ESPN Hates Mid Majors

While compiling my numbers I look at the following metrics:

NET - Universal Ranking

BPI - ESPN's Power Ranking

SOR - Strength of Record

SoS - Strength of Schedule

NCSoS - Non-Conference Strength of Schedule

Quad 1 - Quad 4 Record - Records vs Good teams vs Bad teams

And then I will sprinkle in the good old eye test, **adjust for anti-mid major bias**and compare to other bracketologiest.  Palm and Lunardi are both worse than me but I still review their ranking.  Check out http://bracketproject.blogspot.com/ for comparison.

Anyway, back to the rankings.  Usually there's a red flag threshold for each of the metrics.  NCSOS is huge and if you are below 200 you should be concerned if you are on the bubble.  I see Vitale and Bilas complaining about a team every year that doesn't get in and I can guarantee you their NCSOS is terrible.  See Orange, Syracuse.

For BPI, NET, and SOR I usually flag below 60 as a issue.  Of the team I (and most) have in that are above 60 in  ESPN's BPI ranking are the following:

Colorado St - 80
Creighton - 81
Wyoming - 103!
BYU - 85

Of the teams out above 60:

Michigan - 31
Virginia Tech -23 (in a terrible ACC)
Indiana - 38

Their explantion is the following "The College Basketball Power Index (BPI) is a measure of team strength that is meant to be the best predictor of performance going forward. BPI represents how many points above or below average a team is".

By this definition Wyoming wouldn't even make the NIT.  It makes no sense.

As for my statement of **adjust for anti-mid major bias** .  What I mean by that is if given a chance the committee with move teams around a seed or so to match up low seeded Big 5 teams vs high seeded Mid-Majors .  I.e. don't expect 5 seeded Houston to get 12 seeded Loyola or 8 seeded Murray State to get 9 seeded Davidson.  That would guarantee a mid-major to the next round.  Houston is getting North Carolina or Michigan and Murray State will end up with an underseeded 9 like Iowa State or Iowa.