Continuing with the analysis I used to compare Duke and North Carolina, I ran the same numbers for all the teams in Pomeroy's top 25. The full table is here, and here are some teams at the extremes (negative means overrated by Pomeroy):
I wouldn't have expected to see UConn as the most overrated team, but there they are. Some of that gap can be explained by their impressive showing at Louisville on Monday night. That game bumped their Pomeroy rating up from .972 to .977; that improvement is factored into the KenPom projections, and not any of the lines (yet). But that can't fully explain the discrepancies in the three games prior to the big win at Freedom Hall:
UConn -2 @ ND seems a bit ridiculous at this point, but I also don't think they'd be favored by eight in South Bend. And regardless of how good they looked against Louisville, there's no way the Huskies would be 20 point favorites on the road against DePaul. We'll have to wait and see what their line is against Michigan on Sunday -- I can't imagine it'll be as high as Pomeroy's -18.7 -- but the Huskies look like they'll be receiving a significant downgrade from their Pomeroy rating in next week's Projecting Bracketology.It will be interesting to see how much respect the oddsmakers give Missouri when they visit Iowa St. on Saturday after their big win tonight in Austin. I wouldn't say they've been disrespecting them so far, but they're certainly not as optimistic as Pomeroy:
As always, the truth probably lies somewhere in between.
Well, this should knock Duke's rating back in line.
Marquette is interesting; they're 9-0 in the Big East, but only 20th in Pomeroy's ratings, so if anything you'd think he was underrating them. But that's not the case; as has been noted in various places, the Golden Eagles just aren't that good.
On the other end of the spectrum it makes sense that Michigan St. is better than their Pomeroy rank of #21, since Suton missed those five games, and the Spartans were blown out in two of them. Tonight's destruction of Minnesota will help push things in the right direction. Coming into today Pomeroy had MSU 1.7 points ahead of Purdue; with these adjustments, the Spartans move ahead of the Boilermakers pretty easily.
The main reason for Texas being so low on the list is that they've played Missouri and Kansas St. -- two teams Pomeroy is very high on -- in their last two games. Take those two out and they drop to +0.8; having lost both those games, their spreads may start to fall into line with Pomeroy's opinion of them.
Original Story:
http://vegaswatch.net/2009/02/more-po...
