brooklyn brownstone said:

Maybe it's not individual stats but things like team efficiencies as a whole year over year over year? UR should be the easiest to peg bc we always have the same coach, always had the same style of offense and until last year I'd imagine the defense was fairly consistent since we went away from the matchup.

Saying analytics is stupid is not smart IMO. I understand your point that personnel change happens, but if you can look at numbers and they have the ability predict fairly accurately future results based on past performances (year over year over year) you'd be dumb to ignore them.

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I didn't say all analytics were stupid. I said so many of these analytics are stupid. They just are. And that would include using our 2020 season as even 1% of what we might do this year. And I say that knowing how great our 2020 season was. But, if kenpom is using efficiencies, we are also way better than 11th too. Just saying...he is just picking names out of a hat right now for the most part.

He might be right. He might be wrong. But, what we do know is all of these analytics dudes were way off last year when they had us 11th.

Anyone see the Bill Clinton video campaigning for Dem ticket? Jeez, looks/acts like he ought be sharing a nursing home room with Biden.

ncspiderfan said:

The AnyGivenSaturday poll has Spiders #18.

Just info, but I like to watch this poll since the group voting are for the most part FCS junkies like me (though I am not a voter). The one drawback is many of them do not have Flo Sports access and as a result they might be giving the CAA a bit of a pass at present. I would add that many of them post their own polls in a thread week to week and they question each other's reasoning for particular placements of teams to get feedback and justify their thoughts on placement in their voting.

They are not putting Delaware in their polling this year and have the following ranked for the CAA

5 Nova
16 W&M
17 Rhode Island
18 Richmond
23 New Hampshireo
24 Towson

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I follow their poll as well but rarely post. It seems to me that there is a hugh regional bias but enough voters scattered about to smooth it out a bit. It also seems that many voters take "beauty" points into account when voting as well. With that said their poll by year's end is pretty close to playoff lineup.

Gilly has been waived by the Cavs.

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Click on the links below to listen to their comments.

Greg Gattuso, UAlbany
Chris Merritt, Bryant
Braxton Harris, Campbell
Ryan Carty, Delaware
Tony Trisciani, Elon
Trent Boykin, Hampton
Jordan Stevens, Maine
Kevin Callahan, Monmouth
Rick Santos, UNH
Vincent Brown, North Carolina A&T
Jim Fleming, Rhode Island
Russ Huesman, Richmond
Billy Cosh, Stony Brook
Pete Shinnick, Towson
Mark Ferrante, Villanova
Mike London, William & Mary

Wait, he legit had Harper over KA as the number 1 in the Mooney era. I want some of what he was smoking. Harper had one really good year, KA's number is retired in the rafters. KA is number 2 in our all time scoring list, he scored more than 700 points more than Harper (or more points that Harper scored his senior year). A-10 POY, hit the game winner against Vandy. KA to me is in a class of one, Gilly would be my number 2 on the list. I would frankly have Harper probably in the 8-10 range.

Also agree with everyone else that Gonzo needs to be higher, Ced needs to be higher. I love Garrett too but he is too high. He was a very unique player for us, but he was never the dude on any team he played on. Please don't tell him, I said that though, he is also number one of my list of players who could kick anyone's else ass. Love you Darrius.

Surprised a bit about Cayo, I would have him had over Sherod. Sherod's career just got derailed because of injuries. Smitty is on the the list for his dunking and for his singular ability to engage the crowd. Smitty has the longest highlight reel of any Spider. Period, bar none.

VT4700 said:

That being said, still strange that anyone would have us 11th if using any type of historical performance from the past 5 years.

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Well why don't you shoot ol' Kenny an email and set him straight then

The Clash

The AnyGivenSaturday poll has Spiders #18.

Just info, but I like to watch this poll since the group voting are for the most part FCS junkies like me (though I am not a voter). The one drawback is many of them do not have Flo Sports access and as a result they might be giving the CAA a bit of a pass at present. I would add that many of them post their own polls in a thread week to week and they question each other's reasoning for particular placements of teams to get feedback and justify their thoughts on placement in their voting.

They are not putting Delaware in their polling this year and have the following ranked for the CAA

5 Nova
16 W&M
17 Rhode Island
18 Richmond
23 New Hampshireo
24 Towson

My top tier (in no order other than KA is always first) is:
Anderson
Gonzalvez
Cline
Kendall
Gilyard
Golden
Burton

These 7 guys always produced in their careers.

Level 2a
Harper - took him some time to establish himself and even junior year, struggled with his shot. Senior year - lights out, every game. (in comparison with Burton, Harp scored 200+ fewer points, despite playing in 14 more games than Burton.)
Ced Lindsay - what could have been but for his injury.

Level 2b -
Jordan King. Lightning bolt of offense. One season, but what a season. As fun a single season as I can remember.

Level 3 - The other 10. All good players, occasionally very good but not transcendent or consistent enough to make my highest levels.

Agree that Cayo has to make it on the list, likely at expense of Smith for me.

Maybe it's not individual stats but things like team efficiencies as a whole year over year over year? UR should be the easiest to peg bc we always have the same coach, always had the same style of offense and until last year I'd imagine the defense was fairly consistent since we went away from the matchup.

Saying analytics is stupid is not smart IMO. I understand your point that personnel change happens, but if you can look at numbers and they have the ability predict fairly accurately future results based on past performances (year over year over year) you'd be dumb to ignore them.

???? You said "historical performance from the last 5 years". What else would anyone think you were talking about when we are discussing conference rankings. Which is strange no matter what data Kenpom uses considering no one on the team 5 years ago is playing this year. Kind of shows how stupid and meaningless so many of these analytics are. That being said, still strange that anyone would have us 11th if using any type of historical performance from the past 5 years.

VT4700 said:

If they used historical performance the last 5 years, we would certainly be a lot higher than 11th.

2020: 14-4 2nd.
2021: 6-5 8th( and a strange covid 8th because 7-4 was 3rd that year).
2022: 10-8 6th.
2023: 7-11 11th.
2024: 15-3 1st.

This would average us between 5th or 6th if they used historical performance over the last 5 years.

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You don't take the last 5 conference placements and back-out ratings from there, haha. I think a lot of people struggle thinking about calculating preseason ratings for the entirety of NCAA D1 basketball instead of being hyper-focused on an individual team. Very different perspectives and approaches. You can read about some of the details of how kenpom preseason rankings are calculated here https://kenpom.substack.com/p/preseason-ratings-are-live

As far as the guts of my system, I include the last five seasons of team data and two seasons of conference data (using the current season’s membership), plus returning production, transfers, and notable freshmen, along with coaching changes. Independent forecasts are made for offense and defense.

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fan2011 said:

Preseason was 126, final was 89. Not a huge swing. A10 was very, very weak last year. Kenpoms numbers are more about the conference improving than Richmond being worse.

Additionally, it is very hard for computer models to take into account every piece of info for every team. All they have is past on court performance for the players on the team, and historical team performance. When there are so many unknowns on the roster they tend to just use historical performance over the past 5 or so years. That is what is giving us these rankings.

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I feel like there were a few prediction of us being 11th in a weak A10. But can’t remember if those were human or computer.

Have seen that on occasion on the XenForo-based forums I help run. Caching issue that can result from everything not staying in sync properly in a multi-server setup. In my experience, you can't actually do anything with the other account you appear to be logged in as, as clicking anywhere to do anything takes you out of that account, so hopefully no major security issues, but can't say for sure.

brooklyn brownstone said:

I have expectations of winning.

You can misinterpret it as negativity over low preseason wins expectations, couch it any way you want. I don't care. But I expect yearly, to be a program that expects 20 wins as a baseline, with spikes from there. 2/3 wins. Not 55%. 66% baseline.

If we lose to W&M ever, or Bucknell given the current state of their program compared to ours, something is wrong. Even having doubts about winning these games or listing them as potential pitfalls, is something that I refuse to do. If our program can't convince outsiders that we can win these games, either we are terrible at marketing ourselves (we are) or we are sandbagging our program for some unknown reason (to outperform expectations? No idea why they'd go this route publicly.) Or people think we legitimately don't have the talent to do it, which should never be the case, given our program resources.

I think we should win virtually every OOC game, Auburn excepted.

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I've brought this up before. There is plenty of that at Richmond. imo they prefer lower expectations. then can say we outperformed them. even tho if u look at historical Mooney performance in A10 vs. preseason polls, we do not. many of our fans minimize our ceiling and expectations too. so it is not just within the Robins Center although that is the side that carries more weight. We are not allowed to increase expectations with a 20 year dean of the A10 coach - it makes no difference to many even tho we see teams expectations skyrocket in sports based on who a team has as their coach or when they make a hire.

Some teams embrace high expectations - and we only have to look at our crosstown rival to see a close example. That type of thing is embedded in a program or school culture and it is something I have long wished would change. Because I do think it holds us back and bit of a self fulfilling prophecy. I really thought it was changing when we moved to the A10 but it did not. We prefer comfortableness here.

If they used historical performance the last 5 years, we would certainly be a lot higher than 11th.

2020: 14-4 2nd.
2021: 6-5 8th( and a strange covid 8th because 7-4 was 3rd that year).
2022: 10-8 6th.
2023: 7-11 11th.
2024: 15-3 1st.

This would average us between 5th or 6th if they used historical performance over the last 5 years.

spiderstudent17 said:

I would put Kevin Anderson as #1 and Harper #2. Burton is a little too high for me but still top 10. I would put Golden in top 5 given all the all-a10 accolades received and records broken (even if in a stretch of 5 full seasons playing). King at #8 is interesting but am okay with. It’s hard to put someone who was only here for 1 year in the top 10, but the impact he made last year was incredible and he won A10 POY for UR’s 3rd time in history. If King was here all 4 years, I think an argument could be made that he would’ve ended up #1.

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Yeah I would reverse KA and Harper. Hard to put KA who finished as #2 all time scorer in 4 years, and led back to back ncaas incl s16 not #1 imo. Harper was lights out & consistent senior year but KA overall moreso. Love Harp but think he may be elevated due to NBA draft pick status. JOC did acknowledge "best" is subjective how u interpret "best". also may be why JOC has King higher, I'd have him lower. Just 1 year and we ended up losing NIT first game. He was tremendous shot maker, really fun to watch, but there's value in more years imo. If was just 1 year best he'd be up there with his co A10 POY. But at 1 year to me he's not above Gonzo and Lindsay.

I think Ced was top 3 in the A10 in points, assists and steals when he got injured. I think he would have been A10 POY.

Running into similar problems, will log me in as different poster.

brooklyn brownstone said:

paywall, can anyone summarize or list the 20?

thanks.

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JOC list. Although he summarized accomplishments for each one in the article.

Harper
Anderson
Cline
Gilyard
Burton
Golden
Anthony
King
Francis
Garrett
Terry Allen
Gonzalvez
Quinn
Lindsay
Geriot
Shawndre Jones
Bucknor
Kevin Smith
Brothers
Sherod

urmite said:

What was our preseason KenPom rank, and A10 rank last season?

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Preseason was 126, final was 89. Not a huge swing. A10 was very, very weak last year. Kenpoms numbers are more about the conference improving than Richmond being worse.

Additionally, it is very hard for computer models to take into account every piece of info for every team. All they have is past on court performance for the players on the team, and historical team performance. When there are so many unknowns on the roster they tend to just use historical performance over the past 5 or so years. That is what is giving us these rankings.

Ferrum Spider said:

Gonzo was an assasin. As much as I love KA, I don't think he has the same career without Gonzo. Our first NCAA team was far better than our Sweet 16 we just ran into the Sandman and St. Mary's. None of our other PGs had a SG with his range.

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Yep, I'm a big Gonzo proponent. No back down in that guy. The more I think about it, the KA/Gonzo back court really may be my number one all time UR back court.

Also agree about Ced, he could play with anyone - you could drop him into an ACC line up and most teams you are not losing anything, probably gaining. And he was a clutch performer too.

brooklyn brownstone said:

I have expectations of winning.

You can misinterpret it as negativity over low preseason wins expectations, couch it any way you want. I don't care. But I expect yearly, to be a program that expects 20 wins as a baseline, with spikes from there. 2/3 wins. Not 55%. 66% baseline.

If we lose to W&M ever, or Bucknell given the current state of their program compared to ours, something is wrong. Even having doubts about winning these games or listing them as potential pitfalls, is something that I refuse to do. If our program can't convince outsiders that we can win these games, either we are terrible at marketing ourselves (we are) or we are sandbagging our program for some unknown reason (to outperform expectations? No idea why they'd go this route publicly.) Or people think we legitimately don't have the talent to do it, which should never be the case, given our program resources.

I think we should win virtually every OOC game, Auburn excepted.

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Many preseason prediction show a very low away winning percentage for nearly every team…

Certainly doesn’t mean it will happen…