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Username Post: Next three games        (Topic#25871)
barryw 
Sophomore
Posts: 121

Age: 78
Reg: 05-05-10
01-16-22 08:11 AM - Post#333378    

The next three games(at Princeton, Yale, at Harvard) will basically decide making the Ivy playoffs. Win all three and Penn is definitely in. Two out of three most likely in also. One out of three leaves some hope. Lose all three, wait til next year. I hope the loss to Columbia didn't cost them the playoffs.

 
palestra38 
Professor
Posts: 32685

Reg: 11-21-04
Re: Next three games
01-16-22 09:05 AM - Post#333380    
    In response to barryw

I don't think it's that cut and dried. Anyone can beat anyone this year (although Yale has a chance to pull away). Home court advantage is much less of a factor with no fans. And teams will improve over the course of the season. And then there is Covid. So we'll just have to take it game by game.

 
OldBig5 
Masters Student
Posts: 639

Age: 66
Reg: 02-18-18
Re: Next three games
01-16-22 09:56 AM - Post#333383    
    In response to palestra38

  • palestra38 Said:
I don't think it's that cut and dried. Anyone can beat anyone this year (although Yale has a chance to pull away). Home court advantage is much less of a factor with no fans. And teams will improve over the course of the season. And then there is Covid. So we'll just have to take it game by game.


Agree, important games but they all are and seems most teams are bunched togethe. Wild race to the end I believe.

 
SomeGuy 
Professor
Posts: 6391

Reg: 11-22-04
Re: Next three games
01-16-22 10:48 AM - Post#333389    
    In response to OldBig5

Yes, I don’t think the next three games determine anything, no matter what happens. We need to get to 8 wins this year, I expect. Doesn’t really matter how you get there. If we lose the next three, we’ll be 3-4. Still a road to 8 there.

As for how COVID and injuries impact this season, the guys who killed us for Columbia didn’t play against Harvard yesterday. Have to think Columbia could have won yesterday with Nweke and Harding. With the obvious caveat that Harvard likely would have beaten them regardless with Ledlum.

 
Streamers 
Professor
Posts: 8141
Streamers
Loc: NW Philadelphia
Reg: 11-21-04
01-16-22 01:53 PM - Post#333399    
    In response to SomeGuy

I tend to agree. "targeting" specific games means little when HCA means little and all the teams are pretty bunched up. Just bet all the dogs and hope for 8 Penn wins.

 
10Q 
Professor
Posts: 23199

Loc: Suburban Philly
Reg: 11-21-04
01-16-22 02:20 PM - Post#333402    
    In response to Streamers

My gut tells me that HomeCourt advantage is not going to mean much less this year than other years. Given how sparsely the games are attended, crowd noise doesn’t play that big of a role.

 
SomeGuy 
Professor
Posts: 6391

Reg: 11-22-04
01-16-22 02:27 PM - Post#333403    
    In response to Streamers

On the betting dogs thing, is the evidence playing that out? Home teams in the Ivy so far are 9-3 overall and it looks to me like they are 7-5 against the spread.

You keep saying Penn doesn’t have a home court advantage, but we beat a Brown team that Pomeroy says is 4 points better than us, beat a Cornell team that is even with us by 14, and beat a Dartmouth team that we are a couple of points better than by 10. Now maybe we are better (or they are worse) than the ratings. Or maybe we had three good days. Or maybe, just maybe, home court has to do with some stuff beyond the presence of a crowd.

 
SomeGuy 
Professor
Posts: 6391

Reg: 11-22-04
01-16-22 03:06 PM - Post#333407    
    In response to SomeGuy

The good news is that Princeton is 0-3 at home against the spread. The bad news is Princeton is 3-0 at home.

 
LyleGold 
PhD Student
Posts: 1712

Reg: 11-22-04
01-16-22 03:35 PM - Post#333410    
    In response to Streamers

Say what you will about the entire league being terrible, as one of our crankier posters recently grumbled, but this is the most competitive, balanced Ivy League I’ve ever seen. Even without empty arenas (frankly, they’re practically that way anyhow in recent years) and the Covid Roulette, the league would be like that this year. Even Princeton is lucky as hell not to be 1-2 after barely escaping against two teams we handled well.

It’s not impossible for a three way tie at 8-6 while a couple of 7-7 teams go to the tiebreaker for the last ILT spot. I guess that could leave the bottom three at 6-8.

 
Chip Bayers 
Professor
Posts: 6997
Chip Bayers
Loc: New York
Reg: 11-21-04
01-16-22 03:41 PM - Post#333412    
    In response to SomeGuy

  • SomeGuy Said:
On the betting dogs thing, is the evidence playing that out? Home teams in the Ivy so far are 9-3 overall and it looks to me like they are 7-5 against the spread.

You keep saying Penn doesn’t have a home court advantage, but we beat a Brown team that Pomeroy says is 4 points better than us, beat a Cornell team that is even with us by 14, and beat a Dartmouth team that we are a couple of points better than by 10. Now maybe we are better (or they are worse) than the ratings. Or maybe we had three good days. Or maybe, just maybe, home court has to do with some stuff beyond the presence of a crowd.



You still have to deal with the long bus rides and unfamiliar beds, both of which are more challenging the taller you are.


 
Streamers 
Professor
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Streamers
Loc: NW Philadelphia
Reg: 11-21-04
Next three games
01-16-22 04:15 PM - Post#333417    
    In response to Chip Bayers

Here is why, all other things being equal, I think the dogs will out perform. I absolutely believe HCA does not rate the automatic 3 points anymore. Part of this is the lack of crowds (even small ones help in Ivy gyms) but also because they have largely done away with the weekend road trips.

Also, the bookmakers are pretty formulaic when setting the lines and they do not move much with the small handles. We actually know more than they do about matchups, injuries, etc. Maybe betting ALL the dogs is an exaggeration, but we will see some live ones this year for sure.

Penn should be 4-0. They lost the game in which they were favored the most. It was a predictable overlay given the matchups with the Lion frontcourt fully available. You mentioned PU being a lousy bet so far. Just the kind of thing I am talking about. Also watch the over/unders. Penn Dartmouth went off at 134 because of 2 shot-dependent teams that had recently gone cold. I assumed that would revert which enabled me to make a successful wager.

Using the ‘formula’, Penn should be +7 or 8 at PU. Let’s see how it comes out.

Edited by Streamers on 01-16-22 04:20 PM. Reason for edit: No reason given.

 
SomeGuy 
Professor
Posts: 6391

Reg: 11-22-04
Re: Next three games
01-16-22 06:11 PM - Post#333423    
    In response to Streamers

Admittedly I am not a gambler, so I am only viewing this in a statistical sense (no wagers for me). But does it make sense to say Penn should be 4-0? Because the Brown game was essentially even (and that assumes a 3 point home court advantage — at a neutral site Brown is a 4 point favorite or so against Penn), and the Cornell and Dartmouth games were close enough that the most likely scenario for Penn was 3-1, and 2-2 was more likely than 4-0. Penn managed to lose the one game that it was highly unlikely for them to lose, but overall they’ve ended up about where their profile said they shouldbe after 4 games. Which is how these things work — the metrics give a pretty good sense of where you will end up overall, but don’t do as well game to game.

You cite Princeton being 0-3 at home against the spread so far, but that basically presumes that Princeton’s games are the only ones that matter. I can flip that stat and say that the other 7 schools are 7-2 at home against the spread so far. And by definition home teams should be around even against the spread, right?

I do agree that Dartmouth and Penn hitting the over was a good guess. Penn can be a little tricky on this because of a reduction in pace as the season has gone on. But Penn’s offense seems to play regardless of opponent (the odd exception being Columbia, by far the worst defense they have played all year). So it was a reasonable guess that Penn would score reasonably efficiently even against a decent Dartmouth defense, and that Dartmouth would score reasonably efficiently against Penn’s defense which is, regrettably, not very good.

 
palestra38 
Professor
Posts: 32685

Reg: 11-21-04
Re: Next three games
01-16-22 06:29 PM - Post#333425    
    In response to SomeGuy

Your arguments are wholly circular. OK, home teams are winning most of the games so far in the Ivies, but 7 of the home games are Penn and Princeton, Cornell beat Dartmouth in its only home game, Dartmouth beat Brown in its only home game, Harvard beat Columbia in its only home game, and Yale beat Cornell in its only home game. So in general, it is fair to say that the better team has been winning irrespective of home and away. Forget the ratings--they cannot accurately adjust to the year off, the lack of any continuity from prior years and the lopsided disparity of quality of OOC schedules. Penn will be fine, because we have a good mix of athletes who can apply pressure and good shooters. Our weakness due to injury is in the middle, but Mosh has been surprisingly good. I will be surprised and disapppointed if Penn does not make the tournament whatever our ranking may be.

 
Streamers 
Professor
Posts: 8141
Streamers
Loc: NW Philadelphia
Reg: 11-21-04
Re: Next three games
01-16-22 07:07 PM - Post#333427    
    In response to SomeGuy

  • SomeGuy Said:
But does it make sense to say Penn should be 4-0?


What I should have said was given that they won the other 3 games, they should have beaten Columbia to go 4-0 during the ‘easy’ part of the schedule. I still, like most of us, believe 8-6 locks you into the tournament. Maybe 7-7 gets there through the back door. Where might 5 more wins come from? Splits with HYP? revenge at Columbia?, and then they would need to steal one as a dog on the road. Tomorrow would go a long way toward making up for the Columbia loss.



 
SomeGuy 
Professor
Posts: 6391

Reg: 11-22-04
Re: Next three games
01-16-22 07:14 PM - Post#333430    
    In response to palestra38

Oh, I think you are reading something into my argument that isn’t there. I think Penn is in very good position just like you do. I think we’ll win some road games this year too, and I think (hope) we’ll finish top 4. I didn’t intend any of what I said to suggest otherwise — just arguing about the home dog stuff.

In regards to circularity, by throwing out the ratings you reduce the debate to nothing but competing declarations of who is the better team. I guess we’ll find out more as teams play return games. I think we will see a lot of splits this year because the spread between the teams isn’t what it usually is.

The three road wins so far are Columbia over Penn, Harvard over Columbia, and Brown over Harvard. One true upset (Penn’s loss), and two where the better team seemingly (I have to say seemingly because, if you’re not accepting the rankings as indicative, I’m not sure how we are evaluating who is the better team, so I have no idea if you agree with me) won (Harvard’s games). But we already have two games where the lower ranked team was at home and won — Penn over Brown, Dartmouth over Brown. Still a small sample size, but so far not many upsets, and not much impact on score.

 
palestra38 
Professor
Posts: 32685

Reg: 11-21-04
Re: Next three games
01-16-22 07:17 PM - Post#333431    
    In response to SomeGuy

Could just be that Brown isn't very good

 
SomeGuy 
Professor
Posts: 6391

Reg: 11-22-04
Re: Next three games
01-16-22 07:24 PM - Post#333432    
    In response to palestra38

I continue to disagree on where our defensive weakness is. Mosh has been good defensively—the perimeter has been the problem. Obviously the rebounding killed us against Columbia, and that is part of defense, but I think that was a tactical failing as opposed to a physical one. We were hedging Harding’s guy to help out (and that had as much to do with Turner blowing by our guards over and over as anything), and that left him to rebound like crazy. We needed to stick on him and let guys defend one on one, and I suspect you will see that at Columbia.

Nweke’s scoring against us was deceptive—despite the high shooting percentage, his high number of turnovers actually made it an inefficient game for him. He had a sub 100 ORAT against us. Mosh held up fine there.

Mosh has been very good defensively in three Ivy games, and played well enough in the fourth (Columbia). We are the only team that hasn’t taken advantage of Columbia’s guards and turned them over (and scored) on them. That was where we should have had an advantage and should have won that game.

 
SomeGuy 
Professor
Posts: 6391

Reg: 11-22-04
Re: Next three games
01-16-22 07:35 PM - Post#333433    
    In response to palestra38

I certainly haven’t seen enough to conclude that Brown isn’t good. But getting back to circularity, I guess if you presume that out of conference performance doesn’t matter, and you presume that home court doesn’t mean anything, then you could decide that Brown isn’t very good. However, if they really are about 165 in the country, and home court means something, the likely record for them would be 2-2 or 1-3. I guess I’d put it this way — who did you think looked the best of our opponents so far? Seemed pretty clear to me that it was Brown.

The one thing I really like about your perspective is that you seem to be suggesting that Harvard is the 7th best team in the league. I don’t think that is anywhere close to true, but I certainly like the idea.

 
palestra38 
Professor
Posts: 32685

Reg: 11-21-04
Re: Next three games
01-16-22 07:56 PM - Post#333434    
    In response to SomeGuy

Depends on whom the Crimson have available to play. But outside of Kirkwood, it's pretty much all untested talent. So it's possible but doubtful that they suck. But I put no stock at all in Penn's rating because of that ridiculous schedule they took on for money. We have a core that is really solid, now that Smith has shown he is a player. If we can win when Dingle is a non-factor, that is a good sign.

 
UPIA1968 
PhD Student
Posts: 1117
UPIA1968
Loc: Cornwall, PA
Reg: 11-20-06
Re: Next three games
01-17-22 10:57 AM - Post#333461    
    In response to SomeGuy

The Kenpom stats have Penn at 295 in the country at creating turnovers. No wonder the team didn't take advantage of Columbia's guards.

 
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