2014-2015 KenPom Pre-Season Rankings

[SaintMisbehavin]

Ken Pomeroy's pre-season rankings are out:
kenpom.com/

Here's how the MAAC ranks pre-season:
71. Iona
116. Manhattan
131. Quinnipiac
156. Siena
199. Canisius
216. St. Peter's
222. Fairfield
226. Marist
230. Rider
260. Monmouth
263. Niagara

These "rankings" are really an index, and without actual data from the season there's a large amount of potential error involved, so please don't say "how can he have so-and-so ranked so high?!" because it's based on past performance/recruiting history, not future predictions. (if you remember, Siena finished over 100 spots better than their pre-season projections last season).

If people are interested, I'll post the MAAC updated rankings this year sporadically during the season. 

[Deleted]

Kenpom admittedly puts a lot of emphasis on 'Program History' to start the year. Canisius 5th, for example, is probably a dream.

Siena's predicted record of 16-13 seems a bit too conservative to me. Still, Saints were far from offensively efficient last year and we return all those guys...so a case could be made for a year like this.

[MTS]

Oct 27, 2014 9:02:49 GMT -5 @saintkk said:

Kenpom admittedly puts a lot of emphasis on 'Program History' to start the year. Canisius 5th, for example, is probably a dream.

Siena's predicted record of 16-13 seems a bit too conservative to me. Still, Saints were far from offensively efficient last year and we return all those guys...so a case could be made for a year like this.

So basically these rankings are where the teams finished last year?

A lot of people like Quinnipiac and they could be very good but a lot depends on Mclean. Remember when Umar Shannon got hurt they were not the same team at the end of last season. Also how will Drame handle more attention without Ike Azotam? Dingba is on paper a good recruit but we know freshmen big men usually don't do much in the MAAC.

Siena proved Pomeroy wrong last year and I'm looking forward to them doing it again!

[SaintMisbehavin]

Oct 27, 2014 13:00:49 GMT -5 MTS said:

Oct 27, 2014 9:02:49 GMT -5 @saintkk said:

Kenpom admittedly puts a lot of emphasis on 'Program History' to start the year. Canisius 5th, for example, is probably a dream.

Siena's predicted record of 16-13 seems a bit too conservative to me. Still, Saints were far from offensively efficient last year and we return all those guys...so a case could be made for a year like this.

So basically these rankings are where the teams finished last year?

A lot of people like Quinnipiac and they could be very good but a lot depends on Mclean. Remember when Umar Shannon got hurt they were not the same team at the end of last season. Also how will Drame handle more attention without Ike Azotam? Dingba is on paper a good recruit but we know freshmen big men usually don't do much in the MAAC.

Siena proved Pomeroy wrong last year and I'm looking forward to them doing it again!

The formula used is to measure in-season effectiveness, it isn't made to be a pre-season indication. Pomeroy himself admits that the pre-season "starting point" rankings are significantly flawed. It's once the season begins and actual data can be applied to the formula that the effectiveness takes place.

[nolesaint]

Just about everyone knows that KenPom's really start meaning something round about January. Until then they don't mean much - which the service readily admits.

[gorvy]

Still, there is some value in it as a starting point--- if a team was good last year and has the same coach and loses the same amount they are bringing in-- chances are they will be good again. Last year it was easy to pick Siena--- We had Mitch before and then we didn't-- instant upgrade right there. This year we have the same coach and didn't lose any players--- upgrade again. Next year will be tougher.

[gorvy]

Oct 27, 2014 13:00:49 GMT -5 MTS said:

Oct 27, 2014 9:02:49 GMT -5 @saintkk said:

Kenpom admittedly puts a lot of emphasis on 'Program History' to start the year. Canisius 5th, for example, is probably a dream.

Siena's predicted record of 16-13 seems a bit too conservative to me. Still, Saints were far from offensively efficient last year and we return all those guys...so a case could be made for a year like this.

So basically these rankings are where the teams finished last year?

A lot of people like Quinnipiac and they could be very good but a lot depends on Mclean. Remember when Umar Shannon got hurt they were not the same team at the end of last season. Also how will Drame handle more attention without Ike Azotam? Dingba is on paper a good recruit but we know freshmen big men usually don't do much in the MAAC.

Siena proved Pomeroy wrong last year and I'm looking forward to them doing it again!

I like Quinny to win the maac because they have a strong coach -- Siena is still up and coming, Manhattan loses too many players and Iona is also coming back to the pack. The rest of the MAAC is generally laughable, and that's before I even look at the rosters. It is a tepid selection though because Quinny hasn't proved they can actually win anything.

[Deleted]

People seem to not understand what he does. It's pretty complicated but here's his yearly obligatory writeup:
He factors in history as a factor. Goes back like 5 years. Teams get a 'benefit of the doubt' factor. That's all it is. He has a write up he puts out ever year...

By now, you’ve noticed the preseason ratings have been posted. Thanks to all that have stopped by the past 24 hours. My server thought it was March on Sunday night. (h/t to Matt Norlander for the tweet that generated the traffic. I usually enjoy flipping the switch and watching twitter spread the word organically over the course of a few hours, but since Norlander spilled the beans approximately five minutes after the site turned over, I got an immediate firehose of traffic.)

I’ve discussed the formula in some detail in previous seasons and it hasn’t changed much in the five years I’ve been doing this. Here are some semi-random thoughts on them.

People always want to know why a team is ranked in an unexpected spot. Think of the ratings formula as [team baseline + personnel]. The personnel portion is looking at who is returning from last season’s roster, how much the returnees played, what kind of role each returnee had, and what class they are in. Actually, there’s a two-year window for this, so Butler gets some credit for getting Roosevelt Jones back, for instance.

The system does not give any special consideration to new players entering the program. There is some credit given for high-profile recruits, but the poor performances in 2012-13 of UCLA and Kentucky, among others, in recent years have tended to mute the impact of recruits in the model. Recruiting rankings are useful, but the impact of high-level prospects on their respective teams as freshman can vary wildly.

There is no allowance for impact transfers or redshirt freshmen. So if your program has a high-profile transfer joining the team, the system may be underrating it. But this is where the program baseline can pick up some of the slack. The system is looking at the performance of a team over the past five seasons and its men’s basketball budget over the two most recent seasons for which data is available to figure out what should be expected of a team in the absence of any other information. A lot more weight is given to the past two seasons in terms of team performance. So the system is going to be forgiving about personnel losses on teams like Louisville and Syracuse and Creighton that spend a bunch of money on men’s hoops and have had recent success.

Let’s face it, while people like to talk about how much parity there is in the sport, the reality is that if I wanted to predict the Pac-12 race in 2025, I’d do pretty well forecasting Arizona and UCLA at the top and, well, I won’t call out the teams at the bottom, but despite not knowing who will be coaching or playing for these teams that far in the future, we could make a reasonably good forecast of either end of the conference standings. And that’s true of most leagues. The purpose of the team baseline is to handle this bit of knowledge which is more program-dependent than roster-dependent.

Conference gravity is also thrown into the mix, so that teams that have had outlier performances relative to their conference tend to get pulled back towards the conference mean. Coaching changes are also considered, and teams with a coaching change get punished, though this effect is stronger for teams with a better baseline.

There’s a slight distinction that needs to be made regarding what is being projected. Technically, the system is forecasting a team’s final pythagorean rating and not its final ranking. For instance, take Oklahoma State’s forecasted rating of .8546, which is the 21st-best projection. Last season that rating would have ranked 29th, and two seasons ago it would have been 33rd.

Which is to say that a highly-ranked team is more likely to be overrated than underrated in terms of its ranking. That’s an obvious statement once you get to the top-ranked team, but I expect it’s underappreciated for teams elsewhere in the top 20. By the way, this the fifth season I’ve done preseason ratings and the top-ranked team in preseason has finished first on two occasions - 2012 Kentucky and 2014 Louisville. But both of those teams had to improve on their preseason rating to earn the ratings title at the end of the season.

As far as ratings’ eyesores, Oklahoma State probably topped my personal list, although there are always plenty to go around. Mississippi State was Norlander’s favorite. Indeed, a team going from 208 to 83 may not be the best look for the ratings. Note, too, that TCU is listed at 130 after finishing 234th last season. If you’re in a decent conference and players are staying with the program and the coach isn’t getting fired, you can’t suck forever. That is the theory here.

But in the case of the Bulldogs and the Cowboys, the system likes high-usage guys that have been in the program for multiple seasons. Sure, Oklahoma State loses Marcus Smart and Markel Brown, but at least they know Le’Bryan Nash is capable of being a go-to guy. For Mississippi State, the ratings will turn to Craig Sword for credibility. Unfortunately, the high-usage shooting guard is battling back problems and may miss some games to start the season. Get well soon, buddy! I’ll be waiting to break out the #RickRayBandwagon hashtag until you’re back.

And that brings us to the injury/suspension portion of the show. Basically, if a player is not ruled out for the entire season, they are included as a returnee. So guys like Sword are in as are more extreme cases of guys who are expected to miss multiple weeks.

At any rate, these are the ratings and I’m sticking to them. Unless there is major personnel news in the next week, that is. They’re just a starting point to generate reasonable score and record predictions early in the season. Never let a number define your team, kiddos.

Next up, I’ll take a look at how various projection systems, including my own, did last season.

[Quackman]

I'm generally a numbers guy but count me among those that question how meaningful prior year's statistics are in projecting a team's upcoming season. I get it with baseball: a sport where the outcome is generally determined by how 1 player (a batter) matches up with 1 player (a pitcher). Basketball has too many moving parts (multiple players, pace of play, fouls, injuries, substitutions, etc).

Big difference between "money ball" (meaning baseball) and basketball is that, generally, guys who hit 300, 20 home runs and 100 RBI's are fairly comparable. Every team has guys who score 12 to 15 points per game but some are, simply, better than others ... and their worth comes outside of the stats.

There are certainly important statistics that you can look to when evaluating teams. But, a preseason ranking like this is good for one thing: starting discussions. Appears Mr. Pom has thus been successful.

[SaintMisbehavin]

Oct 28, 2014 13:55:11 GMT -5 Quackman said:

I'm generally a numbers guy but count me among those that question how meaningful prior year's statistics are in projecting a team's upcoming season. I get it with baseball: a sport where the outcome is generally determined by how 1 player (a batter) matches up with 1 player (a pitcher). Basketball has too many moving parts (multiple players, pace of play, fouls, injuries, substitutions, etc).

Big difference between "money ball" (meaning baseball) and basketball is that, generally, guys who hit 300, 20 home runs and 100 RBI's are fairly comparable. Every team has guys who score 12 to 15 points per game but some are, simply, better than others ... and their worth comes outside of the stats.

There are certainly important statistics that you can look to when evaluating teams. But, a preseason ranking like this is good for one thing: starting discussions. Appears Mr. Pom has thus been successful.

Totally agree. Last year I posted these and updated weekly once actual data starts to affect the rankings. In my opinion it's fun to see where teams are pre-ranked with admittedly incomplete data, and where they end up with a more robust data set. In no way was posting these an endorsement of their validity (debatable) or importance (none, obviously, since the season hasn't started). But to me, it's always an indication that the season is near!

[Deleted]

Oct 28, 2014 13:55:11 GMT -5 Quackman said:

I'm generally a numbers guy but count me among those that question how meaningful prior year's statistics are in projecting a team's upcoming season. I get it with baseball: a sport where the outcome is generally determined by how 1 player (a batter) matches up with 1 player (a pitcher). Basketball has too many moving parts (multiple players, pace of play, fouls, injuries, substitutions, etc).

Big difference between "money ball" (meaning baseball) and basketball is that, generally, guys who hit 300, 20 home runs and 100 RBI's are fairly comparable. Every team has guys who score 12 to 15 points per game but some are, simply, better than others ... and their worth comes outside of the stats.

There are certainly important statistics that you can look to when evaluating teams. But, a preseason ranking like this is good for one thing: starting discussions. Appears Mr. Pom has thus been successful.

His preseason stuff isn't that good and he acknowledges that but it isn't that bad either.

Last year KenPom predictions vs. Final.

--Actual---------KenPom
1. Iona----------Manhattan
2. Manhattan---Iona
3. Quinnipiac---Quinnipiac
4. Canisius-----Canisius
5. Siena--------Fairfield*
6. Marist -------Niagara*
7. St. Peters----Rider
8. Rider---------Marist
9. Monmouth---Siena*
10. Fairfield-----St. Peter's
11. Niagara-----Monmouth


Fairfield and Niagara had success prior seasons but lost a lot. That 'benefit of the doubt' factor kept them too high. Siena changed coaches and got decent new players Wright/Long etc.. so they surprised.

By the end of December, Kenpom is pretty damn good at predicting remaining records though.

I would argue immensely with the comment "Every team has guys who score 12 to 15 points per game but some are, simply, better than others ... and their worth comes outside of the stats."
Coaches use these numbers.

Scoring 12 pts per game means little. Scoring 12 pts per game efficiently means: everything. Grabbing more boards than your opponents: everything. Winning the turnover margin battle: everything.

Stats are just as applicable in basketball as they are in baseball.
Football is a little different story. But not so much these. You can measure almost everything statistically in basketball especially nowadays.

[Tony]

its not a apples to apples comparison- he takes 5 years worth of data-- with heavier emphasize on recent 2 or 3 years -- of course the coach that caused the dip is no longer here-- if he ran the simulation with Jimmy's last 5 years - Siena would be 50 spots higher

Stats are fine- but they are not the end all be all- its been proven over and over again you can pretty much make stats say whatever you want- can they be a useful tool-- most definitely

It doesn't take a basketball genius to see ken pom preseason missed final spot on 9 of 11 teams and was way off on Siena, SPC


This year easy to see Canisius way over valued , as is Manahttan, SPC and Siena once again undervalued

like I said fun to talk about-- but at mid major level not too informative ..get back to me dec 15th and standing will look much different than ken pom says right now. And I think kenPom would be first to agree with that.. the preseason rankings are much more informative at top level where teams historically reload and have little coaching turnover

[gorvy]

I don't see why people are so bent out of shape with ken poms rankings. If you know something like "Siena's coach isn't garbage like it was the previous four years" then simply use it! That's what gives you the edge against the "house".