Tuesdays With MORE

The signal is the truth. The noise is what distracts us from the truth.

Nate Silver from “The Signal and the Noise.”

The MORE (Median Order Rank by the Experts) signal is rather clear for the GOLD TIER with 19 of the 20 ranks all in the interval [1,5]. It has even more clarity for the SILVER TIER where 23 of 24 ranks all reside in the interval [6,11]. This leads to a unanimous consensus they have for teams who belong among the best 11 in the country, though admittedly there is some low level noise from one expert to the next. Even 6 of the 8 ranks for the 12th and 13th teams are exactly 12 or 13, too.

The bottom half of this “MORE 25,” as expected, starts to show slightly more divergence between the models, but seeing just 7 red 26’s on this table demonstrates 93% of all T25 ranks by these experts are in agreement for teams they believe are among the better 20% across the landscape. And with 100 losses. mostly between them, it seems apparent many on this list approach their season with purpose to become the rock others break themselves against hoping it leads their team to playing late into April.

Remember, the AZR column below is the average Z-Score of the 3 computer models’ ratings. It accounts for degrees of team strength a ranking can never delineate. Gold, Silver, and Bronze tiers are indicated in this column, also.

The loudest noises are synonymous to the deviation in rank any expert has from the median rank of all four. So in the case of the AVCA Coaches Poll point of view, the loudest noises are coming from Hobart (-7), Nazareth (-5), & MIT (+4.5), each of the UVC, together with Dominican (+3.5). Massey has its loudest noises related to ranking Marymount (-5), Hobart (+5), & Nichols (+3.5). IH has some minor squawking related to New Paltz (+6), Hobart (-4), & NYU (+3), all three in the UVC. The T100 has some temporary noise with Cal-Lu (+4), explained in Sunday’s T100 post, related to no games in 16 days which will be accounted for by 6 games in 4 days coming up this week. Hobart (+4) also shows equal deviation in its T100 ranking more related to having not defeated enough quality opponents while losing to some it had chances to defeat, but didn’t. It is joined by its assessment for Nazareth (+3), no doubt related to Owen Wicken’s ankle injury, to this point not having compensated the T100 model for it because he is still not back on the court as of this writing. ( Last year, I compensated when Laboo returned from his injury for Wentworth, a source of disagreement for their seeding in the NCAA tournament.) Not a lot of noise on the whole with only 5 deviations of at least 5 ranked positions, but there does seem to be a UVC theme here. Hobart mentioned 3 times (-7,-4, +4) to Nazareth’s twice (-5,+3), all 7 others just once, including 3 more from the UVC, as well. With Nazareth playing at Hobart tomorrow each hoping to revive their “conference life,” not only do we hope some of this noise becomes squelched next week, but we also hope to see both teams at full strength on the court, as one of them will be getting on the board with their first conference win of the season, while the other contemplates how to stay out of 7th or 8th place this year, thereby keeping their season going at least through the UVC Tourney.

Who did they beat? The boxes above show the distribution of the ranks of these teams. Who did they lose to thus far? The red discs are the ranks of teams to which these top 25 teams lost a match in the first two months of 2024. Notice, just 7 of the losses reside within the boxes. This is representative of an opponent which beat them whose rank was weaker than at least a quarter of the teams they had already defeated so far. These are the noisy outcomes (upsets) which not only need to be accounted for in the minds of coaches who vote and through computer algorithms intent on measuring a team’s strength, but also might turn into discussion points leading to committee choices for bids to the National Tournament. Potentially massive stakes related to what otherwise could have been just a “blip” on the screen.