Michigan #40 in ESPN BPI Projection
Yeah, that's about all that needs to be said here.
Every year the media underestimates Beilein, and every year he exceeds expectations. Here’s to another.
Every year the hoops team is underrated and the football team is overrated in pre season polls. Let's just let it play out. Losing Wagner, MAAR and D. Robinson is tough, but I still think this is a top ~15 team.
Apparently the mission of ESPN is to just keep embarrassing itself until it dies.
I'm not sure and I really don't care to learn how this BPI is determined, but just looking at some of the 39 teams ahead of Michigan tells you this formula is flawed. Whatever preseason basketball rankings will do for you in July, this one will not look like this in November.
This rating is so absurdly low, I'm speechless. I don't know where Michigan SHOULD be on the list, but somewhere in the top 20 for sure.
Probably want to add an MBB to the title next time. I think it's equally surprising for basketball as it would be football but we're in full on football preseason mode.
Were you expecting a lot of football content in a Basketball Power Index thread?
They're almost guaranteed to be closer than last season when they had 9 Big Ten teams in their top 50, no Michigan. Now we're at least slated for 9th in the Big Ten.
This ranking has Iowa 19th and Illinois 21st. HAHAHAHAHA.
Michigan 9th in the Big Ten. Riiiiiggggght.
Marquette's going to be the 4th best team (effectively, a #1 seed in the NCAA) in the nation next year?
Maybe, but seems odd for a team that lost in the 3rd round of the NIT last year, and has only 1 4-star recruit coming in.
I do wonder if they've done any back-validation on their algorithm? Probably not.
Yeah, that stood out to me too. They were 53rd team in kenpom last year. Had an absolutely horrendous defense (at like 180th after being 160th the season before).
They even lose their highest usage offensive player, so it's not like they even get everyone back. That's a total head-scratcher.
The weird thing is that the article says "though BPI's projections won't come out until the fall..." so if these aren't projections, what are they?
My best guess as to why this is such a bad ranking is that I assume they're just applying the the same Ortgs and win shares per minute that players produced the prior year.
So for Michigan, a guy like Poole with a meh Ortg of 108 is perhaps "projected" to do that in increased minutes. And if he plays 75 percent of minutes at only 108 Ortg, the offense will struggle mightily. But he's probably not going to be that inefficient.
Perhaps that's what they're going to "project" in the fall: actual improvement (or a lack thereof) from players already on the roster.
Fine with me. I would rather have the basketball team be off the radar to start the season. Michigan lost a lot of talent and it will take some time for the new group of players to gel. Hopefully Beilein has this team firing on all cylinders come late February.
Funniest for me is Wisconsin at 8. BPI is no KenPom. I’ll just say that.
Offense ranks at 85? Wow. Is this done by a 10 year old who picks based on how cool the mascot looks?
It also rates teams on a "coaches past performances on offense and defense."
So assuming that takes into account numerous years, it would factor in a lot of meh Beilein defenses and not be weighing Yaklich defenses into that part of the formula.
Given that they were 3rd in defensive efficiency, will probably have better defenders playing more minutes this year, and are in year 2 of Yaklich, I would expect the defense to be top 5 in the country. Elite once again. This has them ranked 13th, probably dragged backwards by Beileins deeper history which isn't relevant to next year.
We might be deeper than last year. We return three starters from a team that went to the NC.
We return the best Defensive PG in the country. We also add a promising Freshman to the PG mix.
We lose MAAR, but have Jordan Poole replace him. Poole might be the most talented player Beilein has ever had. He has NBA written all over him.
Livers will get better offensively and plus we add Johns to the mix, who might be even better.
Matthews will likely improve his shooting. If he does not, we have Brazdeikis, a borderline five star to replace him.
Teske will be better than expected. He will probably be a double double guy consistently if he is hitting 30 minutes.
Unless the offense takes two steps backwards, this is a top 25 team at worst. We might be a top 5 team again if we see improvement at the right positions.
Poole might be the most talented player Beilein has ever had. He has NBA written all over him.
I'd cool the jet engines a bit there. Poole has a long way to go. I don't see him being "the guy" this upcoming year; still going to be total system offense. At the same time, I would bet on Poole having enough of a big year that he'll be gone.
I think Iggy is just as likely as Poole or Matthews to be our leading scorer.
BPI underranked Michigan all last season as well (finished 12th), so it's not shocking that it would underrate a team that effectively lost three starters and most of its proven shooting without recruiting at Kentucky levels (which the formula overvalues).
Kentucky is actually ranked 22th and Duke is 9th.
I would argue that it undervalues incoming talent and dramatically overvalues returning production. They say it heavily weights returning production which is why teams like Marquette (4th), Wisconsin (8th), Iowa (19th) and Illinois (21st) are ranked so high despite all being bad to worse last year. Those are all pretty absurd rankings. I don't think it matters that much if a team returns a lot of players from a mediocre to bad team. That probably just means they'll be slightly better than mediocre to bad the following year if they didn't bring in a big infusion of talent.
Okie dokie then. Guess we’ll just have to let Beilein’s on-court production do the talking for him.
Thats usually worked out pretty well in the past, hasn’t it?
Under the radar is always better than over it.
Well damn, and here I was strongly lookIng forward to the season. Guess I won’t be now....
Lol, can’t wait for this team to hit the floor (no, not sparty style)
They’re gonna be good!
Go Blue!!!
I prefer being ranked low. Want the players top have to work to get into the top 25 and then into the top 10.
Hope somebody puts this on the bulletin board for X, Charles, Poole, and company to see.
You know what the BPI algorithm is really really good at?
Getting a bunch of chuckleheads to click on a stupid, pointless article.
Sometimes I have students in my class who do no work, don't care, and aren't all that smart to begin with.
And I wonder how they will find a job and support themselves in the future.
And now I know where those people work when they grow up.
ESPN has consistently tried to get their own metrics off the ground, and with few exceptions they've failed. BPI is just one of those attempts, and this preseason list sorta highlights why.
What cracked me up was Syracuse being a top-8 team. This was a squad that just barely got into the tournament last year, with an atrocious offense and very good defense, and returns a couple of good players but also a recruiting class that finished 41st in 2018 and is building on the 2 previous classes of 38th (2017) and 18th (2016), and 2 of the three guys in that class are gone. So I'm a bit lost about how a team that can't really shoot and plays pretty good defense can compete against the best teams in the country, but apparently their system says it will and the intern tasked with actually looking at the list just pushed the publish button.
MSU at 13 and Michigan at 40????
I know I am biased but I think player v player we are better than MSU.
PG: I would take Simpson over Winston
SG: Poole over Langford
SF: Matthews over whoever Sparty puts here. Matthews will be the best player on the floor
PF: I do like Tillman and so could an edge to Sparty but this even with Livers here
C: Teske over Ward