Ranking Wars: Montana vs Montana State

[dbackjon]

Craig Healy tweeted out an interesting question -why is Montana ranked, but not Montana State?

The rundown:

Montana: 4-2
Montana State: 3-2

Common Opponents:
Western Illinois (Montana L @WIU, Montana State W at home)
Portland State (Montana L at Home, Montana State W by 20 @PSU)

Both have a buy game win:
Montana over Drake
Montana State over Wagner


Montana's other wins are against 2-3 Northern Iowa and 2-4 Cal Poly

Montana State lost to SDSU and EWU (both double digits)


Does Montana's win over UNI negate the fact they lost to two teams MSU beat?

[grizband]

Craig Healy tweeted out an interesting question -why is Montana ranked, but not Montana State?

The rundown:

Montana: 4-2
Montana State: 3-2

Common Opponents:
Western Illinois (Montana L @WIU, Montana State W at home)
Portland State (Montana L at Home, Montana State W by 20 @PSU)

Both have a buy game win:
Montana over Drake
Montana State over Wagner


Montana's other wins are against 2-3 Northern Iowa and 2-4 Cal Poly

Montana State lost to SDSU and EWU (both double digits)


Does Montana's win over UNI negate the fact they lost to two teams MSU beat?
Maybe?

Although I do have Montana ranked, and not Montana State, the only game comparison that favors Montana is that Drake is a better team than Wagner. At this point, Montana having one more win (by virtue of more games played) is what keeps them ranked over Montana State. If the Cats win next week, they will certainly be in consideration for ranking.

[Prime Power]

Yep, I guess so. I don't think either of them should be ranked.

[grizband]

Yep, I guess so. I don't think either of them should be ranked.
I have Montana ranked (21), but also see the logic in not ranking them.

[bobcathpdevil56]

I have Montana ranked (21), but also see the logic in not ranking them.

I can see either having both ranked or both unranked, but to have one in and the other out may be homerism at this point.

[grizband]

I can see either having both ranked or both unranked, but to have one in and the other out may be homerism at this point.It might be a little. Honestly, I have mountains the edge, because they have one more victory, which is simply a function of more games played.

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[mvemjsunpx]

Yep, I guess so. I don't think either of them should be ranked.

xnodx

[dbackjon]

While I ranked Montana and not Montana State, I think next week if both win, Montana State would be more likely to get into my top 25

1) Wins over teams Montana lost too
2) Montana's better win is offset by the horrendous loss.

[Catbooster]

I have Montana ranked (21), but also see the logic in not ranking them.


I can see either having both ranked or both unranked, but to have one in and the other out may be homerism at this point.

I had just MSU ranked in this week's poll at #24. If the poll went out another rank or two I'd have had both on it because right now I think they are only a couple ranks apart. Voters all think a little differently, which is the strength of the AGS poll, so I can accept that a few would rank the Griz higher. But I'm mildly surprised that UM is ranked #23 on the AGS poll while MSU is ranked #30. I expected that on the Coaches' and STATS polls.

But I don't think it's homerism. I think it's reputation or name recognition. Lots of ballots with just the Griz on them are from people from other conferences. The Griz are still reaping the benefit of dominating the Big Sky for 10-15 years in the early 90's and into the 2000's. They haven't won or shared a conference title for 8 or 10 years (depending on whether you count the vacated title they shared with us in 2011) but they are still thought of as one of the top teams in the Big Sky.

[ursus arctos horribilis]

I can see either having both ranked or both unranked, but to have one in and the other out may be homerism at this point.

You did the same thing grizband did though so it applies to you as well correct?

[Catbooster]

You did the same thing grizband did though so it applies to you as well correct?
You might be confusing him with me - I should change my avatar to avoid confusion. :D I don't know how he voted, but I said I had just MSU.

[ursus arctos horribilis]

You might be confusing him with me - I should change my avatar to avoid confusion. :D I don't know how he voted, but I said I had just MSU.

Nah, you both did it. I don't see anything wrong with it either. Just if you make that statement like 56 did then I gotta come in and level this out a bit. xlolx

Even with the matching avs I don't confuse my Montana brothers.

[bobcathpdevil56]

You did the same thing grizband did though so it applies to you as well correct?

Absolutley, it was a homerism vote from me. Sorry if I didn't mention that I did it as well.

[MSUBobcat]

I had just MSU ranked in this week's poll at #24. If the poll went out another rank or two I'd have had both on it because right now I think they are only a couple ranks apart. Voters all think a little differently, which is the strength of the AGS poll, so I can accept that a few would rank the Griz higher. But I'm mildly surprised that UM is ranked #23 on the AGS poll while MSU is ranked #30. I expected that on the Coaches' and STATS polls.

But I don't think it's homerism. I think it's reputation or name recognition. Lots of ballots with just the Griz on them are from people from other conferences. The Griz are still reaping the benefit of dominating the Big Sky for 10-15 years in the early 90's and into the 2000's. They haven't won or shared a conference title for 8 or 10 years (depending on whether you count the vacated title they shared with us in 2011) but they are still thought of as one of the top teams in the Big Sky.

Also aiding the Griz is the name recognition of UNI, which at this point in the season is the only thing allowing UNI to even sniff the top 25. UNI has a win over Hampton (winless in D-I) and ISU-b and blowout losses (expected) to Iowa and NDSU. UNI has a loss to a UM team that only appears to have a good win because of UNI. Crazy circular logic, IMO. Maybe those in the Valley can enlighten me about what makes UNI a #27 team based on the first 5 games. Even in both programs' bad years, it takes about 6 weeks for UNI and UM to fall out of the poll.

Full disclosure, if I were to submit a poll, none of the 3 would be in the top 25, but would be jumbled in the 26-32 range at the moment. MSU would be slightly ahead of UM, UM slightly ahead of UNI. Lots of season left to move around. UNI has a bunch of tough games upcoming and can prove their mettle (or not). The Griz have a fairly palatable schedule if they get by the enigma of UND this weekend. Davis at home, road games against cellar-dwellers SUU and Idaho and home for the Brawl. To me, (assuming a loss to Davis at this point) this weekend's game @ UND is a must-win for the Griz, unless MSU were to be fairly highly ranked going in to the Brawl. MSU also has a bit of a tough schedule, with our toughest 3 games (on paper) all being on the road, BBQ, ISU-o and the Brawl. This offers an opportunity to distinguish the Bobcats between contender and pretender.

[Catbooster]

I'll explain my opinion a little more - which may be more of an explanation of how I think about the poll in general using these teams as a specific example. There's tons of information out there. Ranking the teams comes down to a lot of subjectivity in how you modify, manipulate and weight the various data points, which obviously means that even with the same data, we'll reach different conclusions and we probably won't have all the same data. My thought process is not necessarily this organized or clean, but I tend to think of the information in several tiers - call it primary, secondary and tertiary for simplicity.

Primary - Head to Head. This is the first thing I look at - the first thing you notice. I may end up giving it less weight - maybe the loser dominated the stats or whatever. In the case of PSU@UM, I'd weigh this less. I wouldn't let this force me to rank UM under PSU. As the season goes on, there are more data points that can gradually override this, but in general, it's the strongest individual data point. Also, if the HtoH was a long time ago (early in the season), it tends to get weighted less as the team may be playing much differently, have injuries, etc.

Secondary - Probably the closest thing to a HtoH is common opponents, IMO. Both teams are being tested against roughly the same thing and those results are a fairly direct comparison of how well they do. Again, there are a number of variables - match-ups, injuries, bad day, etc. - so you have to decide how much weight to give it.

Tertiary - linkages through other (not common) opponents, Massey, Sagarin, SOS, point differentials, injuries, reputation, past years' performance, pulling starters out, etc. Everyone will weight these things differently, but IMO they should generally (not always) have less weight than the primary and secondary things.

In the comparison of the Cats and Griz (at this point in the season), we don't have a HtoH result yet, but there are two common opponents. The Cats beat both of them and the Griz lost to both. If the Griz are ranked higher, then more weight is being given to Sagarin, reputation, etc. than how we did against the same teams. Weighting those tertiary data points more highly than common opponents (or having many more of them that favor the Griz over-ride the two common opponents) may be valid - it's just an opinion after all - but I think it's easier to let personal biases sneak into your rankings with those things.