mrjames
Professor
Posts: 6062
Loc: Montclair, NJ
Reg: 11-21-04
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02-07-18 09:15 AM - Post#246696
In response to SomeGuy
Win shares are a pretty solid metric here. It's reasonable that without the sophomores that Harvard would be stuck on about three wins.
Remember that you can play a lot and really not generate any wins or win shares at all. Playing time is obviously important for metrics that sum, not average, but to get any credit at all, you actually have to do something with the time. (Rio Haskett has negative win shares, Christian Juzang has negative offensive win shares, so does Henry Welsh).
Speaking to 2008 Cornell, it won an awful edition of our league (that and the next one it won were the two worst of the Pomeroy era). If it didn't have Lou Dale (akin to Harvard not having Bryce Aiken) it'd probably be pretty close to where Harvard is right now. It also happened to get a stronger contribution from the upper classes (7 win shares from juniors and seniors). But 2008 Cornell would have only been a slight favorite to win this year's league even at full strength.
Part of this also seems to me that we've forgotten HOW weak this league used to be. Even in an off year, we're better than every year in the aughts except for 2002-03 (and we're neck and neck there). The 2008 and 2009 years were an absolute joke.
If Harvard had a seven man class in 2016 that had a few Top 25 kids and a couple more Top 100 kids, we'd be having a different conversation. Expected output grows exponentially to the top of the rankings, so a class like that should dominate this league. The point is that there was a gaudy win share number projected for this class to hit - one which people generally dismissed as the product of a flawed model - and this class is progressing solidly toward that projected number.
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