Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Pac-12 strength of schedule rankings

Earlier today, I checked the Pac-12 standings and saw this:

Standings Overall

Colorado - 9-0 1.000
Arizona - 9-1 .900
Stanford - 7-1 .875
Oregon St. - 9-2 .818
Arizona St. - 7-2 .778
Washington - 7-2 .778
California - 8-3 .727
Oregon - 8-3 .727
Washington St. - 6-5 .600
Utah - 5-4 .556
UCLA - 5-4 .545
USC - 4-5 .444

It wasn't right.

So I asked my resident stats dude, IM in OC, to do the rankings based on strength of schedule. Here's what he came up with:

Standings SOS-Rank Overall Pac12 Rank on SOS

Colorado 59.2/331, 9-0, 12
Arizona 67.67/195, 9-1, 9
Stanford 79.2/9, 7-1, 2
Oregon St. 67.8/186, 9-2, 8
Arizona St. 71.1/104, 7-2, 6
Washington 63.9/281, 7-2, 11
California 75.9/26, 8-3, 3
Oregon 64.4/266, 8-3, 10
Washington St. 75.7/29, 6-5, 4
Utah 67.9/184, 5-4, 7
UCLA 75/37, 5-4, 5
USC 81.5/4, 4-5, 1

Here's what it would look like:

1. USC
2. Stanford
3. Cal
4. Washington State
5. UCLA
6. Arizona State
7. Utah
8. Oregon State
9. Arizona
10. Oregon
11. Washington
12. Colorado

That makes more sense.

IM's footnotes:

I used the SOS rankings from Saragin rankings: http://www.rpiratings.com/womrate.php.

The numbers in the bottom chart reflect the team, the SOS/National Ranking, based on SOS only. I then ranked the Pac-12 teams based on their SOS National rankings. USC had the strongest SOS of the Pac-12 teams and Colorado the lowest, at 331.

These rankings were done before tonight's games, thus Stanford's SOS will get stronger after playing Tennessee. Cal's should go down based on playing unranked Dartmouth.

Five teams have played very good SOS's: USC/4 ; Stanford/9; Cal/26; Wash St/29 and UCLA/37. The rest are over 100.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I just want everyone to know this ranking is based on the SOS only. I dont think USC is better than Stanford,(especially after the game I saw tonite by Stanford) nor do I think they are playing better than Cal.

An example of the SOS is to look at the top, middle and bottom teams in the Pac12 by SOS and the records of their opponents thus far this season.

Colorado is now 10-0 but their oppositions record is 32-78, thus they have played the teams with the weakest records and are last of the Pac12 teams for SOS purposes.
ASU is now 8-2 and their oppositions record is 51-54(about .500) and they are ranked in the middle, or 6th in the PAC12.
USC is 4-5 and their oppositions records are 63-32, thus USC has played the teams with the best records.
Just a note that with Stanfords game vs Tennessee on Tuesday night their SOS should be about even with USC's, perhaps slightly ahead.

IM in OC