Mark Hollis doing a favor for one of his former employees?
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In all seriousness and sad as it is to say, I think thatās got to be the case.
It has to be, thereās zero logic behind adding a metric thatās supposed to rate teams by resume as a factor in hand rating resumes, especially when the other metric systems you stick it in with are radically different efficiency rankings. Iām still baffled that this was allowed to occur and no one with common sense was able to stop it.
Completely agree. You canāt have a complete outlier like that. It had no business being a considered metric and needs to be removed next year - especially with Hollis gone.
Come to think of it, not only did nobody stop it like you said, but I donāt think I ever read anything on why it was added. No notes on historical accuracy, why the committee likes it, etc. Color me SHOCKED thereās no transparency.
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Apparently, the MSU Athletic Department thought this dude was a genius because he could remember phone numbers.
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āIt was 67 megabytes, or about 13 times the entire works of Shakespeare.ā 
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Well, it was 2015
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Not liking this take from Bart
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On the flip side, teams with the most similar profiles to Michigan topped out at making the S16ā¦ Although, none of them lost in the first round!
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With apologies for being dense, can anyone translate what is meant by āsix-seed fab-five final-four curseā? Nothing I can concoct from that list makes sense. Does it just mean that a 3, 4, and 5 (but not a 6) on that list has made a F4? If so, what does Fab Five have to do with it? Or has a six seed not made the F4 since the Fab Five were freshmen perhaps? And heās picking them to win the region?
That list of teams is his closest statistical comparisons to Houston this year and he likes how most of them have fared in March (two of them making final 4 runs). I think the Fab Five mention is because no 6 seed has made it that far since them and he is picking them to win the region. Thatās surprising to me because his system generally likes Michigan a lot as well.
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I donāt understand the Houston love. They are a very small team and one of our strengths is perimeter defense. Iām not all that worried. Will we blow them out? Probably not but 8-10 is what Iād guess. And as Iāve said before, San Diego state isnāt going to be an easy game for them. Could easily see hem losing it.
I donāt really see a pattern with those comparisons. One champ, two other Final Four teams, one Sweet 16 and six teams that lost in the first weekend. Thatās all over the place.
At any rate, 60% of their closest comparisons didnāt make it past the round we would face them in, so I donāt find it that scary.
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Depends which of his metrics we use. If we go by resumĆ©, thereās a spread ranging from the first round to the Final Four (but eight of ten made it to the Sweet 16):
http://barttorvik.com/resume-compare.php?team=Michigan&year=2018
I guess all the speculative hoohoo can be provocative. But weāre a three seed, the number seven team in the country, deservedly so. Saying we MIGHT be vulnerable to this or that team for this or that reason. . . I guess we can tremble in anticipation if we choose to, but honestly. . . these are the visions these journos get underpaid to spin at this time of year.
A super hot-shooting team might knock us out at any point, but where I see we might stumble is if this team, which has overachieved so greatly, suddenly goes stone cold and gets overwhelmed unnecessarily by a team like NC, and cannot recover its confidence. But that situationāand the kind of clever game plans that instill confidenceāare what weāve got Beilein for.
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Iād be interested in seeing similarity scores using the four factors (on O and D). Just using ADJ O, ADJ D, and T is interesting, but kind of limited because teams do things in such different ways. I mean, is 2011 Syracuse really similar to 2016 Purdue, and are either similar to 2015 Iowa? Is this yearās Michigan team really similar to last yearās Baylor team?
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One thing I found interesting when filling out a bracket last night: when using FiveThirtyEightās interactive bracket that Dylan mentioned (https://umhoops.com/2018/03/12/theyre-saying-national-writers-weigh-michigans-ncaa-tournament-chances-2/), Houston had the best chance of any team 6 or lower of making the Sweet 16 this year. Also noticed that our region had the best parity, with the top 4 seeds all 14% or greater to reach the Final Four.
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Danger? What danger? WE are the danger!
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I have a personality defect of sorts where I fixate on things that piss me off, and then spend my free time analyzing them, usually leading to a situation where Iām more pissed off. With 30m of free time, and my personal topic of the week being our comparable S-curve rank with MSU, I sat down and took a quick look at schedule and performance. No new insights, but interesting how the numbers shake out.
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Games against weak opponents (all locations): MSU 10-0, +31.7 margin of victory, M 9-1 (LSU), +23.7 margin of victory
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Home games against quality opponents: MSU 2-0 (ND, NC), +18 MoV, M 1-0 (UCLA), +9 MoV
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Road+Neutral against quality opponents: MSU 0-1 (Duke), -7 MoV, M 1-1 (TX, NC), -4 MoV
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B1G schedule with full overlap (same opponent/location): MSU 9-1, +8.6 MoV, M 7-3, +6.3 MoV
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B1G no overlap: MSU 8-0, +13.9 MoV, M 8-2, +6 MoV, noting the variances are M playing OSU one more time, Purd two (Neut/Road) more times, Neb one more time (R+Neut vs Home for MSU), at PSU vs home for MSU, etc, MSUās comparatively strong game is at IU
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Head to Head: MSU 0-2/M2-0 MoV +/-10.5, and worth noting this is Road + Neutral with no Home game for M
Conclusions:
- MSU beat bad teams by a lot - clear talent advantage shines through and they pour it on
- MSU beat teams they were supposed to beat in conf, not always pretty but they didnāt give any away
- Michigan played the harder schedule and probably took an extra loss or two relatively because of it
- Michiganās 2 H2H wins of 10+ points absolutely should and did count, but were not enough to overcome the rest
- Iād say categories 2 and 3 wipe each other out, MSU has the numbers to say it won categories 1 and 4. Michigan CLEARLY won 6, and 5 is where it comes down to strength of our 8-2 and schedule against their 8-0 with weaker opponents
- We had a good argument for the Detroit slot and one more win may have made the difference, esp if it was OSU or Purdue, but possibly even if it was one of the lesser games
- None of this matters now
- Glen Rice scored 184 points in 6 tourney games and this doesnāt get discussed enough in March Madness lore
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One note: MSU played UNC in the PK80 (neutral), not at Breslin. So your category 2 for MSU would be 1-0 (still +18 MoV) and their category 3 would be 1-1 with a +5.5 MoV.
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