Anyone who has looked at the RPI realizes that the Ivy League had fallen from its recent perch, squarely in the teens, first to the absolute bottom of the list before rebounding to the high 20s.
While the league has struggled this season, the binary win-loss nature of the RPI is currently punishing the Ivies far too much for their close losses, something which should even out and lead to the league's rise over the next month.
Pomeroy tells a different story, as the league sits 15th nationally, primarily on the strength of the overly generous preseason rankings, which are still biasing the team ratings in his system.
The ultimate answer likely lies in between the two. Massey's composite rankings, which look at a wide ranging group of ranking systems, have the Ivy League in 21st, and Sagarin's predictive model has the league 25th. If forced to pick a narrow range within which the Ivies would be likely to fall, those boundaries sound as good as any.
Sunday, December 2, 2012
Friday, October 5, 2012
The 2012-13 Ivy Basketball Projection Post
It was going to be 2010-11 all over again.
A talented Harvard team, full of potential, against a gritty, veteran Princeton unit with the league's best two-way player (Kareem Maddox, then, and Ian Hummer now) in a showdown for another Ivy title. The Crimson appeared to be the slight favorites in that hypothetical horse race, boasting a much stronger reservoir of young talent to fill out its rotation than the Tigers had accumulated over the past couple years.
Then, this happened.
Harvard lost its best player (Kyle Casey) and its most important player (Brandyn Curry) in one 24-hour news cycle, which when combined with the graduation losses of Keith Wright and Oliver McNally left the Crimson down four starters from last year's NCAA tournament squad. Oh, and throw in rotation guard Corbin Miller, who left the team to fulfill his two-year religious mission obligation. Those five players accounted for 62 percent of last year's total offensive possessions and included three of Harvard's four best defenders by Adjusted Plus-Minus. Most importantly, that list also included the only three Crimson players to see any time at point guard last season (Curry, McNally, Miller).
A talented Harvard team, full of potential, against a gritty, veteran Princeton unit with the league's best two-way player (Kareem Maddox, then, and Ian Hummer now) in a showdown for another Ivy title. The Crimson appeared to be the slight favorites in that hypothetical horse race, boasting a much stronger reservoir of young talent to fill out its rotation than the Tigers had accumulated over the past couple years.
Then, this happened.
Harvard lost its best player (Kyle Casey) and its most important player (Brandyn Curry) in one 24-hour news cycle, which when combined with the graduation losses of Keith Wright and Oliver McNally left the Crimson down four starters from last year's NCAA tournament squad. Oh, and throw in rotation guard Corbin Miller, who left the team to fulfill his two-year religious mission obligation. Those five players accounted for 62 percent of last year's total offensive possessions and included three of Harvard's four best defenders by Adjusted Plus-Minus. Most importantly, that list also included the only three Crimson players to see any time at point guard last season (Curry, McNally, Miller).
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