(02-10-2022 12:17 PM)dawgonit Wrote: Quality work there. If I could give reputation, I would. However I don't necessarily see the reasoning on how you decided the points based on team ranking as a way of measuring and comparing but I still this does show some interesting comparisons.
Wouldn't the raw sum total though favor conferences with more members? They can have more average members and just rack up more points that way but not necessarily be a stronger league?
It made sense at the time.
The scale I used was mainly to simplify the numbers. I could've just said OK, 358 total teams, so #1 is worth 358 points, #2 is 357, #3 356, and so on. But at the end of the day, I figured there's not much difference between a team ranked 140 and one ranked 145. When they play each other, it can go either way. So a range seemed more appropriate.
Additionally, if we're gauging strength, schools in the 200s and 300s don't bring much to the table. So my system stopped awarding points at #200.
Here's the complete scale I used:
Ranking - Points
1-5 - 10
6-10 - 9
11-15 - 8
16-25 - 7
26-50 - 6
51-75 - 5
76-100 - 4
101-125 - 3
126-150 - 2
151-200 - 1
201+ - 0
As for the number of conference members throwing off the count, you're right that it can in certain cases. (What really throws it off is if one conference plays round-robin and another plays in strict divisions with minimal overlap. In the latter case, ranking each division separately would be the way to go.)
The reason I wasn't too bothered by this for my comparison is that, as long as you're playing everyone in the conference, it doesn't matter if Conference A has two more members than Conference B. If the two conferences are otherwise equal, and Conference A's two extra members are weak (i.e., ranked lower than 200), there's no advantage. A doesn't gain any points over B, despite having more teams.
As those extra members increase in strength, Conference A will eventually get a bump over Conference B.
But if Conference A has two more strong teams than Conference B, it follows that Conference A is the stronger conference.
As a real world example, the new Sun Belt has five more members than CUSA 4.0. But they don't gain any advantage because six SBC teams add 0 points, and another five teams only add a single point each.
Even though CUSA 4.0 is smaller, they only have one zero point team and two one-point teams. Translation: while CUSA 4.0 isn't exactly a multi-bid conference, most games will be against reasonably strong opponents ranked in the Top 150.
Meanwhile, the American makes us both look bad, with nearly half the conference ranked in the Top 100. Is the bottom half of the conference strong? No, not at all. So they don't gain anything from their two zero-point members, and only a mild bump from their four one-point teams, but the top half of the conference more than makes up for that.
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Average Kenpom College Basketball Conference Rankings
