The Road to #1- Hockey and Basketball Schedule Analysis (Both Our Own and Others)
So, I do a lot of schedule analysis for my own purposes for hockey, and, I was just doing something similar for basketball, and figured, well, why not sign up for an account at MGoBlog and let other people see my work? So, I hope to carve out a little niche here and post analysis of schedules and figure out what the basketball team must do to attain a ranking, and which other teams must lose for them to get one, and what the Michigan hockey team must do to advance in rankings.
Some weeks I might do Basketball on Monday and Hockey on Tuesday, but, that seems silly since hockey's heading into a break.
As a general rule, I'll only talk about the 5 teams above us in the rankings. Unless we're not ranked, in which case I'll talk about teams 21-25 and those with more votes than us.
So, a hockey mini-analysis:
This weekend, we swept Michigan State. It was awesome. As a consequence, we moved from #14 to #12, and cracking the top 10 is always nice. We don't play until the GLI, so, there's no way to analyze our schedule here.
So, teams that can affect us just by losing that play this weekend:
#11 Vermont plays at St. Lawrence, just on Saturday. St. Lawrence? Not very good. Not terrible. Just sub-.500. Vermont probably leaves with a win. Doesn't affect us.
A very important Saturday/Sunday series to watch is #10 Colorado College playing at #2 Minnesota. A Minnesota sweep could mean Michigan leapfrogs CC without even playing.
No games for #9 Cornell, #8 Boston College, or #7 Princeton.
So, the skinny: The best Michigan can hope for is Minnesota sweeps Colorado College at home and Michigan is #11 next week. There's a very off chance St. Lawrence wins, and, if both things happen, we may just crack the top 10.
Basketball is way more complicated.
In the USA Today Coach's Poll, we're a theoretical #30. In the AP Media Poll, we're a theoretical #28. Our only game this week is Saturday against a one-win Eastern Michigan at Crisler. 4:00, BTN. I'm excited. Not really. Should pick it up easily. And by that I mean, WE MUST KILL THEM IF WE WANT TO BE RANKED NEXT WEEK. A NARROW WIN WON'T BE GOOD ENOUGH.
This is the part where you skip to the last paragraph, unless you're a ridiculous die-hard. Trust me, you'll do it pretty soon.
I'll start with the non-ranked teams that separate us from the Top 25. For the rest of the article, I will list rankings in the same order I listed ours. If its only a theoretical ranking, there will be a "T" before it, and if a team's ranked in one poll and non-ranked in another, I'll mention their non-ranking. So, if a team was a theoretical #31 in the USA Today Poll and non-ranked in any fashion in the AP Poll, they'd be listed as "T#31/NR".
T#29/T#31 BYU: Two games this week, one against Boise State on Wednesday, one against Portland on Saturday, both at home. Neither team has votes of any sort, also, neither team has more than two losses. Losing to both? Unlikely. Losing to one? Not unreasonable.
T#28/T#35 Wisconsin: The Badgers (who we happen to open Big Ten play against) play tomorrow against a two-win Idaho State team, and play Wisconsin-Green Bay on Saturday. WGB is 5-2 (2-0), but, that doesn't mean I'm impressed with any of their wins.
T#27/T#26 Dayton: Losable game on the road at 5-2 Creighton Wednesday. Easy win at home against Coppin State Saturday.
T#26/#22 Baylor: Easy game Saturday against Prairie View A&M. Can't see them falling from AP, may enter USA Today.
T#31/T#27 Clemson: Game Saturday against South Carolina State. I anticipate a Clemson win. SCS is over .500, but, Clemson is undefeated.
#25/T#29 Miami (FL): Florida Intl. on Friday. Robert Morris on Sunday. Win. Win.
#23/#25 Kansas: Saturday v. 1-win UMass. Win.
#24/#24 Marquette: Saturday v. crappy IPFW. They're 3-5, which means I don't care about them enough to look up what that stands for. Win.
#22/#23 Davidson: Would you look at that, a real contest. Tuesday Davidson plays a 6-1 West Virginia team (and, while it's basically irrelevant, they're T#39/NR. The T#39 ties them with Florida St. at 1 vote, last in the poll). So, they could lose that one. Saturday, 1-win Chattanooga. Win.
#21/#21 Ohio State: I don't know why, but OSU has only played five games this season. Saturday they play their sixth in Columbus vs. an undefeated Butler. Butler could definitely win. I'm not sure they will, but they could.
So, the skinny:
We can hope for an Ohio State loss. We can hope for a Davidson loss. We can hope for a Dayton loss. We can hope for two BYU losses. If all of those things happen, and we KILL EMU, by my estimation, we still end up something like T#26/T#26, unless we get lucky. Next week, we beat Oakland at a "neutral" site (I imagine it'll be a slightly pro-UofM crowd), then we might be talking ranking.
I'll post Thursday-ish saying how goes it so far. Until then, good night, don't let the Tommy Amakers bite.
December 8th, 2008 at 11:09 PM ^
Good stuff. I have to say though I'm hoping for Ohio State and Wisconsin wins this week, the stronger the Big 10 is the better for us in March. It would be pretty nice to be ranked, as long as we keep winning it won't be long.
December 9th, 2008 at 12:00 PM ^
With basketball--there are the rankings and the rpi--so there are [at least] two groups of data that matter. In the same way, with hockey there are [at least] three, the rankings, the rpi and the pair wise [pwr]. So, this means one schedule analysis for every work day----perfect for us readers!
December 9th, 2008 at 3:18 PM ^
Yep, I agree. If we are on the bubble in March (which I don't think we will be. I think we will be safely in the Tourny finishing 3rd in the Big Ten), then the most important thing for us will be perception of the Big Ten. If the Big Ten is perceived to be soft, the we would be in trouble. Thus, we need all Big Ten teams to win their non-conference games.
Go Blue!
Go Big Ten!
December 9th, 2008 at 12:15 AM ^
The only problem with this analysis is that the basketball rankings are essentially meaningless. In the ranking that matters, the RPI, we're 15th, 2nd in the Big 10. We'll probably drop a bit before the conference season starts b/c every game from here in is against a 100+ RPI team, but we should enter the conference around the top 20, which is where we want to be to make the NCAA.
December 9th, 2008 at 12:15 AM ^
I like to see the bball team gettin some love lately. I think people need to stop worryin bout gettin in the rankings and just worry bout us winning games. We have four games coming up that are must-wins as far as im concerned. But there certainly not guaranteed. I do seem to recall a team that beat Duke and UCLA, have a near loss to Savannah St. I expect that if we do win the next 4, and move to 10-2 overall, we would likely crack to top 25.
As good as we played against Duke, we need to work on the little things that can help improve our consistency, so we dont have anymore scares against bad teams. Rebounding and minimizing turnovers are the two things that stand out to me as areas of needed improvement. The potential is definitively there, but on a night wen the threes arent falling (which is inevitable), its going to come down to the tough rebounding and ball security.
December 9th, 2008 at 12:50 AM ^
are a two-edged sword so here's to a nice W streak going into the Big 10 ride. It is fortunute that Beilein has these games to re-configure the team chemistry with Lucas Perry.
It is unfortunate we play IU once this year in the regular season. Silver lining is that IU is away and early in the conference schedule and should be a road win. Proof that synchronicity is at work here is that we also play the Izzoids once late in the slate at home. Unlike previous decade of big ten hoops, there are NO conceded L's for this team on the scheduled once you beat UCLA and DUKE. Uconn is the toughest game on the slate.
As per previous post, GO conference against all comers. Too bad Kentucky gets IU. If they were playing us, I think we would be favored. Damn I dislike Kentucky b-ball with the exception of Tubby who finally figured out he had to get the fuck out of there.
Brian made me tear up with with Sims/MoM thing like when I used to cry watching Little House even though it was a suck show. Awesome post by the fearless leader.
December 9th, 2008 at 8:00 PM ^
IPFW = Indiana University Purdue University @ Fort Worth. Their mascot is the Mastodons. I gather they're administered by the same joint program that runs IUPUI (=Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis, also known as the Jaguars). Indiana has to be the only state I can think of where its two major public universities jointly co-sponsor the satellite sites.
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