Monday, March 18, 2024

March Madness Intermission: Fewest NCAA Tournament Wins

We are taking a short break from our normal offseason posts to celebrate our nation's seminal event, the NCAA Tournament. This week, we'll have a few posts on statistical minutia that may help you fill out your tournament bracket or may just give you an opportunity to impress your friends and neighbors with tournament facts. First up, we are going to look at current power conference teams with the fewest NCAA tournament wins since the field expanded in 1985. Some of them might even be in the field this year.

Before we get started, we need to define what we mean by 'Power Conference'. For this exercise, we are going to include teams that are currently members of the ACC, Big East, Big 10, Big 12, Pac-12, and SEC. The Atlantic 10 and American Athletic Conference have both been pseudo power conferences at different points in their existence, but many of the best teams from those league's have been gobbled up by the other six conferences. Oh, and one other thing. We are only going to consider victories in the Round of 64 and beyond. No matter how they are branded, First Four games, are play-in games and if you lose in those, did you even make the real tournament? 

Let's begin with current power conference teams that have won exactly four tournament games since the field expanded. 
Three SEC schools have won just four tournament games in the past forty years. Ironically, Georgia has been coached by four men in that span with a Final Four appearance. Hugh Durham took Georgia to the Final Four two seasons before the field expanded (1983), but only managed a single tournament win at Georgia after that run to the national semifinal. Tubby Smith took Georgia on their deepest run in the expanded field in 1996 before he won a national title two years later at Kentucky. Jim Harrick, a national title winning coach at UCLA, guided Georgia to two tournaments, but won just a single game before leaving the school in disgrace. Finally, former Marquette and Indiana coach Tom Crean was never able to get Georgia to the tournament during his tenure. Ole Miss was on the business end of Bryce Drew's miracle shot in 1998, but Rod Barnes did win three tournament games at the school, including two in 2001 to get them to the Sweet 16. Andy Kennedy technically won two games during his tenure in Oxford, but one came in the First Four. South Carolina has only won four tournament games since the field expanded, but they clustered those wins in perfect sequence on the way to the Final Four in 2017. The other power conference team to be stuck on four wins is Virginia Tech. The Hokies made tourney appearances as members of the Metro and later Atlantic 10 before joining the ACC. A perpetual bubble team under Seth Greenberg, the Hokies made their deepest run under Buzz Williams in 2019.

What about teams that have won exactly three tournament games since the field expanded?
Like the SEC with four-win teams, one league (the Pac-12) is overrepresented with three-win teams. Colorado has not advanced past the second round since the field expanded in 1985. Oregon State went 26 years between tournament appearances, but consolidated all their wins in one season during their Elite 8 run in 2021. Washington State has been coached by two men who found greater success once they left Pullman (Kelvin Sampson and Tony Bennett) and have not advanced past the Sweet 16 in the expanded tournament field. TCU is the only other power conference team to win exactly three tournament games since the field expanded. The Horned Frogs have bounced around, playing in the Southwest Conference, WAC, Conference USA, and Mountain West, before finding a home in the Big 12. Along the way, they have never advanced past the second round. 

There is only one team that has won exactly two NCAA Tournament games since 1985. 
Northwestern did not even qualify for their first NCAA Tournament until 2017. As the old adage goes, you can't be upset in the first round if you never make the tournament. Give the Wildcats credit, their first round win rate is 100% as they have won their opener in both tourney appearances. 

We are getting close to the bottom. Which teams have won exactly one game since the field expanded? 
The Rutgers basketball program has been nearly as destitute, perhaps more so, than their football team. The Scarlet Knights went three decades between tournament appearances. They won their first tournament game in nearly 40 years in 2021 and played a great second round game in nearly upsetting a Final Four bound Houston team. UCF made four tournament appearances under Kirk Speraw in the 90s and early 2000s when they were members of the TAAC/Atlantic Sun. Those were low-major leagues, so the Knights received very low seeds (never higher than 14). They returned to the tournament in 2019 under Johnny Dawkins, won their first ever tournament game, and gave top-seeded Duke a run for their money in the second round. 

And finally, let's hear it for the only power conference team to have not won a tournament game since the field expanded. 
In fact, the Cornhuskers have never won a tournament game in their entire history. They did not make the NCAA field until 1986, and despite four consecutive appearances between 1991 and 1994, including a three seed in 1991, failed to win a single tournament game. Is this the year? Can Nebraska finally garner their first tournament victory? If so, it might be time to build a state of Fred Hoiberg in Lincoln. 

Thursday, March 14, 2024

2023 Adjusted Pythagorean Record: Conference USA

Last week we looked at how Conference USA 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 2023 Conference USA 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.
Finally, Conference USA 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 a somewhat arbitrary standard to determine whether or not a team's actual conference record differed significantly from their APR. By that standard, New Mexico State and Liberty overachieved relative to their APR. The Aggies and Flames also overachieved relative to their YPP numbers and we went over some reasons for that last week. 

First Timers
The 2023 Conference USA Championship Game was a matchup of two teams (Liberty and New Mexico State) making their first ever conference championship game appearance. It also marked the first year in Conference USA for each school as both the Flames and Aggies had been competing on the independent circuit for the previous few seasons. How often has an FBS conference title game matched up two teams making their first title game appearance? Glad you asked. Lets take a stroll down memory lane beginning with the birth of the conference title game in the 1990s. 
Only four conferences held title games in the 90s, so the first championship games held by the SEC (1992), Big 12 (1996), WAC (1996), and MAC (1997) featured first time participants. The first three SEC Championship Games were all clashes between Florida and Alabama and the Gators did not relinquish their stranglehold on the SEC East until 1997. The Big 12 was a little more fluid at the top of the league following Tom Osborne's retirement after the 1997 season. Finally, the WAC only staged a title game for three seasons before the strongest members broke away and formed their own conference (the Mountain West). In the 2000s, the ACC and Conference USA got into the conference championship business. 
The first two ACC Championship Games featured teams making their first conference title game appearances, but the league has not had a pair of newbies in the title game since. The first two Conference USA Championship Games also featured teams making their first conference title game appearances. And finally, the MAC, after years of domination by Marshall and Toledo in their respective divisions, became the egalitarian league we all know and love when its title games featured a pair of greenhorns in four our of six seasons between 2003 and 2008. The 2010s brought even more leagues to the conference title table with all ten FBS conferences eventually staging one. 
The Big 10 and Pac-12 both held their inaugural title games in 2011, but have not featured two neophytes in the title game since. The American Athletic Conference began holding a conference championship game in 2015, but many of their participants had already played in conference title games in other leagues. It was not until 2019 that their title game featured two teams making their title game debuts. Conference USA's membership was in flux for much of the decade and they saw three consecutive championship games feature teams making their first title game appearance. The Mountain West played their first conference title game in 2013 and two of their first three games saw both participants make their title game debuts. Finally, the Sun Belt became the final FBS conference to host a championship game in 2018. And now we come to the current decade. 
The 2022 Sun Belt Championship Game featured a pair of teams making their conference title game debuts even thought Coastal Carolina technically won the Sun Belt East in the pandemic impacted 2020 season. The championship game was canceled that season, so the Chanticleers never got to play in the title game. That Sun Belt clash and the most recent Conference USA Championship Game are the only two title games this decade to feature title games newcomers and the odds of another all newbie title game continue to dwindle each season. 

Here are the potential all-newbie combinations in each championship game beginning with the Power Four. 
In the ACC, NC State and Syracuse are the only longtime members that have never played in a championship game. They are joined by newcomer Cal who never qualified for the Pac-12 Championship Game. The Big 10 has a quintet of teams that have never played in a conference title game, but with the league jettisoning divisions, a combination of two of these five teams playing in the conference title game in the same season seems quite remote. With traditional powers Oklahoma and Texas departing for the SEC, there is a bit of a power vacuum in the Big 12. This makes it the most likely power conference to stage a championship game where both participants are first timers. Like the Big 10, the SEC is also doing away with divisions, making the odds of an all-first timer title game slim to none. 

Finally, here are the potential all-newbie combinations for each Group of Five title game. 
Conference USA and the Sun Belt have by far the best odds of hosting the next all-first timer title game. Five of ten current Conference USA members have never played in a conference title game while eight of fourteen Sun Belt members have been shut out of the game. The Sun Belt is the only FBS conference to maintain divisions though, so that may make things a little more difficult. Eleven of twelve Mountain West members have played in a conference title game (Colorado State and New Mexico faced off in the second ever WAC Championship Game), so until they officially merge with or add the remaining two members of the Pac-12 (Oregon State and Washington State), it is not possible for that league to have two first time championship game participants. The MAC will not be able to host an all-first timers title game until 2025 at the earliest when Massachusetts rejoins the league

I hope you enjoyed the 2023 Conference USA Championship Game. While it was historic in that it clinched an unbeaten regular season for Liberty and sent them to a New Year's Six Bowl, it also likely marked one of the last times a conference title game will feature two schools with no experience in title games. 

Thursday, March 07, 2024

2023 Yards Per Play: Conference USA

After six weeks of Power Five reviews, we shift back to the Group of Five and examine Conference USA.

Here are the 2023 Conference USA standings. 
So we know what each team achieved, but how did they perform? To answer that, here are the Yards Per Play (YPP), Yards Per Play Allowed (YPA) and Net Yards Per Play (Net) numbers for each Conference USA team. This includes conference play only, with the championship game not included. The teams are sorted by Net YPP with conference rank in parentheses.
College football teams play either eight or nine conference games. Consequently, their record in such a small sample may not be indicative of their quality of play. A few fortuitous bounces here or there can be the difference between another ho-hum campaign or a special season. Randomness and other factors outside of our perception play a role in determining the standings. It would be fantastic if college football teams played 100 or even 1000 games. Then we could have a better idea about which teams were really the best. Alas, players would miss too much class time, their bodies would be battered beyond recognition, and I would never leave the couch. As it is, we have to make do with the handful of games teams do play. In those games, we can learn a lot from a team’s YPP. Since 2005, I have collected YPP data for every conference. I use conference games only because teams play such divergent non-conference schedules and the teams within a conference tend to be of similar quality. By running a regression analysis between a team’s Net YPP (the difference between their Yards Per Play and Yards Per Play Allowed) and their conference winning percentage, we can see if Net YPP is a decent predictor of a team’s record. Spoiler alert. It is. For the statistically inclined, the correlation coefficient between a team’s Net YPP in conference play and their conference record is around .66. Since Net YPP is a solid predictor of a team’s conference record, we can use it to identify which teams had a significant disparity between their conference record as predicted by Net YPP and their actual conference record. I used a difference of .200 between predicted and actual winning percentage as the threshold for ‘significant’. Why .200? It is a little arbitrary, but .200 corresponds to a difference of 1.6 games over an eight game conference schedule and 1.8 games over a nine game one. Over or under-performing by more than a game and a half in a small sample seems significant to me. In the 2023 season, which teams in Conference USA met this threshold? Here are Conference USA teams sorted by performance over what would be expected from their Net YPP numbers.
New Mexico State and Liberty significantly exceeded their expected record based on YPP while Middle Tennessee and UTEP significantly underachieved relative to their YPP numbers. The Aggies and Flames combined for a 15-1 conference record (14-0 against the rest of the league), including a perfect 5-0 mark in one-score conference games. Meanwhile, the Blue Raiders and Miners combined to finish 3-6 in one-score conference games. Both teams also finished with a negative turnover margin in league play, although neither was exceptionally poor in that regard. 

A Dearth of Ranked Teams
Thanks to a confluence of factors in the 2023 bowl season (a blowout loss by Liberty, an upset loss by SMU, and coaching upheaval at Tulane and James Madison), only two Group of Five teams finished the season ranked in the AP Poll. And those two teams (SMU and Liberty) were historically low (22nd and 25th respectively). Since college football officially separated power conference teams from non-power conference teams in 1998 (first BCS versus non-BCS and later Power Five versus Group of Five), 2023 represented the second fewest number of ranked non-powers. 
2023 was tied with five other seasons behind 2005 for the fewest number of non-power teams represented in the final AP Poll. So 2023 was not a great year for non-power teams, but was it really that bad?

Another way to look at representation in the AP Poll besides the total number of ranked teams is to award what I dub 'Poll Points' for each ranking spot. A team that finishes first earns 25 Poll Points, second 24, third 23, and so on, until the team ranked 25th earns just a solitary Poll Point. Using that methodology, 2023 was by far the worst season for non-powers in the BCS/CFP era.
Ranked non-powers accumulated just five Poll Points in 2023 which demolished the previous low of thirteen set in 2001 when Louisville, Toledo, and BYU finished the year ranked 17th, 23rd, and 25th respectively. And speaking of teams like Louisville and BYU, that segues nicely into the main reason there was a dearth of ranked non-powers in 2023. The best non-powers have ascended into power conferences. 

In the 26 seasons between 1998 and 2023, there were 97 instances where teams from a non-power conference found there way into the final AP Poll. That is a little less than four per season. 36 (roughly 37 percent) of those appearances in the final AP Poll are no longer in non-power conferences. 
Led by TCU and Utah in the early 2010's, the best of the best from non-power conferences with perhaps one notable exception (Boise State) have migrated to power conferences. If we look at Poll Points, the results are even more significant. Those 97 ranked teams produced 878 total Poll Points. 406 of those points (46 percent) are now in power conferences. The non-power conferences will have a token seat at the table in the new College Football Playoff format, but I expect this trend of few ranked non-powers to continue. The non-powers that have built a brand this century are almost all in power conferences, so the benefit of the doubt will not be given to upstarts. Non-powers will have to post fantastic records to get a sniff of the lower reaches of the AP Poll. 

Thursday, February 29, 2024

2023 Adjusted Pythagorean Record: Big 12

Before we get started, Happy Leap Day to all who celebrate. Remember, as Leap Day William taught us, nothing that happens on this day counts! Last week we looked at how Big 12 teams fared in terms of yards per play.his 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 2023 Big 12 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.
Finally, Big 12 teams are sorted by the difference between their actual number of wins and their expected number of wins according to APR.
Oklahoma State significantly exceeded their expected APR while TCU and UCF significantly underachieved relative to their APR. Those same three teams also significantly overachieved (Oklahoma State) and underachieved (TCU and UCF) based on their expected record according to YPP and we went over some reasons for that last week. No need to rehash those reasons.  

We Like Lance, A Lot
In 2022, Kansas qualified for a bowl game for the first time since the waning days of the George W. Bush administration (2008). Though they ended the year by losing seven of eight games, including the Liberty Bowl, it was a phenomenal season for a team that won a grand total of eight conference games between 2009 and 2021. Expectations were muted heading into 2023, with the Jayhawks picked to finish ninth in the the new look Big 12 by the preseason periodicals. Technically, the Jayhawks only slightly exceeded those modest forecasts, finishing tied for seventh with a 5-4 league record. However, the Jayhawks finished unbeaten in the non-conference and won their bowl game against UNLV to finish 9-4. That record earned them a final ranking in the lower reaches of the AP Poll (23rd) and in the process meant head coach Lance Leipold has now guided two different schools to ranked finishes in the AP Poll. His final team at Buffalo (2020) also finished ranked. In fairness that team did not play any regular season non-conference games and thus probably deserves an asterisk of some kind, but leading Buffalo to an unbeaten regular season is still impressive in the face of a global pandemic. Is this a unique achievement? I did some research and actually this is more common than you might think. 
Among coaches that were active in 2023, 26 had guided at least two different FBS programs to ranked finishes. Those coaches are listed alphabetically in the table below. 
As usual, Nick Saban is in a class (nearly) by himself, having led three different schools to ranked finishes. That achievement looks a little less impressive when you consider that Butch Jones and Steve Sarkisian have done the same. Brian Kelly has also guided three different schools to ranked finishes and while he is a notch below Saban, he is a notch (or two) above Jones and Sarkisian. 

So roughly 20% of active FBS coaches have led multiple schools to ranked finishes. Not as impressive as I initially thought. However, Leipold has guided two schools that could charitably be described as non-traditional powers to ranked finishes. How can we quantify the difficulty in leading schools like Buffalo and Kansas to ranked finishes versus Alabama and Texas? You could probably do an in-depth historical analysis of each school, but I decided on a much simpler measure. For the 26 coaches that led two different schools to ranked finishes, I looked at their first ranked finish at each school and calculated the amount of time since that school's most recent ranked finish. Using Leipold as an example, prior to 2023, Kansas had last finished ranked in 2007, a span of 16 years. Meanwhile Buffalo had never finished ranked in their history prior to their ranked finish in 2020. Since Buffalo had never finished ranked prior to Leipold's arrival, that speaks to the rarity of his accomplishment, but also presented a problem for attempting to quantify that accomplishment. The Bulls have not been playing at the FBS level for a century like other schools. They rejoined FBS in 1999 after playing at the highest level for about a decade in the 1960s. I decided to arbitrarily calculate the amount of time for schools that had never previously been ranked as 25 years. Even if they had fielded a team for longer than that, the landscape of college football and the game itself has changed significantly in the 21st century. Those 26 coaches are listed once again, but this time they are sorted by the average amount of time between their first ranked finish at each school and the schools' most recent ranked finish prior to their arrival. Higher is better, or at least more impressive. 
Leipold shines when he adjust for each school's history. He finishes tied for second with PJ Fleck behind James Franklin. Vanderbilt went 64 years between ranked finishes prior to Franklin's arrival and he had the Commodores ranked in back to back seasons (2012 and 2013). Obviously, if Vanderbilt had never finished ranked in their history, the 25 year rule would apply and illogically derate his accomplishment. However, again the 25 year rule is far from perfect, but is intended to put all mid-majors and programs that have recently moved to FBS on a more level playing field. At the other end of the spectrum from Leipold is Lincoln Riley who inherited a stacked program from Bob Stoops at Oklahoma and engineered a quick turnaround after a momentary lull under Clay Helton at Southern Cal. 

Thursday, February 22, 2024

2023 Yards Per Play: Big 12

Before we get started this week, I wanted to take a moment to mention the passing of legendary college basketball coach Lefty Driesell. For the unfamiliar, Lefty was a favorite coach of mine and the inspiration for both my old AIM screen name and the address of this blog. Obviously, as a naive 23 year old, SEO optimization did not enter my mind. Before he retired, I was able to see Lefty coach in person at the Charlotte Coliseum in December 2001. Hard to believe that was nearly a quarter century ago, but time keeps rolling along. But enough about me, lets get to why you came here in the first place, a look back the Big 12. 

Here are the 2023 Big 12 standings.
So we know what each team achieved, but how did they perform? To answer that, here are the Yards Per Play (YPP), Yards Per Play Allowed (YPA) and Net Yards Per Play (Net) numbers for each Big 12 team. This includes conference play only, with the championship game not included. The teams are sorted by Net YPP with conference rank in parentheses.
College football teams play either eight or nine conference games. Consequently, their record in such a small sample may not be indicative of their quality of play. A few fortuitous bounces here or there can be the difference between another ho-hum campaign or a special season. Randomness and other factors outside of our perception play a role in determining the standings. It would be fantastic if college football teams played 100 or even 1000 games. Then we could have a better idea about which teams were really the best. Alas, players would miss too much class time, their bodies would be battered beyond recognition, and I would never leave the couch. As it is, we have to make do with the handful of games teams do play. In those games, we can learn a lot from a team’s YPP. Since 2005, I have collected YPP data for every conference. I use conference games only because teams play such divergent non-conference schedules and the teams within a conference tend to be of similar quality. By running a regression analysis between a team’s Net YPP (the difference between their Yards Per Play and Yards Per Play Allowed) and their conference winning percentage, we can see if Net YPP is a decent predictor of a team’s record. Spoiler alert. It is. For the statistically inclined, the correlation coefficient between a team’s Net YPP in conference play and their conference record is around .66. Since Net YPP is a solid predictor of a team’s conference record, we can use it to identify which teams had a significant disparity between their conference record as predicted by Net YPP and their actual conference record. I used a difference of .200 between predicted and actual winning percentage as the threshold for ‘significant’. Why .200? It is a little arbitrary, but .200 corresponds to a difference of 1.6 games over an eight game conference schedule and 1.8 games over a nine game one. Over or under-performing by more than a game and a half in a small sample seems significant to me. In the 2023 season, which teams in the Big 12 met this threshold? Here are Big 12 teams sorted by performance over what would be expected from their Net YPP numbers.
Conference championship game participant Oklahoma State (more on them later) significantly exceeded their expected record based on YPP while TCU and UCF underachieved relative to their YPP numbers. Oklahoma State was left for dead after a lackluster non-conference performance that included a close win at Arizona State and a blowout home loss to South Alabama. After a close loss to Iowa State to open conference play, it seemed like Mike Gundy might finally be on his way out in Stillwater. But the Cowboys won their next five conference games (with three coming by one-score) before getting waxed by UCF. At 5-2 and holding the tiebreaker over Oklahoma thanks to their head to head win in Bedlam, the Cowboys pulled off consecutive second half comebacks against Houston (trailed by 14 in the second quarter) and BYU (trailed by 18 at the half) to qualify for the Big 12 Championship Game. The Cowboys finished 4-1 in one-score conference games and had a decent turnover margin in Big 12 play (+4). Close games pushed the Cowboys to the pinnacle of the Big 12, but they kept TCU and UCF near the bottom of the league standings. One season after holding a horseshoe and four-leaf clover, TCU's good fortune flipped. The Horned Frogs finished 0-3 in one-score conference games (0-4 overall thanks to their opening loss to Colorado) and had the worst in-conference turnover margin in the Big 12 (-8). This kept them home for the holidays one season after they finished as the national runner up. UCF also fared poorly in one-score conference games, posting a 1-3 mark in such games. Their close game losses were especially tight, with two of the defeats coming by a single point and another coming by two points. 

Underwater in Championship Games
Doing away with divisions is probably a good thing for college football. I say probably because a team's geographic location should not arbitrarily make their path to the conference title game easier or nigh impossible (see the Big 10 for instance). However, doing away with divisions also ensures teams like Purdue, Duke, or Wake Forest will not be making conference title appearances for a very long time. Conferences obviously want their best teams to qualify for the championship game because it usually means a better game, more ticket sales, a higher television rating, and beginning in 2024, an opportunity to secure multiple CFP bids. But I'm an egalitarian (and a Wake Forest fan) so I think it rules when Purdue, Duke, or Wake randomly shows up on Championship Saturday. But I'm not here to argue for or against divisions. No, I'm here to point out a statistical anomaly. 

With unbalanced divisions, its easier for a (statistically) mediocre or bad team to qualify for the conference championship game. With an easy schedule, a few lucky bounces, a tiebreaker, and a small sample size (eight or nine game league schedule) a team that is statistically weak can finish ahead of six or seven other teams in a division. But without divisions, that same team would need to finish ahead of twice as many teams to qualify for the conference championship game. And that is exactly what Oklahoma State did in 2023. The Cowboys finished with a Net YPP of -0.27 and became just the second team to qualify for a conference championship game in a league without divisions with a negative Net YPP. The other team to do so also played in the Big 12. 
Division-less conferences have not been around for very long. By my count there have been 19 such seasons (see below), but the Big 10 and SEC are nixing divisions in 2024, meaning all the power conferences will be free-for-alls. The MAC also announced they will not have divisions in 2024, leaving the Sun Belt as the lone holdout. As leagues expand and divisions go away, I expect we will see fewer and fewer teams get to their respective conference title games with negative Net YPPs. Cherish Oklahoma State's 2023 accomplishment for its rarity!

Thursday, February 15, 2024

2023 Adjusted Pythagorean Record: Big 10

Last week we looked at how Big 10 teams fared in terms of yards per play.his 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 2023 Big 10 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.
Finally, Big 10 teams are sorted by the difference between their actual number of wins and their expected number of wins according to APR.
Using a game and a half as the standard for significant over or underachievement, no Big 10 team saw their actual record differ significantly from their APR. 

Losing Teams in Bowl Games
As the bowl schedule has expanded in recent years, more losing teams are finding their way into postseason games. Some may lament the mediocrity (or worse) of their inclusion and hearken back to the days of exclusivity in bowl games. Personally, I don't mind more college football (we don't have any games for roughly eight months out of the year), but to each his own. I'm not here to try and convince you a five win team playing in Detroit the day after Christmas is good (or bad). On the contrary, I want to see if there is any angle where we can make some extra money to pay off those holiday bills. 

In the BCS/College Football Playoff Era, nineteen teams have participated in a bowl game despite owning a losing record entering the game. Those teams have ranged from champions of brand new conferences (North Texas in 2001), to also-rans from the SEC (Mississippi State in 2016), to a glut of teams willing to play postseason exhibitions in a global pandemic. How have these teams fared both straight up and against the spread? Read on to find out!
Those nineteen teams finished with a 10-9 straight up record. Basically, they have been a coin flip to win outright in their bowl games. However, in those nineteen games, they entered as betting underdogs thirteen times meaning we would not have expected them to finish with a winning record. Nineteen games is a small sample, but these losing teams have overachieved at least relative to the moneyline. In addition, motivation does not appear to be an issue for these losing teams. They have won five of the six games in which they entered as favorites. Alas, there does not appear to be a solid ATS trend to take away from this examination. Their cumulative ATS record has also amounted to a coin flip with the teams combing for a 9-10 mark (3-3 ATS as a favorite and 6-7 ATS as an underdog). 

Unfortunately, there has not been an overarching trend when it comes to betting on or against losing teams in bowl games. My advice is to handicap their games as you would any bowl team. Focus on how they played in the regular season, keep tabs on their opt outs and coaching changes, and don't be afraid to back them on the moneyline if they enter as underdogs. 

Thursday, February 08, 2024

2023 Yards Per Play: Big 10

Two conferences down. Eight to go. We head (mid) west this week and examine the Big 10. 

Here are the 2023 Big 10 standings. 
So we know what each team achieved, but how did they perform? To answer that, here are the Yards Per Play (YPP), Yards Per Play Allowed (YPA) and Net Yards Per Play (Net) numbers for each Big 10 team. This includes conference play only, with the championship game not included. The teams are sorted by division by Net YPP with conference rank in parentheses.
College football teams play either eight or nine conference games. Consequently, their record in such a small sample may not be indicative of their quality of play. A few fortuitous bounces here or there can be the difference between another ho-hum campaign or a special season. Randomness and other factors outside of our perception play a role in determining the standings. It would be fantastic if college football teams played 100 or even 1000 games. Then we could have a better idea about which teams were really the best. Alas, players would miss too much class time, their bodies would be battered beyond recognition, and I would never leave the couch. As it is, we have to make do with the handful of games teams do play. In those games, we can learn a lot from a team’s YPP. Since 2005, I have collected YPP data for every conference. I use conference games only because teams play such divergent non-conference schedules and the teams within a conference tend to be of similar quality. By running a regression analysis between a team’s Net YPP (the difference between their Yards Per Play and Yards Per Play Allowed) and their conference winning percentage, we can see if Net YPP is a decent predictor of a team’s record. Spoiler alert. It is. For the statistically inclined, the correlation coefficient between a team’s Net YPP in conference play and their conference record is around .66. Since Net YPP is a solid predictor of a team’s conference record, we can use it to identify which teams had a significant disparity between their conference record as predicted by Net YPP and their actual conference record. I used a difference of .200 between predicted and actual winning percentage as the threshold for ‘significant’. Why .200? It is a little arbitrary, but .200 corresponds to a difference of 1.6 games over an eight game conference schedule and 1.8 games over a nine game one. Over or under-performing by more than a game and a half in a small sample seems significant to me. In the 2023 season, which teams in the Big 10 met this threshold? Here are Big 10 teams sorted by performance over what would be expected from their Net YPP numbers.
Iowa and Michigan significantly exceeded their expected record based on YPP while Nebraska and Illinois underachieved. Iowa and Michigan combined to finish 6-1 in one-score conference games and the Wolverines finished with the second best in-conference turnover margin (+15) in the Big 10. Meanwhile, Illinois and Nebraska has the two worst in-conference turnover margins in the Big 10 with the Illini finishing seven turnovers in the hole while Nebraska turned the ball over fifteen more times than their league foes. The Cornhuskers also finished 1-5 in one-score conference games, continuing an incredible trend I shall henceforth refer to as the Curse of Bo Pelini
Outliers
Iowa was bad on offense in 2023. That is not a controversial or surprising statement. Their nepo offensive coordinator was under fire before the season began thanks to their lackluster performance throughout his tenure. In order to keep his job, the Iowa offense had to average at least 25 points per game in 2023. That number included any points scored by the defense or special teams which have been fantastic over the past few seasons. The Hawkeyes just missed their goal of 25 points per game by roughly ten points. Per game. Iowa averaged 15.4 points per game in 2023 and ranked second to last in scoring offense (only Kent State averaged less). As you may have noticed from the YPP table, their per play offensive numbers were also quite bad. The Hawkeyes averaged under four yards per play against Big 10 opponents (3.85). I have YPP numbers going back to 2005, and while the Hawkeyes cannot lay claim to having the worst per play conference offense of any BCS/Power Five team in that span (my alma mater actually holds the record with 3.06 in 2014), they are by far the most successful BCS/Power Five team with a dreadful offense. 

Including Iowa last season, 28 BCS/Power Five teams have averaged less than four yards per play in conference action since 2005. 26 of those 28 teams finished with losing conference records. Iowa, of course, won their division with a 7-2 mark last season and Vanderbilt eked out a 4-4 SEC record in 2008 while averaging 3.96 yards per play. Twelve of 28 teams finished winless in conference play, seven finished with one conference win, six won two league games, and UCLA in 2008 was the only team to win three (two of their three league wins came against teams that also averaged under four yards per play). Combined the 27 teams not named Iowa, finished 26-201 in conference play, averaging less than one league win! The Hawkeyes were not a great team in 2023, but they were one of the most unique teams in recent college football history. 

For the curious, all 28 BCS/Power Five teams that averaged under four yards per play are listed below along with their conference record. 
Non-BCS and Group of Five teams that averaged under four yards per play in conference action did not fare any better. In fact, they were a little worse. Since 2005, fourteen mid-major teams have averaged under four yards per play in league games. Those teams combined for a 9-101 conference record and no team won more than three league games.