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February 17 Ivy League Wilson Ratings

Posted on by in Brown, By the Numbers, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Ivy League, Penn, Princeton, Yale

We’re midway through Ivy League play, and everyone has played each other at this point. So this is as good a time as any to debut a ratings system I have come up with. Unlike the RPI, my formula looks at the result beyond the winner and loser. And unlike Sagarin and Pomeroy, I don’t just use the final margin, which is often prone to skewing and can give an inaccurate picture of what the game was actually like. And unlike all three of those ratings systems, my formula looks at individual game results instead of just averaging everything.

Graphical representations of year-by-year rankings

Posted on by in Blog, Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Ivy League, Penn, Princeton, Yale

Here are graphs of year-by-year RPI, Sagarin, and Pomeroy rankings for the eight Ivy teams and the league in general.

Setting the record straight: reality vs. hyperbole

Posted on by in Blog, Ivy League, Penn

With Penn all but wrapping up the league with its win on Tuesday night, there’s again a lot of talk on the message boards, in blogs, and in articles about how supposedly terrible the Ivy League is this season and how comparatively weak this Quaker team is. For Penn fans it’s undoubtedly fun to feed their superiority complex. For fans of the other schools, it’s a means of denigrating Penn’s dominance. But both sides are ignoring the cold reality of the facts, and it’s time to set the record straight.

Memorable moments few and far between last night

Posted on by in Blog, Ivy League, Penn, Princeton

It seems there are two distinct types of Penn-Princeton games: exciting, down-to-the-wire thrillers and boring, one-sided affairs. There is rarely any middle ground. Last night’s contest at The Palestra definitely fits into the latter category. Usually there are one or two memorable plays that stay with you, but it’s hard to come up with a single one from last night.

Gamecenter: Princeton 41, Penn 60

Posted on by in Gamecenter, Ivy League, Penn, Princeton

Key sequence: Luke Owings got a conventional three-point play to cap off a 10-2 Tiger run that drew Princeton to within 10 at 40-30 with 10:37 left. Penn’s Eric Osmundson couldn’t connect from outside the arc and Princeton got the ball back, but Justin Conway’s pass was picked off by Ibby Jaaber, who took it in for a fastbreak layup. Then Owings got tangled up with Mark Zoller driving along the baseline and was called for falling out of bounds. Brian Grandieri missed on a jumper and Scott Greenman got open for a three-pointer that would have cut the Tiger deficit to single digits, but his shot missed everything. At the other end, Steve Danley grabbed the rebound off an Osmundson miss, was fouled, and hit both free throws to restore Penn’s lead to 14.