mrjames
Professor
Posts: 6062
Loc: Montclair, NJ
Reg: 11-21-04
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12-25-16 12:43 PM - Post#216629
There's been a lot of talk about this being a down year for the Ivy, so I wanted to provide some evidence from which people can argue about how well we've been doing as a league.
This evidence is all based on Game Scores. For those unfamiliar with Game Scores, it is essentially a metric that assigns a Pythagorean Win Percentage to a team's performance in a game. For instance, Harvard's game score versus Houston was 95.9. This means that if Harvard played exactly well enough to produce that margin at Houston, it would be expected to win 95.9% of games against a nationally average team on a neutral floor. Using Bart Torvik's Pythag calcs, it also means that Harvard played, in that game, like roughly the No. 7 team in the country plays on AVERAGE.
The first look I like to take is league-wide, by month for non-conference games since the start of this new "golden age" (call it the 2010-11 season):
Yr/Mth AvgGS
1 2010/11 45
2 2010/12 44
3 2011/01 46
4 2011/03 63
5 2011/11 42
6 2011/12 51
7 2012/01 41
8 2012/03 50
9 2012/11 36
10 2012/12 43
11 2013/01 51
12 2013/03 60
13 2013/11 50
14 2013/12 54
15 2014/01 40
16 2014/03 60
17 2014/04 61
18 2014/11 46
19 2014/12 51
20 2015/01 50
21 2015/03 58
22 2015/11 47
23 2015/12 52
24 2016/01 50
25 2016/03 79
26 2016/11 41
27 2016/12 53
Obviously we post high non-conf GS's in March (we've done well in the Tourney), but really we want to look at Nov/Dec/Jan. So far, our 41 average in November was indeed bad, nearly matching our Jan 2014 low and tied for second lowest in the period with Jan 2012. But our rebound in Dec has been really strong - our second-best non-tourney month over this span (Dec 2013).
The Dec jump has been driven primarily by Harvard (40 in Nov to 77 in Dec), Cornell (26 to 49), Dartmouth (16 to 34) and Yale (64 to 72), while Brown (31-32) and Penn (64) have hung tough at the same number month over month. (The Quakers' monthly consistency is REMARKABLE and probably a statistical anomaly given that the standard deviation of their game scores for both months is highest in the league - Penn is all over the place, but mostly good).
MthYr Ivy mean GamesPld
2016/12 harvard 77 4
2016/12 yale 72 5
2016/11 princeton 65 3
2016/11 pennsylvania 64 5
2016/11 yale 64 6
2016/12 pennsylvania 64 4
2016/12 princeton 58 6
2016/12 cornell 49 4
2016/11 harvard 40 4
2016/11 columbia 37 6
2016/12 dartmouth 34 6
2016/12 brown 32 3
2016/11 brown 31 8
2016/11 cornell 26 7
2016/12 columbia 18 2
2016/11 dartmouth 16 5
And thus we can see that the data is starting to fit the narrative a bit: a disastrous start, but a strong December, with the gains spread around most teams. But how do our best teams stack up during this golden era run?
Rank Year MthYr Ivy mean
1 2012 2011/11 harvard 90.2
2 2016 2016/01 yale 89.6
3 2011 2011/01 harvard 88.4
4 2014 2013/12 harvard 83.5
5 2013 2013/01 princeton 82.8
6 2016 2016/01 princeton 82.8
7 2014 2013/11 harvard 82.1
8 2016 2015/12 yale 80.4
9 2016 2015/12 harvard 79.3
10 2012 2011/12 harvard 77.8
None of the 2017 team months crack the top 10 (joining only 2015 without a team-month on that list). But Harvard's December is currently 11th and Yale's December is 15th and Nov Princeton/Both Penns/Nov Yale are all sitting between 30-37th.
Further illustrating how our strength is through the middle, if we look at the average or better game score months since the 10-11 season, this season has 8 of its 16 team-months over that bar which is better than last year, equal to 11-12 and 13-14 and only trailing our excellent 14-15 season.
Where this year really excels, though, is in its scalps. Looking at all Ivy wins since 1950, we can assign a game score necessary to win a game against that opponent in that venue by at least 1 point (i.e. no extra credit for winning by more, just what game score does it take to win at all).
Harvard's win at Houston this year is the best of all time (for now, let's see where Houston's rating ends up). It's followed by COR-WISC 2010, PRIN-FSU 2012, PENN-UNC 1979, COL-PURD 1969, PENN-CLEM 1975, PRIN-UNC 1972, PRIN-MARQ 1997 and BRN-PROVY 2015.
In 10th place, at present, is PENN-UCF, though much like (and likely more so than HAR-HOU), we'll see where UCF's rating ends up after losing its star PG.
The other notable 2017 scalp was YALE-WASH, which checks in at No. 85 all time.
So, for me, the key takeaways seem to be as follows:
1) After a rough start, the league is getting much stronger.
2) Yale has been the most consistent team thus far, while Penn has averaged a high level of play, but with massive game-to-game variance in performance.
3) Harvard once again followed a mediocre Nov with a strong Dec. That's when injuries decimated the Crimson last year and sent it into a tailspin.
4) While the eight team-month game score averages from the "Top 4" are all in the Top 9, the one team-month to crack that list is Cornell's Dec, possibly making it a sneaky team to watch.
5) Oddly, while it seems to be a down-year for the very, very top of the league, we've still pulled in two of the (for now) Top 10 most impressive wins in Ivy history according to the objective metrics.
Happy Holidays, all!
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