College Basketball Team Rankings - January 30, 2012

Here is the inaugural version of the Betting Market Power Rankings for Men's College Basketball. I first created these for the NFL at the Advanced NFL Stats Community site.  I added the NBA earlier this month when I launched this blog. After some tinkering, I've come up with an approach that works for college basketball.  

I initially attempted to apply the same method I use for the NFL and NBA rankings to College Basketball, but after testing out the results, I realized that something different was required.  The issue with college basketball is that from early January to early March, most teams are only playing within their own conference.  My NFL/NBA method only looks back a few weeks to determine the relative strength of each team.  But if the Big Ten teams have only been playing against other Big Ten teams and the Colonial Athletic Association (CAA) teams are only playing other CAA teams, my method has no idea where to rank the relative strength of these two conferences.  

NBA Team Rankings - January 26, 2012

Here are the Betting Market Power Rankings for January 26, 2012.

These rankings look at the betting lines over the past three weeks and derive an implied power ranking (GPF).  With the added information of the over/unders, I'm also able to decompose a team's ranking into offense (oGPF) and defense (dGPF).  For more background, see the Methodology page.


I've restructured the table a bit in an attempt to provide greater clarity on the metrics I'm reporting.  Ranks have been added for the oGPF, dGPF, and GOU columns.  I also added Win/Loss record.


The Thunder have worked their way into the top spot this week, with an 0.5 point advantage over the previous number 1, the Heat.  The big mover this week was the Nuggets, who are now at number 4 (up five spots).  They are also the clear number one in GOU (Generic Over/Under).  At 204 points, that's a full 8 points above the number 2 team, the Heat.  The Mavericks reversed their gains from last week, dropping back down to 10th (likely driven by Dirk Nowitzki's absence).

NBA Team Rankings - January 19, 2012

Here are the NBA Betting Market (BTM) Power Rankings as of Thursday, January 19, 2012.

The general idea behind the rankings is to use the point spreads and over/unders for recent games (the past three weeks) to derive a power ranking, with more weight given to more recent games.  There is also an adjustment that accounts for actual game outcomes.  Refer to the Methodology page and my post at Advanced NFL Stats Community for more detail.

The big mover this week were the Dallas Mavericks, who moved from 11th to 5th (their GPF improving 1.5 points to 4.0).  Key drivers of the movement were the line against the Lakers (four point underdogs on the road, which indicates the betting market felt those two teams were evenly matched, assuming a 3.5 point HCA) and a 2.5 point favorite over the Clippers on the road, indicating a 6 point gap between the two teams.

How Much is Carmelo Anthony Worth?

In my first post of the NBA Betting Market Team Rankings, I threw out a prediction of the line and over/under for Saturday's Knicks/Thunder matchup.


I picked the game at random as the intent was to just show how the rankings work.  However, due to Carmelo Anthony's Thursday night ankle sprain which has ruled him out for tonight's game, I can also illustrate how these rankings can be used to evaluate the impact of injuries and assess implied player worth.

NFL Team Rankings - Divisional Playoff Round

Here are the NFL Team Rankings for the Divisional Round of the Playoffs. These rankings were already posted at the Advanced NFL Stats Community site earlier this week.
The general methodology is the same as that used in the NBA Team Rankings.  I had to tweak the weighting approach somewhat to account for the playoffs (additional details can be found at the Advanced NFL Stats link above).


Here is a glossary of terms:


LSTWK - The betting market rank as of the prior week (the Wildcard Round)
GPF - Stands for Generic Points Favored. It’s what you would expect a team to be favored by against a league average opponent at a neutral site.
oGPF – Offensive Generic Points Favored. The component of a team’s total GPF attributable to its ability to score points.
dGPF – Defensive Generic Points Favored. The component of a team’s total GPF attributable to its ability to prevent the other team from scoring points
GWP - Stands for Generic Win Probability. I converted the GPF into a generic win probability using the following formula: GWP = 1/(1+exp(-GPF/7)).
oRANK – The team’s oGPF ranking.
dRANK – The team’s dGPF ranking.

NBA Team Rankings - January 11, 2012

Here are the NBA Betting Market (BTM) Power Rankings as of Wednesday, January 11, 2012.  I plan on updating these on a weekly basis, probably around Wednesday or Thursday (I'm trying to find the optimum time and day for updates that catches both the Wednesday and Friday games).


The general idea behind the rankings is to use the point spreads and over/unders for recent games (the past three weeks) to derive a power ranking, with more weight given to more recent games.  There is also an adjustment that accounts for actual game outcomes.  Refer to the Methodology page and my post at Advanced NFL Stats Community for more detail.

Glossary

Here is a glossary of terms used in the rankings table below (the structure of the table and the metrics shown draws significant inspiration from the Advanced NFL Stats Team Efficiency Rankings):

• GPF - Stands for "Generic Points Favored".  It's what you would expect a team to be favored by against a league average opponent at a neutral site.
• oGPF - Stands for "Offensive Generic Points Favored".  The component of a team's total GPF attributable to its ability to score points (per game).
• dGPF - Stands for "Defensive Generic Points Favored".  The component of a team's total GPF attributable to its ability to prevent the other team from scoring points (per game).
• GWP - Stands for "Generic Win Probability".  I converted the GPF into a win probability using the following formula: 1/(1 + exp(-GPF/6.5)).
• oRANK - The team's oGPF ranking.
• dRANK - The team's dGPF ranking.