Benchmarking the two seasons of 2014

[pelagius]

So, first this is post is not meant to criticize Christian Stewart (I liked him ... the Ryan Hancock of the 21st century). But let's benchmark BYU's two seasons of 2014: pre-Taysom Hill (I'll count the Utah St. game with this group although we could throw it out completely just for the purpose of benchmarking) and post-Taysom Hill injury.

So I'll do a pure-MOV model to benchmark (this is most like the Sagarin predictor except I avoid doing the weird things Sagarin does to the data). First, BYU overall in this model:

Rank  Team                    Rating   W   L
1     Alabama                101.016  11   1
2     TCU                    100.164  10   1
3     Mississippi             98.006   9   3
4     Georgia                 98.003   9   3
5     Baylor                  96.976  10   1
6     Oregon                  96.546  11   1
7     Mississippi St          95.994  10   2
8     Auburn                  95.830   8   4
9     Oklahoma                95.103   8   3
10    Michigan St             94.650  10   2
...
34    Boise St                80.821  10   2
35    Utah                    80.388   8   4
...
41    Texas                   78.903   6   6
...
47    Virginia                76.907   5   7
...
53    Brigham Young           74.521   8   4
54    California              74.433   5   7
...
64    Central Florida         71.795   8   3
65    Utah St                 71.684   9   4
...
71    Houston                 69.420   7   4
...
76    Nevada                  68.593   7   5
...
99    Middle Tennessee St     63.385   6   6
...
153   Connecticut             51.301   2   9
...
166   UNLV                    48.518   3  10
...
253   Savannah St              7.496   0  12

So overall, we benchmark BYU's quality as 53; in the Bronco era the historical average is about 30. However, 50 seems to be the low end of the Bronco distribution. Both 2010 and 2005 were teams with overall quality slightly worse than 50.



Comparing the two seasons. Rank BYU separately for UCONN - Utah St and UCF - Cal:

32    Brigham Young           81.956   4   1
74    Brigham Young2          69.234   4   3

If you throw out the Utah St game you get the following for the Taysom led team:

16    Brigham Young           89.422   4   0

So the post-Taysom team is benchmarked at 74 (roughly the same quality as Washington St. and Oregon St.). Remember, this is average quality over those post-Taysom games and I certainly think the Christian Stewart team that beat Cal is much better than the team in those early games (probably around 40-50 in quality now).

Some notes; the last season BYU benchmarked using an MOV model at 70 or worse was 2003 (so we don't so a 70+ team for BYU very often). Also, overall the team is between 13-20 points per game better pre-Taysom injury. Of course, that's unfair to Christian Stewart because it's the average quality of the team for his games and its coidentified with all the other injuries.


Also, benchmarking BYU's toughest games

1. Boise St: ranked 34 but losing on the road is like losing to a 30ish team on a neutral field.

2. Texas: ranked 41 but that's like beating a low 30s team on a neutral field (of course, one can argue that Texas' quality was very low at the point in the season).

3. Cal: ranked 54 but that's like beating a mid 40s team on a neutral field.

4. Central Florida: rank 64, but on the road so like losing to mid 50s team on a neutral field

5. Virginia; rank 47 but since it was at home it's like beating an mid to upper 50s team on a neutral field.