I am working on a project trying to rank all time programs and noticed that the average winning percentage is .537

In theory it should be .500 but once you factor in games against d2 teams, teams that have moved up, teams that have deemphasized sports, & vacated wins it makes sense that that number is not a perfect .500

question: Does .537 sound accurate? To me it seems much higher than it should be

Vacated wins should lower the collective winning percentage, right? Because vacating results in a game being 0-0 for the winner and 0-1 for the loser instead of 1-0 for the winner and 0-1 for the loser.

Forfeits, in contrast, would have no effect on the collective winning percentage because a forfeit just reverses the result.

(03-13-2014 01:51 PM)Wedge Wrote:  Vacated wins should lower the collective winning percentage, right? Because vacating results in a game being 0-0 for the winner and 0-1 for the loser instead of 1-0 for the winner and 0-1 for the loser.

Forfeits, in contrast, would have no effect on the collective winning percentage because a forfeit just reverses the result.

yes good point. vacated wins should lower the results bringing it closer to .500

What's the source of your numbers? If your source is using consistent methodology year-to-year and from school-to-school, you should get something fairly accurate. If the numbers are self-reported by schools, you may see some large variations.

(03-13-2014 01:59 PM)prp Wrote:  What's the source of your numbers? If your source is using consistent methodology year-to-year and from school-to-school, you should get something fairly accurate. If the numbers are self-reported by schools, you may see some large variations.

http://fs.ncaa.org/Docs/stats/m_basketba...010-16.pdf

It seems funny to me to see ND as the ninth all time winningest team by total victories and twelfth all time by winning percentage......in basketball.

I think you answered your own question. The teams that did well moved up to division 1 and the teams that did not do well did not move up unless an entire conference moved at the same time. You would also have schools that didn't do well that dropped basketball altogether.

Even though Kentucky is #1 in overall and percentage by a decent margin, I still don't like our wins over YMCA's and schools for the blind back in the early years. I guess all of the programs that are old as the hills have those, though.

(03-13-2014 03:52 PM)Fredbrd7 Wrote:  I think you answered your own question. The teams that did well moved up to division 1 and the teams that did not do well did not move up unless an entire conference moved at the same time. You would also have schools that didn't do well that dropped basketball altogether.

Yup - just look at the four Dakota schools that have moved up in the past decade - .550, .583, .587 and .609 winning percentages overall, but vast majority of those wins were at the DII or lower level.

I would be interested to see winning percentages against current DI colleges.

Playing a local YMCA/high school/national guard/fire hall/etc. teams shouldn't count, and neither should win against DII teams (for those teams that just made the jump)

(03-13-2014 02:18 PM)TerryD Wrote:  It seems funny to me to see ND as the ninth all time winningest team by total victories and twelfth all time by winning percentage......in basketball.

There are some interesting stats in there. I noticed in all-time wins, 4 of the old Big 8 teams are within 8 slots of each other between 33 and 40. I probably wouldn't have expected Western KY to be in the top 10 by winning percentage.

WKU is the most under rated program in d1

(03-14-2014 10:28 AM)BewareThePhog Wrote:  

(03-13-2014 02:18 PM)TerryD Wrote:  It seems funny to me to see ND as the ninth all time winningest team by total victories and twelfth all time by winning percentage......in basketball.

There are some interesting stats in there. I noticed in all-time wins, 4 of the old Big 8 teams are within 8 slots of each other between 33 and 40. I probably wouldn't have expected Western KY to be in the top 10 by winning percentage.

Winning percentage is heavily influenced by the quality of competition, obviously, so for the teams that have been playing since about 1900, there are a lot of wins in there over competition that isn't at today's D-I level, and more recently, teams that have dominated at a level below that of the top conferences can produce a very high overall win percentage.

Would be interesting to see overall wins and win percentages from the 1984-85 season (first season with a 64-team NCAA tournament) through the present.

(03-14-2014 01:27 PM)Wedge Wrote:  

(03-14-2014 10:28 AM)BewareThePhog Wrote:  

(03-13-2014 02:18 PM)TerryD Wrote:  It seems funny to me to see ND as the ninth all time winningest team by total victories and twelfth all time by winning percentage......in basketball.

There are some interesting stats in there. I noticed in all-time wins, 4 of the old Big 8 teams are within 8 slots of each other between 33 and 40. I probably wouldn't have expected Western KY to be in the top 10 by winning percentage.

Winning percentage is heavily influenced by the quality of competition, obviously, so for the teams that have been playing since about 1900, there are a lot of wins in there over competition that isn't at today's D-I level, and more recently, teams that have dominated at a level below that of the top conferences can produce a very high overall win percentage.

Would be interesting to see overall wins and win percentages from the 1984-85 season (first season with a 64-team NCAA tournament) through the present.

I wasn't surprised to see UNLV's high win rate given their relatively short history - it was Western KY's relatively long history at a high level that caught my eye.

(03-14-2014 01:27 PM)Wedge Wrote:  

(03-14-2014 10:28 AM)BewareThePhog Wrote:  

(03-13-2014 02:18 PM)TerryD Wrote:  It seems funny to me to see ND as the ninth all time winningest team by total victories and twelfth all time by winning percentage......in basketball.

There are some interesting stats in there. I noticed in all-time wins, 4 of the old Big 8 teams are within 8 slots of each other between 33 and 40. I probably wouldn't have expected Western KY to be in the top 10 by winning percentage.

Winning percentage is heavily influenced by the quality of competition, obviously, so for the teams that have been playing since about 1900, there are a lot of wins in there over competition that isn't at today's D-I level, and more recently, teams that have dominated at a level below that of the top conferences can produce a very high overall win percentage.

Would be interesting to see overall wins and win percentages from the 1984-85 season (first season with a 64-team NCAA tournament) through the present.

ND had a great basketball program in the Seventies and early Eighties under Digger Phelps (Austin Carr, John Shumate, Adrian Dantley, -----snapped UCLA's 88 game winning streak---two streaks actually, book ended by two ND losses----and a 1978 Final Four appearance).

I don't think that those wins were because of low level competition

As a basketball independent in those years, ND normally played teams like Kentucky, DePaul (Mark Aquirre years), UCLA, Marquette (Al McGuire years), etc...

I ain't willing to discard that history in favor of one that begins in 1985.

(03-14-2014 01:27 PM)Wedge Wrote:  

(03-14-2014 10:28 AM)BewareThePhog Wrote:  

(03-13-2014 02:18 PM)TerryD Wrote:  It seems funny to me to see ND as the ninth all time winningest team by total victories and twelfth all time by winning percentage......in basketball.

There are some interesting stats in there. I noticed in all-time wins, 4 of the old Big 8 teams are within 8 slots of each other between 33 and 40. I probably wouldn't have expected Western KY to be in the top 10 by winning percentage.

Winning percentage is heavily influenced by the quality of competition, obviously, so for the teams that have been playing since about 1900, there are a lot of wins in there over competition that isn't at today's D-I level, and more recently, teams that have dominated at a level below that of the top conferences can produce a very high overall win percentage.

Would be interesting to see overall wins and win percentages from the 1984-85 season (first season with a 64-team NCAA tournament) through the present.

I agree. Playing old Big East, ACC and BIG are conference that are historically good and deep. I don't want to discredit any team at top of list because they have done very well in NCAA Tourney but NC, Duke, Syracuse & Indiana had to do it against tough conference opponents.

.537 sounds right to me. Consider that for 50 years, the Big 10 had a bottom feeder (Chicago) that is no longer in D-1. The Big 8 had Wash U for 30-40 years. The SEC had Sewanee for a decade. For 30 years Arizona/ASU/Texas Tech/UTEP/New Mexico/NMSU would regularly beat up on conference-mates West Texas A&M and Hardin-Simmons before they dropped down.

The list goes on, but you get the point.