Post by phil on Jan 26, 2023 10:09:10 GMT -5
After reading DoggyDaddy’s write up on the upcoming game I thought that it might be fun to visit the LV discussion forum. No, not the original one, that one has restricted access because their distorted worldview kept getting peppered by inconvenient facts. The secondary forum isn’t quite as busy but let’s give them kudos for allowing input from fans that haven’t drunk the orange Kool-Aid.
I saw a reference to Big Least and would like to respond. I participate there but I haven’t tipped my hand, so I don’t plan on posting this there.
I could understand, even if I disagree, with the use of Big Least if they are talking about the current conference. I’m not even going to argue that the current Big East is stronger than the current SEC. I’ll even give credit to the term — on a cleverness scale from 1 to 10, it easily deserves a 1.5. Which means, in all likelihood, the term wasn’t dreamed up by an SEC fan, that’s too high a bar, they must have stolen it from someone else.
But they weren’t talking about the current Big East. They were talking about the old Big East. This isn’t just my inference, they actually said “but the ‘old’ Big East conference…”.
They said it in response to someone who posted some stats about tournament results. The years weren’t listed but it’s pretty easy to figure out that the tables were based on 2008 – 2013, with the last year corresponding to the last year of the old Big East.
The initial comment was based on the number of teams invited by the selection committee.
Let’s summarize the results:
2008 Big East 8 SEC 5 Advantage Big East
2009 Big East 7 SEC 7 tie
2010 Big East 7 SEC 6 Advantage Big East
2011 Big East 9 SEC 4 huge Advantage Big East
2012 Big East 8 SEC 8 tie
2013 Big East 8 SEC 7 Advantage Big East
in summary, the Big East had an advantage in four of six years, tied in two, and the SEC dominated in exactly 0 years during this time. Over those six years the Big East had 47 teams selected to the tournament while the SEC had 37. That’s a significant advantage.
These are the years the respondent is referring to the Big Least. If getting 47 teams qualifies for derision, what’s the right label for a conference that gets 10 fewer teams into the tournament?
It’s one thing to get teams invited, it’s another thing for those teams to win. How many wins did the SEC have over that six-year period? They had 62, slightly more than 10 per year. Not bad. How many wins did the Big East have over that period? 90!!! That’s an average of 15 per year, almost 50% more than the SEC.
The SEC fan (presumably a Tennessee fan) wasn’t about to argue that 37 teams selected was better than 47. No, not even Tennessee fans think that (most of them, anyway). But, as many have observed (and this is broader than just SEC fans) once one convinces oneself of a notion, mere contrary facts aren’t going to change your mind, you’re going to dream up some excuse why the facts mean something other than the obvious. Addendum — after writing this I went back to see if there were any more pearls of wisdom in the thread and found this: “A study by Stanford University proved that once someone’s mind is made up you cannot change it regardless of the facts”. Yes, discouraging, and yes, I’m ignoring the study by trying to respond with facts but what else to do?
No, this fan wasn’t about to discard the term “Big Least”.
So, what was their explanation?
“The multiple bids were generally a display of generosity by the selection committee, leaving most fans outside of that conference with raised eyebrows. “
Yes, apparently the selection committee decided that the Big East deserved preferential treatment, so the huge number of invitations to the tournament represented some sort of affirmative action for basketball teams.
Now you might think that I’m going to absolutely destroy the notion that the selection committee would engage in any such actions but I’m not. I’m seriously suspicious that the selection committee has engaged in preferential treatment, but I think that treatment favors the SEC. The notion that the Big East has benefited from preferential treatment is laughable but that’s often the case for SEC fans, who can correctly say that the SEC was the top conference in the land for some period of time but have decided to cling to that notion long after the facts say otherwise.
I have some thoughts on how to test these assertions mathematically but putting together all the data is not trivial and I haven’t had the energy. Maybe this will inspire me to work on it.
In the meantime, I’ll make one simple observation which is far from perfect.
It seems plausible that if the selection committee decided to add a lot of teams from one conference that didn’t deserve to be in the tournament, the number of teams selected would be high, but when those teams actually played they’d be washed out of the tournament early. One metric is to look at the winning percentage in the tournament.
I demonstrated that the number of Big East invites over the six-year period was far higher than for the SEC but maybe the winning percentage was weaker?
Nope.
The Big East went 90 – 44, winning 67.2% of their games, while the SEC went 62 – 36, winning 63.3% of the games. Not terribly different, but even a Tennessee fan knows that 67 is higher than 63 (I think, don’t make me bet on it).
The problem is that while this metric is an interesting metric, it doesn’t tell us definitively that one conference is being favored over another.
Let me illustrate with a simple example.
Imagine two conferences each get exactly one team selected to the tournament. A team from the first conference is given a one seed. As a one seed their expected number of wins is 4.25, but maybe they were over seeded and only win three. Three and one leaves them at a 75% winning percentage.
In contrast, the second conference gets a single team in seeded as a five seed, who follows expectations, wins the first round and loses the second round. They winning percentage is 50%. In this overly simplified example the first conference was the recipient of preferential treatment but they winning percentage, while lower than it should be, is still better than the other conference seeded correctly.
I need to put together a metric that measures how many wins each team and conference should get based upon their actual seeding and see if it measures up to the expected results.
Not today, but I hope I have shared enough data to destroy the notion that the old Big East, in the last six years of existence deserved to be called the Big Least. Rational observers of women’s basketball know that was an era of dominance by the Big East.
I saw a reference to Big Least and would like to respond. I participate there but I haven’t tipped my hand, so I don’t plan on posting this there.
I could understand, even if I disagree, with the use of Big Least if they are talking about the current conference. I’m not even going to argue that the current Big East is stronger than the current SEC. I’ll even give credit to the term — on a cleverness scale from 1 to 10, it easily deserves a 1.5. Which means, in all likelihood, the term wasn’t dreamed up by an SEC fan, that’s too high a bar, they must have stolen it from someone else.
But they weren’t talking about the current Big East. They were talking about the old Big East. This isn’t just my inference, they actually said “but the ‘old’ Big East conference…”.
They said it in response to someone who posted some stats about tournament results. The years weren’t listed but it’s pretty easy to figure out that the tables were based on 2008 – 2013, with the last year corresponding to the last year of the old Big East.
The initial comment was based on the number of teams invited by the selection committee.
Let’s summarize the results:
2008 Big East 8 SEC 5 Advantage Big East
2009 Big East 7 SEC 7 tie
2010 Big East 7 SEC 6 Advantage Big East
2011 Big East 9 SEC 4 huge Advantage Big East
2012 Big East 8 SEC 8 tie
2013 Big East 8 SEC 7 Advantage Big East
in summary, the Big East had an advantage in four of six years, tied in two, and the SEC dominated in exactly 0 years during this time. Over those six years the Big East had 47 teams selected to the tournament while the SEC had 37. That’s a significant advantage.
These are the years the respondent is referring to the Big Least. If getting 47 teams qualifies for derision, what’s the right label for a conference that gets 10 fewer teams into the tournament?
It’s one thing to get teams invited, it’s another thing for those teams to win. How many wins did the SEC have over that six-year period? They had 62, slightly more than 10 per year. Not bad. How many wins did the Big East have over that period? 90!!! That’s an average of 15 per year, almost 50% more than the SEC.
The SEC fan (presumably a Tennessee fan) wasn’t about to argue that 37 teams selected was better than 47. No, not even Tennessee fans think that (most of them, anyway). But, as many have observed (and this is broader than just SEC fans) once one convinces oneself of a notion, mere contrary facts aren’t going to change your mind, you’re going to dream up some excuse why the facts mean something other than the obvious. Addendum — after writing this I went back to see if there were any more pearls of wisdom in the thread and found this: “A study by Stanford University proved that once someone’s mind is made up you cannot change it regardless of the facts”. Yes, discouraging, and yes, I’m ignoring the study by trying to respond with facts but what else to do?
No, this fan wasn’t about to discard the term “Big Least”.
So, what was their explanation?
“The multiple bids were generally a display of generosity by the selection committee, leaving most fans outside of that conference with raised eyebrows. “
Yes, apparently the selection committee decided that the Big East deserved preferential treatment, so the huge number of invitations to the tournament represented some sort of affirmative action for basketball teams.
Now you might think that I’m going to absolutely destroy the notion that the selection committee would engage in any such actions but I’m not. I’m seriously suspicious that the selection committee has engaged in preferential treatment, but I think that treatment favors the SEC. The notion that the Big East has benefited from preferential treatment is laughable but that’s often the case for SEC fans, who can correctly say that the SEC was the top conference in the land for some period of time but have decided to cling to that notion long after the facts say otherwise.
I have some thoughts on how to test these assertions mathematically but putting together all the data is not trivial and I haven’t had the energy. Maybe this will inspire me to work on it.
In the meantime, I’ll make one simple observation which is far from perfect.
It seems plausible that if the selection committee decided to add a lot of teams from one conference that didn’t deserve to be in the tournament, the number of teams selected would be high, but when those teams actually played they’d be washed out of the tournament early. One metric is to look at the winning percentage in the tournament.
I demonstrated that the number of Big East invites over the six-year period was far higher than for the SEC but maybe the winning percentage was weaker?
Nope.
The Big East went 90 – 44, winning 67.2% of their games, while the SEC went 62 – 36, winning 63.3% of the games. Not terribly different, but even a Tennessee fan knows that 67 is higher than 63 (I think, don’t make me bet on it).
The problem is that while this metric is an interesting metric, it doesn’t tell us definitively that one conference is being favored over another.
Let me illustrate with a simple example.
Imagine two conferences each get exactly one team selected to the tournament. A team from the first conference is given a one seed. As a one seed their expected number of wins is 4.25, but maybe they were over seeded and only win three. Three and one leaves them at a 75% winning percentage.
In contrast, the second conference gets a single team in seeded as a five seed, who follows expectations, wins the first round and loses the second round. They winning percentage is 50%. In this overly simplified example the first conference was the recipient of preferential treatment but they winning percentage, while lower than it should be, is still better than the other conference seeded correctly.
I need to put together a metric that measures how many wins each team and conference should get based upon their actual seeding and see if it measures up to the expected results.
Not today, but I hope I have shared enough data to destroy the notion that the old Big East, in the last six years of existence deserved to be called the Big Least. Rational observers of women’s basketball know that was an era of dominance by the Big East.
