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Username Post: The Stepian: IL has 3 of Top 10 Mid-Major Prospects        (Topic#21759)
palestra38 
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08-15-18 04:59 PM - Post#260318    
    In response to TheLine

Last year doesn't count.

And again, HCA only is actually "home court" when your fans are the vast majority.

 
TheLine 
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08-15-18 05:02 PM - Post#260319    
    In response to palestra38

It does serve as a baseline - both for teams and players.


 
HARVARDDADGRAD 
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The Stepian: IL has 3 of Top 10 Mid-Major Prospects
08-15-18 05:14 PM - Post#260320    
    In response to TheLine

Torvik is providing the % chance of winning the tournament, not the regular season title. Torvik predicts regular season as:

11-3 Harvard
9-5 Yale
8-6 Penn
8-6 Princeton
6-8 Brown
5-9 Columbia
5-9 Cornell
5-9 Dartmouth

HCA involves more than just fan count. It is the only possible explanation for giving Yale that high a chance to win the tournament. Similarly, it seem to be the only explanation I can think of as to why Torvik gives 9-5 Yale almost a 4x greater chance at winning the tournament when compared to 8-6 Penn/Princeton

Edited by HARVARDDADGRAD on 08-15-18 05:14 PM. Reason for edit: No reason given.

 
PennFan10 
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08-15-18 06:36 PM - Post#260323    
    In response to TheLine

Just so I understand, The Omniscient Torvik has the following:

Harvard #72 (KP 144 LY)
Yale #114 (KP #197 LY) Nothing to do w HCA
Penn #139 (KP #125 LY)
Princeton #149 (KP #190 LY)

So HYP all make historic jumps of 40-80 spots but Penn regresses 14 spots? And that seems credible to you?



 
HARVARDDADGRAD 
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08-15-18 07:34 PM - Post#260327    
    In response to PennFan10

Absolutely.

Yale and Harvard lost no one and are adding talent. Penn lost 2 of its top 6 rotation players.

According to 247, Harvard has the best recruiting class in the league by a large margin, while 247 ranks Penn and Yale's classes similarly. Princeton brings in the best player in exactly the right spot - to replace Bell, their only key loss to graduation.

Yale is also adding a Junior 6'9" 3* impact player who was in the running for ROY and is a potential DOY. Harvard gets Aiken back (1st team all ivy/ROY) and Tommy McCarthy. Penn gets back some 'redshirts.'

Yes, players can improve with experience, but there is no basis for thinking that any team will benefit uniquely.

I also remember reading that Harvard's second half KenPom was much higher than the first half.

Harvard, Yale and Princeton are likely to improve over last year, Penn less likely.

 
palestra38 
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08-15-18 08:56 PM - Post#260336    
    In response to HARVARDDADGRAD

You have no clue what you are talking about. Penn had 3 recruits who match up with anything Yale and Princeton brought in who either didn't play last year or barely played. Penn will be as deep as any team in the league. Penn did not lose anyone in the 1st or 2d team all-Ivy. It will be enjoyable repeating next year.

 
HARVARDDADGRAD 
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The Stepian: IL has 3 of Top 10 Mid-Major Prospects
08-15-18 09:16 PM - Post#260337    
    In response to palestra38

Sure, whatever you think. Nothing else apparently matters to you anyway.

Maybe the recruiting services and Torvik have it all wrong .... maybe they don't.

Penn did lose Foreman, who was honorable mention. Penn lost more than any other team (except possibly Cornell with Gettings).

So, who are these guys who never played and what is the basis for their being impact players?




Edited by HARVARDDADGRAD on 08-15-18 09:21 PM. Reason for edit: No reason given.

 
PennFan10 
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08-15-18 09:24 PM - Post#260338    
    In response to palestra38

It must have really hurt losing 2x to Penn last year. Wow. That's some crimson colored analysis.

Tommy McCarthy? Did you seriously put Tommy McCarthy ahead of ANYONE? He is gonna be 3rd or 4th string on his own team. Keep smoking what you are smoking.



 
HARVARDDADGRAD 
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The Stepian: IL has 3 of Top 10 Mid-Major Prospects
08-15-18 10:16 PM - Post#260339    
    In response to PennFan10

Last time we saw McCarthy he led the Crimson to a 37-13 first half lead over the Quakers up in Cambridge. He was certainly ahead of the Penn players that day, as a freshman.

Edited by HARVARDDADGRAD on 08-15-18 10:17 PM. Reason for edit: No reason given.

 
palestra38 
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Re: The Stepian: IL has 3 of Top 10 Mid-Major Prospects
08-16-18 07:38 AM - Post#260348    
    In response to HARVARDDADGRAD

That was a long time ago. But keep thinking that Penn lost more than anyone else and will regress. They will find another designated shooter and have another senior guard to pick up the slack. Meanwhile, they return 4 of 5 starters, most of their bench and have 2 redshirted highly recruited sophs before we even look at freshmen. This was to be the first year they competed for a title.

 
Streamers 
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08-16-18 08:17 AM - Post#260349    
    In response to palestra38

I’m a little surprised to see one of these summer prediction threads get so heated. Personally, I have never found that national media ever really gets the Ivy predictions right (aside from league coaches polls) and nobody has made a case that there is a lot of separation among the top 4 this year. We should all be optimistic going in.

For my part, I would be more likely to think Penn will crack the top 100 if Jelani had no gotten hurt again.

 
TheLine 
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The Stepian: IL has 3 of Top 10 Mid-Major Prospects
08-16-18 08:18 AM - Post#260350    
    In response to palestra38

I love it.

Penn returns the 2nd best player in the league last year. I'd say he's odds on favorite to be the best this year. 3 other starters return, including one of the best shooters in the league and another who I think is likely to be the best guard on the defensive end.

Princeton is returning Cannady and Stephens. Sure, they under-performed but they have talent. KenPom had them above Yale.

And both Penn and Princeton are odds-on worse than than Yale?

Maybe Torvik is looking at Yale's shiny W-L record?

I'll take the under on Yale.


 
Silver Maple 
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Reg: 11-23-04
08-16-18 10:45 AM - Post#260357    
    In response to TheLine

I, for one, am delighted to see the Harvard fans and the national media underestimate Penn.

And I'll tell you what I'm really looking forward to: as Harvard keeps bringing in high school players with gaudy recruiting ratings, and continues to underachieve the resultant expectations, how will the fans and media explain this?

 
mrjames 
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Re: The Stepian: IL has 3 of Top 10 Mid-Major Prospects
08-16-18 10:59 AM - Post#260358    
    In response to TheLine

Hi all -

Figured this was as good an entry point as any to step away from my summer hiatus (sort of - more on that at the end).

Rather than try to answer all of the different questions/topics of debate one by one, I just want to share some thoughts about preseason rankings.

1) ACTUAL PERFORMANCE: Preseason rankings have a ton of predictive ability. Even those that are based on subjective means like the AP poll ( Preseason AP Poll Performance ). But those that are based on objective rankings of all 1-351 teams are even more on point ( Objective Preseason Model System Performance).

Of course, on a team-by-team basis, there can be huge misses, but if you look at it from a macro level, it's pretty impressive what a limited amount of information can produce when it comes to an accurate prediction.

2) WHY DO THEY EXIST? - Aside from fodder for rabid fans to digest, they actually serve an important ratings purpose. It used to be that most ratings systems "floated" early in the year - assuming all teams were equal to start - and thus took a long time to settle. From a Bayesian perspective, though, ignoring our priors (we kinda know that UNC is gonna be better than UNH) leads to unnecessary uncertainty early on. So, by establishing an objective preseason benchmark (and one that's pretty darn accurate to boot), we can more strongly credit teams that register close losses to great teams early and more strongly debit those teams that register narrow victories over the dregs of D-I.

3) WHAT DO THEY DO? - As has been mentioned here, they roll forward player performance, add in new player expectations, sprinkle in some team trends (plus some minor secret sauces by system) to spit out an objective offensive rating. Defensive rating tends to be more based on team style, continuity and general historical trend and is the less accurate of the two. It's important to note that the objective preseason rankings (Hanner, KenPom, Bart Torvik, etc.) do NOT involve the producer getting involved in any subjective way. So, it's not "Torvik thinks" so much as it is "Torvik's empirical model says."

4) PRESEASON RATINGS AREN'T STATIC - At this point last year, Harvard was looking at a full year of Bryce Aiken and Tommy McCarthy as the PG depth chart, Yale was going to be led by Makai Mason and Jordan Bruner, Dartmouth was going to have Evan Boudreaux. And so on...

Some of these systems will account for further player movement (Bart did along the way), some won't. We never survive October and November without some MASSIVE losses as a league, so these will assuredly change before tip off in November.

5) BELL CURVES ARE THICK AROUND THE MIDDLE - When I used to do detailed projections, my targeted miss was anything better than +/- .1000 in Pythag. At the top and bottom of the curve, that can mean the difference in 50ish ranking spots. Around the middle, that rises to about 80ish. Given that we often have a lot of teams around the middle, it takes a BIG rankings difference to imply a significant difference between two teams.

Hopefully, the above was helpful. I wasn't terribly surprised by Bart's initial cut.

Harvard lost nobody off a team that had the best conference adj efficiency margin and highest slope to its performance start to finish. Add to that players returning from injury and a strong recruiting class, and the modest increase over its stretch run performance seems right.

Leaving aside subjective expectations, Penn makes sense if you understand the model. When the model looks at Foreman and Wood, it sees about 41% of Penn's performance above replacement offensively going out the door. Bart's estimates of the ability of Penn to replace that production are quite strong, actually, but sum total the offense and defense get trivially worse.

Princeton and Yale are the same stories - strong, returning answers offensively drive the expected ORAT up, model generally favors long-run trends defensively so some improvement (regression to mean) boost them each there.

Not going to go through the rest, except to say that I expected Brown to be a little more ahead in 5th of 6th-8th.

Now to return to my comment about my hiatus from the top. My wife and I are about to have our third child, which is incredibly exciting. Between #dayjob and #dadlife, something has to give. Covering the league the way I'd want to cover it (checking in with folks around the league, watching a bunch of games from across the league, booting up the code), just doesn't seem like it will be possible - at least in the short run. So I'm going to power down the Twitter feed and my active participation on these boards for this season. I'll still be checking in from time to time, and I hope to get back to covering the league in the future. But I need to be realistic about my time, and this seems like it has to be on my cut list.

I'll still be watching, and if we can survive the usual devastation in October and November, it could be a HUGE year for our league!

-Mike

 
palestra38 
Professor
Posts: 32685

Reg: 11-21-04
Re: The Stepian: IL has 3 of Top 10 Mid-Major Prospects
08-16-18 11:29 AM - Post#260359    
    In response to mrjames

Other than Princeton, I agree with you. They had 3 players who could play at this level and win last year and one was graduated. They are weak in the middle and for them to take a huge step up, it requires freshman play equivalent to the play of upperclassmen on Harvard Yale and Penn. So I just don't see them anywhere but in a fight for 4th with Brown.

I don't think anyone doubts that Harvard has the best talent. That has not translated yet to championships, however.

Congrats on the child-to-be and family life. My kids are now in their late 20s and I need some good Ivy basketball to fill that gap.

 
PennFan10 
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Posts: 3580

Reg: 02-15-15
08-17-18 12:11 PM - Post#260423    
    In response to palestra38

And we have our first (and possibly only) Mr James sighting. Thanks for these thoughts, they provide a helpful framework for the data. Understandably, we all gravitate to some part of your analysis. I was drawn to this:

  • mrjames Said:

Of course, on a team-by-team basis, there can be huge misses, but if you look at it from a macro level, it's pretty impressive what a limited amount of information can produce when it comes to an accurate prediction.




And subsequently was reminded that Penn had 8 players score more than 20 pts in a game last year. They return 6 of those players as well as most of the players on a top 75 defensive team. HarvardGrad, for whatever reason, has focused his entire Penn analysis on what the Quakers lost while talking exclusively about what every other team brings back.

Harvard is easy because they, theoretically, bring back everybody.

 
HARVARDDADGRAD 
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08-17-18 04:50 PM - Post#260455    
    In response to PennFan10

My point was simple:

Harvard brings everyone back + Aiken + top recruiting class
Yale brings everyone back + Bruner.
Brown brings everyone back.
Princeton loses Bell and Brennan, but adds the league's top recruit to replace Bell.
Penn loses Foreman and Wood.

I see that Penn fans believe replacements are available, but - other than Bell/Princeton - no other presumed top 5 Ivy squad has to replace a starter, let alone 2 of its top 6 players.

Those are facts. By March, it may not mean much, but for Torvik's analysis it apparently did.

That's what I've been trying to communicate.




 
PennFan10 
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The Stepian: IL has 3 of Top 10 Mid-Major Prospects
08-17-18 06:06 PM - Post#260460    
    In response to HARVARDDADGRAD

You mean those are the facts you want to focus on? There are other facts you have chosen to ignore.

Is it possible all of that happens and those teams are still not better than Penn? That's the other side of the coing. Yale loses Mason and they were not good without him. They lost Bruner, again, and there is not telling if he will be healthy for and entire season for the first time. Will that be enough to close the significant gap between them and Penn/Harvard? Brown bringing back everyone isn't enough to win a full Ivy slate and the ILT. They dont' have near the depth Harvard and Penn do.Is it possible Towns isn't recovered and won't play? Aiken? Also, Harvard only gets to play 5 guys at a time and I believe Penn was the team that had 8 guys with 20 pt games right? Did Harvard ever have that with that talent? Nope. Penn brings back 6 players who have scored 20+ in a game and a top 75 defense. No other Ivy has that.

Why is it that for you the new players at Harvard are "a top recruiting class" and for Yale it's great players but for Penn, the players on their roster are "replacements" or "redshirts"?

Your facts support your story. There are more than just your facts available.



Edited by PennFan10 on 08-17-18 06:07 PM. Reason for edit: No reason given.

 
HARVARDDADGRAD 
Postdoc
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Reg: 01-21-14
Re: The Stepian: IL has 3 of Top 10 Mid-Major Prospects
08-17-18 06:53 PM - Post#260462    
    In response to PennFan10

I'm not predicting anything. I'm merely pointing out what each team has returning. Yes, I'm assuming that those players on the roster are healthy. Can't possibly do anything else at this point.

I can't believe that you have an issue with those facts, given the facts that:

Harvard's defense rated higher than Penn's (#55 vs #72). Yale's will improve dramatically if Bruner is healthy.

Eight 20 point scorers is a meaningless statistic. Penn's Non-conference SOS was 7th in the league at 249. Remove last few local contests and I believe it was over 300 while Penn's bench was scoring. Easier to find 20 point scorers vs Delaware St, etc. than against 77th ranked non-conference schedule. 4OT 100pt games do help meaningless stats like that alot.

Again, you have faith in your bench and trainer's room. Good for you.




 
PennFan10 
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08-18-18 01:03 AM - Post#260467    
    In response to HARVARDDADGRAD

“Yale’s defense will improve a dramatically”

Seems a lot like a prediction and not much like a certain fact.

“I’m merely pointing out what each team has returning”

You’ve done well pointing out what Harvard, Yale and Princeton has returning. You have only pointed out what Penn has lost. Outside of Harvard Penn has the deepest bench in the league and it’s not close. There is not nearly the dramatic difference in returning experience you portray.



 
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