, but consider that two of the toughest five venues is ourselves home & away.) “Who you play “where” does make a difference in schedule strength.
My opinion is that with a better fortune of venue location, WVU could have fared better than they have, and if so, would in better position to contend for a CCG berth. Which, though chances are small….they are still in contention.
West Virginia has been playing their best football of the season…..by far…..in their last three games. They beat KSU and TCU handily (we didn’t, TCU), and lost to Texas on the road by only four points. Of those three games, Texas was their worst performance, but even that was five points better than their current power ranking.
Looking at these three games, the worst that you can evaluate WVU is by their worst recent performance against Texas, and as just noted, that is five points better than their rating.
But, if you average all of the last three games, you can conservatively assess WVU at about eight points higher their current season rating…..or about fifteen points better than their earlier performance where they lost to Tech and beat Baylor in overtime. This clearly appears to be a much better playing team now, than they were then.
Performance against the strength of schedule has been a bit of a mixed bag. Their performance against their two toughest opponents (@OSU & @Texas) has been relatively “season” average performances. However their next two lower rated venues (KSU and TCU at home), WVU played lights-out better by a hunky 20 points above their rating.
Considering the season slide that Kansas State has experienced though, one could argue that WVU’s performance is overrated, due to KSU being overrated, and that would leave the recent TCU performance as a one hit wonder. So there is that potential chink in West Virginia’s armor.
Still, it leaves somewhat conflicting trends of the Mountaineers coming into this game with ISU….playing very strong “right now”…versus questionably as strong against “stronger opponents”.
Resultantly that also provides two very different scenarios. My judgement is that the upward season trend is the more consistent one, and thus the more credible one to use going into Saturday’s game, especially considering they played well against Texas, on the road.
With that, I have the Mountaineers currently functioning as a team power ranked 10th in the country. They are arguably nearly as good as Texas….as they showed…..and had they played Texas at home, if all went according to Hoyle, home field advantage (6 to 7 points difference) would have given them a win.
Furthermore Massey has their defense power ranked 16th in the country, which is the highest power rated defense we have faced this year. OSU and OU are 22nd and 27th respectively…..and we lost to the higher ranked defense of those two, and barely squeaked by the other.
Summarily, this is a WVU team that is playing at its peak when coming to Ames, and that is a high level of performance.
IOWA STATE
Take what I said in the analysis last week, and now let’s build on that……
I can now say that with the additional Texas data point, Iowa State is definitely showing a solid performance trend heading steadily up.
As I discussed last week, if we would take the Baylor’s performance where we handicapped them 21 easy points….. and adjust only half of that…..and also detune the Kansas State bludgeoning by half….we can perhaps consider those performances more “expectable” , and perhaps better view a picture of Iowa State’s “normalized” trend.
Do that, and you have the most remarkable and steady upward trend starting with Texas Tech. Since our game against Tech….a low point….the trend rises constantly through Texas, where at the moment we are playing fifteen points per game better than back then.
Start the comparison with the OSU game one later, we are playing ten points per game better now, than then.
And compared to how we played against Oklahoma (prior to Tech, and not a part of our current trend) we are playing about three points better than the day we beat the Sooners, which was our best game of the year until we thumped Kansas State. (The Texas performance was about even.)
So…..
Ignoring the trend and using the whole season average….. I have Iowa State’s season performance at 89.26, which is good for a power ranking of 7th in the country. That’s not far off from where the polls have us.
However, if I factor in the trend and use where Iowa State is playing now ….the good guys are playing about five points better than the season average ranking (last four games), and that puts us in 3rd in the country territory for the moment. But, that depends on ”if” we can continue our trend through WVU.
Additionally, Iowa State has definitely played better against our tougher opponents, with only OSU as an under-performance against the top four teams played so far.
The OSU loss was also at a time when we were playing our worst football of the season (excluding Louisiana), with Texas Tech and OSU being our worst performances of the year, and those two games came back-to-back. Whatever was going on then, we have seemingly kicked it.
Summarily, if Mountaineer fans had access to the Cygarin Ratings…….they would not like seeing what it suggests about their upcoming opponent. At worst, we’re pretty darned good and consistent. At best….we are damned good, and doing our goodest heading in to Saturday.
THE GAME.
It comes down to this…we are playing West Virginia at their peak……and West Virginia is playing Iowa State at our peak. Both teams are trending up, and both teams are also way overdue for a correction.
Both teams are on track for everyone to expect their respective “A” games, and the outcome is very likely going to come down to the team that blinks….either a performance correcting team letdown on game day….or Baylor game-like screw-ups that will cost the loser the game.
I could go either way with comparing the two possible team performance levels….. either the season average performance……or the recent peak performance. Either way though, they apply to both teams equally. So it really doesn’t change the predicted odds of winning the game.
Therefore…. the analysis suggests Iowa State being favored by 10 points, and a 76% probability of winning.
If we want to be pessimistic, we can look at what if we play season “average” and the Mountaineers bring “peak”. If we do that, then we have the Cyclones still favored by five, with a 63% possibility if winning. So as long as we play “average” or better….we seem to have favorable odds.
But…..a wart-filled game (early on) like we had against Baylor would almost assuredly cost us this game. Especially if you consider that WVU’s defense is power ranked 16th and Baylor’s was ranked 36th. Against the Mountaineers…..it is certainly be more difficult to make up for early mistakes.
Furthermore, I think this could be an unusually low scoring game, at least in the context of Iowa State and the Big-12 in general. I think it is possible that neither team will reach 30 points, similar to the OSU and Texas games. A low scoring game tends to keep the game close, and therefore improves the chances for the trailing team to strike late.
I like our odds that the Cygarin Ratings indicate. Indeed, they weirdly disturb me. At the beginning of the week, I expected the analysis to show a closer game than Vegas predicts, based on West Virginia appearing to be playing lights-out recently. But it didn’t come out that way because Iowa State is playing better also. I really can’t find any flaws in the data to consider anything otherwise.
We do have to remember that a 75% chance of winning means West Virginia wins one in four, and 63% means the ‘Neers would win a little better than one in three. So I like our odds…..but West Virginia knows they can win one out of three or four games…..and they will do what they can to make it this one.
(In my opinion.)
Cygarin Ratings Linky.....
Even though we have had an abbreviated season, we now have some pretty good information to be able to analyze teams. And as far as data goes, considering the population sample of a round robin schedule for the teams we are evaluating, it’s pretty decent data. It’s not just a population “sample”, but rather the entire population of a conference, albeit still small. That is something not available in other conferences.
WEST VIRGINIA
Overall for the season, I have West Virginia ranked 5th in the conference and power ranked about 27the in the country….that’s a pretty respectable national ranking.
The Mountaineers have had the misfortune of having most of the toughest part of their schedule on the road: @Iowa State, @ Texas, and @ Oklahoma State, and only Oklahoma at home.
From a conference schedule ranking perspective, WVU had the toughest “upper” schedule in the conference, playing four of the five toughest home/away venues of it. To compare, OSU played only one. (Iowa State played three, but consider that two of the toughest five venues is ourselves home & away.) “Who you play “where” does make a difference in schedule strength.
My opinion is that with a better fortune of venue location, WVU could have fared better than they have, and if so, would in better position to contend for a CCG berth. Which, though chances are small….they are still in contention.
West Virginia has been playing their best football of the season…..by far…..in their last three games. They beat KSU and TCU handily (we didn’t, TCU), and lost to Texas on the road by only four points. Of those three games, Texas was their worst performance, but even that was five points better than their current power ranking.
Looking at these three games, the worst that you can evaluate WVU is by their worst recent performance against Texas, and as just noted, that is five points better than their rating.
But, if you average all of the last three games, you can conservatively assess WVU at about eight points higher their current season rating…..or about fifteen points better than their earlier performance where they lost to Tech and beat Baylor in overtime. This clearly appears to be a much better playing team now, than they were then.
Performance against the strength of schedule has been a bit of a mixed bag. Their performance against their two toughest opponents (@OSU & @Texas) has been relatively “season” average performances. However their next two lower rated venues (KSU and TCU at home), WVU played lights-out better by a hunky 20 points above their rating.
Considering the season slide that Kansas State has experienced though, one could argue that WVU’s performance is overrated, due to KSU being overrated, and that would leave the recent TCU performance as a one hit wonder. So there is that potential chink in West Virginia’s armor.
Still, it leaves somewhat conflicting trends of the Mountaineers coming into this game with ISU….playing very strong “right now”…versus questionably as strong against “stronger opponents”.
Resultantly that also provides two very different scenarios. My judgement is that the upward season trend is the more consistent one, and thus the more credible one to use going into Saturday’s game, especially considering they played well against Texas, on the road.
With that, I have the Mountaineers currently functioning as a team power ranked 10th in the country. They are arguably nearly as good as Texas….as they showed…..and had they played Texas at home, if all went according to Hoyle, home field advantage (6 to 7 points difference) would have given them a win.
Furthermore Massey has their defense power ranked 16th in the country, which is the highest power rated defense we have faced this year. OSU and OU are 22nd and 27th respectively…..and we lost to the higher ranked defense of those two, and barely squeaked by the other.
Summarily, this is a WVU team that is playing at its peak when coming to Ames, and that is a high level of performance.
IOWA STATE
Take what I said in the analysis last week, and now let’s build on that……
I can now say that with the additional Texas data point, Iowa State is definitely showing a solid performance trend heading steadily up.
As I discussed last week, if we would take the Baylor’s performance where we handicapped them 21 easy points….. and adjust only half of that…..and also detune the Kansas State bludgeoning by half….we can perhaps consider those performances more “expectable” , and perhaps better view a picture of Iowa State’s “normalized” trend.
Do that, and you have the most remarkable and steady upward trend starting with Texas Tech. Since our game against Tech….a low point….the trend rises constantly through Texas, where at the moment we are playing fifteen points per game better than back then.
Start the comparison with the OSU game one later, we are playing ten points per game better now, than then.
And compared to how we played against Oklahoma (prior to Tech, and not a part of our current trend) we are playing about three points better than the day we beat the Sooners, which was our best game of the year until we thumped Kansas State. (The Texas performance was about even.)
So…..
Ignoring the trend and using the whole season average….. I have Iowa State’s season performance at 89.26, which is good for a power ranking of 7th in the country. That’s not far off from where the polls have us.
However, if I factor in the trend and use where Iowa State is playing now ….the good guys are playing about five points better than the season average ranking (last four games), and that puts us in 3rd in the country territory for the moment. But, that depends on ”if” we can continue our trend through WVU.
Additionally, Iowa State has definitely played better against our tougher opponents, with only OSU as an under-performance against the top four teams played so far.
The OSU loss was also at a time when we were playing our worst football of the season (excluding Louisiana), with Texas Tech and OSU being our worst performances of the year, and those two games came back-to-back. Whatever was going on then, we have seemingly kicked it.
Summarily, if Mountaineer fans had access to the Cygarin Ratings…….they would not like seeing what it suggests about their upcoming opponent. At worst, we’re pretty darned good and consistent. At best….we are damned good, and doing our goodest heading in to Saturday.
THE GAME.
It comes down to this…we are playing West Virginia at their peak……and West Virginia is playing Iowa State at our peak. Both teams are trending up, and both teams are also way overdue for a correction.
Both teams are on track for everyone to expect their respective “A” games, and the outcome is very likely going to come down to the team that blinks….either a performance correcting team letdown on game day….or Baylor game-like screw-ups that will cost the loser the game.
I could go either way with comparing the two possible team performance levels….. either the season average performance……or the recent peak performance. Either way though, they apply to both teams equally. So it really doesn’t change the predicted odds of winning the game.
Therefore…. the analysis suggests Iowa State being favored by 10 points, and a 76% probability of winning.
If we want to be pessimistic, we can look at what if we play season “average” and the Mountaineers bring “peak”. If we do that, then we have the Cyclones still favored by five, with a 63% possibility if winning. So as long as we play “average” or better….we seem to have favorable odds.
But…..a wart-filled game (early on) like we had against Baylor would almost assuredly cost us this game. Especially if you consider that WVU’s defense is power ranked 16th and Baylor’s was ranked 36th. Against the Mountaineers…..it is certainly be more difficult to make up for early mistakes.
Furthermore, I think this could be an unusually low scoring game, at least in the context of Iowa State and the Big-12 in general. I think it is possible that neither team will reach 30 points, similar to the OSU and Texas games. A low scoring game tends to keep the game close, and therefore improves the chances for the trailing team to strike late.
I like our odds that the Cygarin Ratings indicate. Indeed, they weirdly disturb me. At the beginning of the week, I expected the analysis to show a closer game than Vegas predicts, based on West Virginia appearing to be playing lights-out recently. But it didn’t come out that way because Iowa State is playing better also. I really can’t find any flaws in the data to consider anything otherwise.
We do have to remember that a 75% chance of winning means West Virginia wins one in four, and 63% means the ‘Neers would win a little better than one in three. So I like our odds…..but West Virginia knows they can win one out of three or four games…..and they will do what they can to make it this one.
(In my opinion.)
Cygarin Ratings Linky.....
