Predicting the Big Sky

[ZifCat52]

I haven't posted for a long time, but do read every post on a frequent basis. I really appreciate the interest everyone has in Bobcat athletics and hope that we keep the discussion throughout the year. I have developed a spreadsheet to use the Sagarin ratings to get an idea of who will win the conference. I used it last year and it was pretty good, so I though I'd share the current projections and update them every week or so. The basis for the sheet is the Sagarin ratings published daily, I use the home advantage value and the team ratings to determine who will likely win any game. If a team wins one the ratings say they shouldn't, I count that as a schedule changer and use it to adjust the projections, the same for a team who loses one they were supposed to win.

I plan to update the ratings before each conference game, so here is the projection going into tonight's (Saturday) games.

Team W L Schedule Changers

Montana 12 2 0
Portland State 12 2 0
Northern Arizona 11 3 -1
Montana State 5 9 +1
Eastern Washington 5 9 +1
Sacremento State 4 10 0
Idaho State 4 10 0
Weber State 3 11 -1

Tonight's predicted winners from this system are Montana, Eastern Washington, Idaho State, and Portland State.

As you can see, the conference has three teams that currently are rated in a group above the other 5, but if you look at the spread from top to bottom in Sagarin ratings, the difference is about 9 points, which is the lowest difference among all the conferences in the country. This says that the conference is extremely well matched within itself, leading to some very exiciting games within the conference, with one win or loss at the right time meaning the difference between finishing first second or third or not making the tournament at the end.

Last year, if you recall, the second place team finished 7 and 7, the last place team was 5 and 9, and the Grizzlies and Cats tied for the last spot in the tourney which went to the Grizzlies becasue they beat Eastern Washington at Cheney the first game of the season and we lost to Eastern in an extremely close game in the fieldhouse in which Jason Erickson missed two 3-pointers (both went halfway down, then rolled out) in the last minute of the game and Marc Axton hit a 3-pointer in between Jason's misses, otherwise MSU goes to the tourney and the Grizzlies stay home. Similarly, if you recall, with the conference race so tight, there were a huge number of potential outcomes even going into the last week's games. After the Bobcats beat NAU Wednesday night, it looked as if they were almost assured a spot in the tourney, but every combination of wins and losses that could be bad for the Cats happened between Wednesday and Sunday when they played Sac State, meaning they had to win to get in. Frank Brown gets hurt in the first few minutes of the game with the Cats ahead by more than 10 points and we lose in the second half because we couldn't match up athletically with a walk-on redshirt point guard (a result of the 5-8 rule problems). It appears this years conference race will be just as exciting, so I hope all of you will be at each game, rooting for the Cats, every game will be critical and let's support them, win or lose.