Hi all! I hope you enjoyed the first weekend of the season. I was glued
to the TV and certainly enjoyed the return of football.
The pre-season
favorites got off to strong starts, for the most part, highlighted by Alabama’s
41-14 trouncing of Michigan. The only exception was Oklahoma, who
uncharacteristically struggled to a 24-7 victory over UTEP. Also struggling was
Stanford, who is coming off one of the best runs in school history but lost
Andrew Luck to the NFL draft. The Tree needed a fourth quarter field goal to
defeat San Jose State 20-17. This drops Stanford from #21 in my pre-season
rankings to #34 after week won.
An updated top 10
can be found below:
|
Rank
|
Team
|
Rating
|
Record
|
E(FR)
|
P(WARG)
|
|
1
|
Alabama
|
28.95
|
1-0
|
10.69-1.31
|
0.175
|
|
2
|
Oklahoma State
|
26.22
|
1-0
|
10.14-1.86
|
0.113
|
|
3
|
Florida State
|
25.24
|
1-0
|
10.71-1.29
|
0.18
|
|
4
|
USC
|
24.22
|
1-0
|
10.12-1.88
|
0.073
|
|
5
|
Ohio State
|
22.41
|
1-0
|
10.06-1.94
|
0.098
|
|
6
|
West Virginia
|
22.01
|
1-0
|
9.41-2.59
|
0.034
|
|
7
|
Oregon
|
21.66
|
1-0
|
10.31-1.69
|
0.07
|
|
8
|
LSU
|
21.46
|
1-0
|
9.17-2.83
|
0.016
|
|
9
|
Clemson
|
19.63
|
1-0
|
9.73-2.27
|
0.029
|
|
10
|
South Carolina
|
19.59
|
1-0
|
9.02-2.98
|
0.008
|
The rankings can be volatile early in the season when there isn’t much
data available for estimating the relative strength of each team. That said,
seven of the top ten remain and the three newcomers to the top ten, Oklahoma
State, West Virginia and Clemson, were ranked 18, 12 and 13 in the pre-season
ranking. This illustrates the advantage of incorporating the pre-season
rankings through the prior distribution. By incorporating the pre-season
rankings, we have eased some of the early season volatility, while updating the
pre-season rankings in a more sensible manner than the algorithmic approach
used by main-stream poll voters (i.e. where teams only drop if they lose and
only move up if teams ranked ahead of them lose).
Here are the top 15 with the best chance of finishing undefeated
|
P(WARG) Rank
|
Rank
|
Team
|
P(WARG)
|
|
1
|
50
|
Ohio
|
0.222
|
|
2
|
3
|
Florida State
|
0.180
|
|
3
|
1
|
Alabama
|
0.175
|
|
4
|
22
|
Louisville
|
0.130
|
|
5
|
2
|
Oklahoma State
|
0.113
|
|
6
|
5
|
Ohio State
|
0.098
|
|
7
|
4
|
USC
|
0.073
|
|
8
|
7
|
Oregon
|
0.070
|
|
9
|
6
|
West Virginia
|
0.034
|
|
10
|
9
|
Clemson
|
0.029
|
|
11
|
23
|
North Carolina
|
0.029
|
|
12
|
12
|
Michigan State
|
0.026
|
|
13
|
8
|
LSU
|
0.016
|
|
14
|
15
|
Nebraska
|
0.015
|
|
15
|
40
|
Central Florida
|
0.015
|
Ohio was the big winner of the weekend. The Bobcats increased their
probability of finishing undefeated from 2% to over 20% thanks to their upset
of Penn State. Alabama and Florida State also appear more likely to finish the
season undefeated after impressive opening week victories. That said, none of
these teams are a good bet to finish undefeated with all having less than a 22%
chance of finishing undefeated and only the top 8 having more than a 5% chance
of running the table.
Week 2 will be a bit of a let-down after an exciting week 1. One game
that stands out to me is Washington traveling to Baton Rouge to take on LSU.
LSU is certainly favored but the rankings have LSU favored by 14, which is a
far cry from the Vegas line of 23. Furthermore, Keith Price is one of the best
quarterbacks in the country and LSU has a tendency to look sloppy on offense,
which can lead to closer than expected results. Don’t get me wrong, LSU should
win this game and I’m probably a little biased (I’m a U-Dub alum) but I think
this could be an interesting game to watch. In addition, it will also be interesting to
see how Missouri and Texas A&M enjoy their first taste of SEC action
against Georgia and Florida, respectively.
Full ranking can be found at my personal website: http://www.biostat.umn.edu/~josephk/index.php?page=sports
No comments:
Post a Comment