2020 Adjusted Pythagorean Record: Sun Belt

Last week we looked at how Sun Belt teams fared in terms of yards per play. This week, we turn our attention to how the season played out in terms of the Adjusted Pythagorean Record, or APR. For an in-depth look at APR, click here. If you didn’t feel like clicking, here is the Reader’s Digest version. APR looks at how well a team scores and prevents touchdowns. Non-offensive touchdowns, field goals, extra points, and safeties are excluded. The ratio of offensive touchdowns to touchdowns allowed is converted into a winning percentage. Pretty simple actually.

Once again, here are the 2020 Sun Belt standings.

And here are the APR standings with conference rank in offensive touchdowns, touchdowns allowed, and APR in parentheses. This includes conference games only with the championship game excluded. Since teams played a varied number of games (the only scheduled conference game that was not played was between Louisiana-Monroe and Troy), the rankings are on a per game basis, not raw totals. 

Finally, Sun Belt teams are sorted by the difference between their actual number of wins and their expected number of wins according to APR.

I use a game and a half as an arbitrary line of demarcation to determine if a team significantly over or under-performed relative to their APR. By that standard, no team saw their record differ significantly from their APR. 

East Vs West

The Sun Belt is new to divisional play, having split into separate divisions in 2018. In that short time frame, the East has dominated the West, going 39-20 in interdivision play. The East was especially dominant in 2020, posting a 15-4 record against West division opponents, with Louisiana-Lafayette accounting for three of the West's quartet of victories. 

While the East won nearly 80% of interdivision games in 2020, that doesn't do justice to the extent they dominated their rivals in the West. Their four losses all came by a touchdown or less and their total margin of defeat in those four games was just fifteen points. If we look at per game scoring margin, East teams beat West teams by nearly two touchdowns per game on average!

While we missed out on a Sun Belt Championship Game in 2020, the East is 2-0 in the game's brief history. In that span, Louisiana-Lafayette has won the West each season. Perhaps not surprisingly, they are the only West division team with a winning record against the East in that span. If the West is to make up any ground in this nonexistent challenge, the other four teams in the division must start pulling their weight.  

That concludes our ten conference, twenty post slog through the beginning of the offseason. We are a little more than twelve weeks from some hot Week Zero action. Between now and then, posts will be more sporadic (think every two or three weeks instead of every week), but look for some First Half Point Differential posts on the 2020 college football season as well as a few YPP and APR throwbacks. As always, thanks for reading and enjoy your summer.