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Week Four F/+ Ratings Vs. AP Poll

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NavyBuckeye91's picture
September 28, 2015 at 8:29pm
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Week Four F/+ Ratings Vs. AP Poll

Comparing this week’s F/+ Ratings to the AP Poll is liable to make your head hurt and shake your belief in either stats, your eyeballs, or the voters.  The S&P+ portion of the F/+ ratings is all 2015 data, so any latency from last season or preseason expectations is gone. That had a huge effect for some underrated teams, which have performed well in September. The effects of last season stats on the FEI (Fremeau Efficiency Index) will continue to diminish for a few more weeks. I'm switching things up a bit this week and placing the table up front for stats geeks to make their own observations.

Observations from Week Four’s data

1) Offense matters…but defense matters more.  ‘Bama retained sole possession of the top spot in both S&P+ and FEI, placing them alone atop the F/+ Ratings by 18 percentile points. tOSU dropped significantly in their F/+ rating, mostly due to their 7th place spot in S&P+.  Diving deeper into S&P+ shows the Buckeyes hold the 6th spot for defense, but fell all the way to 33rd for S&P+ Offense.  The gap between Bama and the field widened, while the Ole Miss, Clemson and LSU closed considerably on the Buckeyes.The top 10 in S&P+ are ‘Bama, FSU, WVU, LSU, Ole Miss, Clemson, tOSU, OU, USC, and TTUN (that is not a typo).  Five of those teams are in the Top 10 for S&P+ Defense: ‘Bama, FSU, Clemson, tOSU, & WVU.  The Top 10 Offenses by S&P+ are Baylor, Texas Tech, USC, TCU, Ark, ND, LSU, Ole Miss, Tulsa, & UGA: only LSU, Ole Miss and USC had Top 20 defenses.

2) AP Top 25 Matchups.  That wacky PAC-12. I went with the F/+ favorites last week of Ore and UCLA, which was 50% correct.  AU (previously #16 AP) was overvalued and lost to UCLA (this week’s #7), convincingly.  Utah, as it turns out, was undervalued by F/+ and Oregon’s stats must have been extremely skewed by last season, and apparently the Buckeyes gave Utah the unlock key to Oregon’s defense. I should’ve known that would happen with coach Meyer’s relationship to Utah.

This weekend features five matchups between current AP Top 25 teams: #6 ND @ #12 Clemson; #8 UGA vs. #13 ‘Bama; #14 A&M vs. #21 Miss St.; #15 OU vs. #23 WVU; and #3 Ole Mis @ #25 UF.  Based on S&P+ ratings (how they matchup in offensive and defensive categories) and home field advantages, I’m going with Clemson, ‘Bama, Miss St., OU, & Ole Miss.

3) Biggest Losers.  Ore, Arizona, Ga Tech, Mizzou, BYU, and Tenn.  Other than Auburn, which has dropped from preseason #6 into obscurity, no other team has fallen from grace faster than the Oregon Ducks.  This week  the Ducks not only dropped 14 spots in AP voting to #27, they also lost 21 places in F/+ rating mostly due to their S&P+ rating dropping to #52 (they are #21 in Offense and #89 in Defense). Similarly, Mizzou, Arizona and BYU dropped in both the AP and F/+ ratings with their losses Saturday. Ga Tech and Tenn are the outliers.  Despite losing, and dropping significantly in the AP Poll, they held their ground in F/+ rating.  My guess is their road losses to decent F/+ Rating opponents hurt them less than it helped the winners: Duke climbed 15 spots in F/+ and got enough votes to be #33 in the AP, while Florida jumped eight places in F/+ and is now the AP #25.

4) Biggest Winners.  TTUN, Duke, Utah & UF.  I covered the Duke and UF wins above, which propelled both from unranked to garnering some AP votes.  Of the two, Duke has the more impressive F+ ratings after climbing from 37th to 22nd.  UF made gains, but is still at 38th, despite their AP Top 25 ranking.  Utah, as one would expect, jumped eight spots in the AP with their win over Ore combined with their previous win over TTUN. To match that, their F/+ rating jumped 15 places to 21st. Sadly, the Fighting Harbaughs posted the biggest combined gains with their #22 AP ranking (after three weeks with zero votes) and their rise from 31st to 16th in F+ rating. They have closed within 5.5% points of Sparty in F/+ rating.

5) Undervalued.  ‘Bama, Ga Tech, Duke, KSU, Tenn, Louisville, ASU, Ark, & Va Tech.  These teams are all 10 or more places lower in the AP Poll than their F/+ Ratings suggest.  Arkansas is the second best three-loss team in the country according to F/+; Louisville is the best at 27th. You can’t make this stuff up.

6) Overvalued.  MSU,TCU, Utah, Northwestern, Ok St, UF, BSU, Iowa, Temple, Cal, Texas Tech, Toledo, Arizona, NC St., & Houston.  These teams are 10 or more places in the AP voting above their F/+ Ratings.  There are three teams in the AP Top 10 (MSU, TCU & Utah) that are ranked 11 places above their F/+ Ratings. MSU faces Purdue, TCU hosts Texas, and Utah has a tough one against ‘Open’. I don’t expect their AP rankings to change much after this weekend. NwU (10 spots higher in the AP than their F/+) meets Goldie this weekend, which will tell us a lot about both teams and the B1G West. It’s a home game for the Wildcats, and the defenses are very close, but Minny has a significant edge in S&P+ Offense.  Ok St and UF are barely in the Top 35 for F/+, yet they are in the AP Top 25. That should end this week: I already picked Ole Miss to dump the Gators, and I’m taking KSU over the Cowboys.

Honorable Mention: Baylor.  The Bears sit nine spots in the AP Poll above their F/+ Rating. Their game vs. Texas Tech this week will be another Big XII basketball score.  In S&P+ terms, Baylor’s #1 Offense meets the Red Raiders #118 Defense, as Texas Tech’s #2 Offense faces the Bear’s #94 Defense.  Last team with the ball wins.

8) Head Scratchers.  Louisville finally got a win, and now is the statistically highest rated 1-3 team, climbing this week to #27 for F/+.  The Indiana Hoosiers are the lowest-rated, undefeated team in F/+ (#78).  Four  teams with F/+ ratings below #50 continue to receive votes in the AP Poll: Arizona, NC State, Houston and Memphis.  Four teams with F/+ ratings in the Top 30 received zero votes in the AP Poll: Ga Tech, Louisville, ASU, and Ark.  They all have two or three losses.

I welcome your comments, observations and suggestions.  Go Bucks! Beat Indiana!

Previous weeks:  Week 1  Week 2  Week 3

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