Weekly Roundup: The Problem With Team Sheets
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The Roundup
I sat down to watch the ACC Championship this morning and I pulled up two resources I like to look at to compare resumes: our HHS Compare Teams page, and the NCAA’s Team Sheets. Both pages told similar stories—NC State had the edge over Florida State because they had the head-to-head advantage and fewer losses to teams ranked No. 50 or higher in the RPI/HHS Rating.
One thing I didn’t expect is how the Team Sheets skewed that perspective even further in favor of NC State, as a result of breaking each team’s opponents into quadrants. The quadrant system, which the HHS Compare Teams feature does not utilize, inherently makes a value judgment about the quality of an opponent beyond their ranking.
This is an issue because the NCAA Selection Committee uses these documents as its source for judging resumes and determining who deserves a tournament bid each March. The way the quadrants are determined has a significant impact on tournament selection and seeding.
For the women’s sheets, the quadrants are very simple— Q1: 1-25, Q2: 26-50, Q3: 51-100, Q4: 101+. This means a meeting with the No. 26 team in the country on the road is judged as less difficult than one against the No. 25 team at home. That is clearly not the case, and the NCAA has put in the time to correct for location in the men’s team sheets:
Another issue with the current quadrant system is that it is incredibly thin for Quad 1 and Quad 2, and wide for Quad 3 and Quad 4. A road game against the No. 101 team in the nation is Quad 2 in the men’s system but Quad 4 in the women’s. These two faults can be particularly damaging for mid-majors making a case for at-large bids. The typical mid-major team plays most of its Quad 1 and Quad 2 opponents in neutral-site tournaments or “buy” games on the road. Beyond those games, their opportunity to face teams in the top 50 is mostly nonexistent in most conferences and games against Quad 3 opponents are scarce as well.
The team sheets also have practically no information about the margin of victory, other than figuring it out by hand based on the scores of each game. Including that information can help add some context when teams are limited to playing mostly Quad 3 and 4 teams. Let’s look at South Dakota’s team sheet, as an example…
If you just give this page a glance, you wouldn’t necessarily see a top-25 team in this resume. However, the HHS Compare Teams tool would tell you that they have an average margin of victory of 25.0, including an impressive 33.7 in conference games.
With all those things in mind, it is important to remember that no system is going to be perfect and it is about finding the right balance. The quadrant system has merits, but it has to be deliberately constructed. That attention to detail is there for the men’s game, it seems like an obvious step to apply it to the women’s game.
What We’re Working On
On Tuesday we are revealing the five finalists for the inaugural Becky Hammon Mid-Major Player of the Year Award presented by Her Hoop Stats, so read up on the 10 semifinalists before the release.
Ben Dull wrote about Oregon State’s duo of Destiny Slocum and Aleah Goodman, and how the tandem has brought the Beavers to new heights.
Derek Helling looked at Becky Hammon Award semifinalist Sara Rhine and her journey from being a dominant high school force to a prolific scorer for Drake.
Mike Bossetti on Ohio State freshman Kierstan Bell, the Buckeyes’ highest-ranked recruit since Kelsey Mitchell, and her immediate impact.
Amari Dryden profiled players from Drake, UNI, Little Rock, and Old Dominion who are playing for their hometown teams for Part 5 of her Hometown Heroines series.
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What We’re Reading
Alicia Jessop wrote for The Athletic about the balance that female broadcasters have to find between work and motherhood. ($)
A unique story about Neil Terry, a manager for Wichita State basketball, who carries on his mother’s legacy as the mayor of his hometown of Geuda Springs, Kan. ($)
All statistics via herhoopstats.com unless otherwise noted and are up to date as of March 8, 2020.