Final Standings and Season Wrap-up

While there are still games to be played in this basketball season, we have now passed the Section 2 playoffs.  What this means is that almost all the student athletes that participated during the season are now spectators like the rest of us.  It also means we can now fully evaluate the Section 2 season with regards to the Sectional Forecast this blog is mainly based.  Before I do that though, a quick word on the two AA finals that happened last night.

In the first game, Albany ended the Suburban's streak of AA championships in impressive style.  Unfortunately for Bethlehem it doesn't appear as though they played their best game, but losing to a team as good as Albany should not be viewed negatively.  Making the finals of any class in any section is a great accomplishment and also, by the way, really hard to do.  After the first game I was wondering if Green Tech could pull off a twin killing in ending the Big 10's AA championship streak as well.  While they fell short, there was a bit of vindication for Troy's decision to play in the AA sectionals instead of their rightful A bracket based on enrollment.  Early in the season I said how they must feel like they are good enough to win it all or they wouldn't have made that decision and they proved it last night.

Overall the season was a good one and though I didn't accomplish all the goals I had set out at the beginning of the year, I can only be happy with how everything turned out.  The forecast did really well and as good as I could expect.  If only I could do that well in the NCAA tournament I'd be a lot better off.  I look forward to seeing how the girls' model responds to another full season's data and 5 more data points from this year's sectionals.  I was a bit worried about even presenting it this year, but considering its flaws due to lack of data I think it can only go up from here.  I've tried to be as transparent as possible about the math and its limitations and again, if you haven't, I encourage you to read the methodology page.  Without further adieu, the final sectional standings:

Boys

Sectional Forecast Rating                      64        9          .877

Sectional Prediction Rating                    62        11        .849
Section 2 Committee                             60        13        .822

Common Opponents Analysis               52        21         .712

Girls

Sectional Prediction Rating                    55        12         .821

Section 2 Committee                             55        12         .821

Common Opponents Analysis               53        14         .791

Sectional Forecast Rating                      50        17         .746

As previously stated, there is another element I’m tracking as well and that is for the two regression models.  Since they base things on how far a team advances, I wanted to see how well it’s doing when teams crossed those thresholds.  In order to advance to the second round, the model would have to give you a score of 0.556.  To get to the semifinals, a 0.778 is needed to be achieved.  The table below shows how those teams did.  For example, there were 17 boys’ teams that had a rating above 0.556, which 16 of them won in the first round. (These ratings were calculated using all the regular season games including those after the brackets were released and none of the sectional games.)

Boys – Sectional Forecast Rating

1^st Round                                             16        1           .941

2^nd Round                                             7          1          .875
3rd Round                                             1          0         1.000
4th Round                                              0          0           n/a

Total                                                     24         2          .923

Boys – Sectional Prediction Rating

1^st Round                                             16        1           .941

2^nd Round                                             7          1          .875

3rd Round                                             2          0         1.000
4th Round                                              0          0           n/a

Total                                                     25         2          .926

Girls – Sectional Forecast Rating

1^st Round                                             10         3          .769

2^nd Round                                             6          0          1.000

3rd Round                                             1          0          1.000
4th Round                                              0          0           n/a

Total                                                     17         3          .850

Girls – Sectional Prediction Rating

1^st Round                                             8          2          .800

2^nd Round                                            7          0          1.000

3rd Round                                             2          0         1.000
4th Round                                              0          0           n/a

Total                                                     17         2          .895

There is one other analysis I’m tracking and that includes the teams the models did not have with necessary rating to advance, but were seeded to advance.  So this is a situation where a team had a 0.500 rating, but was seeded 6^th for instance.  The one caveat here is that, since my seeds aren’t used, I could have teams that played each other even though I have them both advancing.  This analysis counts that as both a win and a loss.

Boys – Sectional Forecast Rating

1^st Round                                             12         3          .800

2^nd Round                                            10         2          .833

3rd Round                                             8          1          .889
4th Round                                              5          0          1.000

Total                                                     35         6          .854

Boys – Sectional Prediction Rating

1^st Round                                             11         5          .688

2^nd Round                                             9          3          .750

3rd Round                                             7          1          .875
4th Round                                              4          1          .800

Total                                                     31         10        .756

Girls – Sectional Forecast Rating

1^st Round                                              5          4          .556

2^nd Round                                             10        4          .714

3rd Round                                             7          2          .778
4th Round                                              1          4          .200

Total                                                     23        14         .622

Girls – Sectional Prediction Rating

1^st Round                                              9          4          .692

2^nd Round                                             5          4          .556
3rd Round                                             4          4          .500

4th Round                                              2          3          .200

Total                                                     20        15        .571

Along with some of the items I mentioned in my last post I also anticipate doing a bit more in terms of analyzing how the model and I'll be posting those items when I get them done.  I'll also be updating the championship pages and the enrollment page for next year when they come out.  Hopefully that will be sooner rather than later.