Pablo's top 25

[chipNdink]

pablo said:

...Thus, I can say the Pablo top 25 look like this (UConn? Didn't see that one coming.)

1 Penn State
2 USC
3 UCLA
4 UConn
5 Santa Clara
6 Nebraska
7 Oregon
8 New Mexico State
9 Texas
10 BYU
11 Florida
12 Michigan
13 Arkansas
14 Stanford
15 Utah
16 Sacramento State
17 LSU
18 Oklahoma
19 California
20 Wisconsin
21 Ohio State
22 Purdue
23 Iowa State
24 Tennessee
25 Illinois

Yeah, Huskies at #4! Ooops, wrong Huskies. :-( Seriously, how does Stanford come in at #14, after losing to #10 BYU, while Washington is unrated after only losing to #9 Texas?? Even Wisconsin, a team that lost worse to Texas is ranked #20.

[Go Iowa]

and hasn't Iowa State lost a couple of times?

[UCSBVball]

Pablo takes a few weeks to get in groove - This week Rich Kern's poll looks the most realistic.

[Mr. Wednesday]

chipndink said:

Seriously, how does Stanford come in at #14, after losing to #10 BYU, while Washington is unrated after only losing to #9 Texas?? Even Wisconsin, a team that lost worse to Texas is ranked #20.

It's not just who they've lost to that matters, it's also who they've beaten... not all losses are created equal... not all wins are created equal...

(That's my store of off-the-cuff explanations gleaned from reading the FAQ about how it's calculated -- hopefully, the proprietor can give you chapter and verse on the exact source of the outcome.)

[chipNdink]

Also, where's Cal Poly, which beat Texas?

[JT]

chipndink said:

Also, where's Cal Poly, which beat Texas?

Probably a bit lower, because they lost to Pepperdine, which lost to Hawaii twice, and lost to Texas, and had no "good" win other than Cal Poly.


Bottom line (and it's been said over and over and over)... Pablo is likely to have some very strange results early on.

[Ye Olde Dawg]

There may be a clue in Washington's opponents after the Texas match:

Name	Scores	Pablo (last year)
Davidson College	30-25, 30-14, 30-19	212
Morehead State	30-20, 30-18, 30-17	285
Liberty	30-13, 30-17, 30-17	256

I'm sure none of those matches helped their Pablo rank. Of course, I still don't get why they're ranked below Wisconsin, but hey -- this Pablo ranking is so early its value is mostly in entertainment anyway.

[FloridaPerson]

The best part of this pablo is who's not in it.

[TIGERS PWN]

Arkansas?
Iowa State?
Illinois?
Oklahoma?

This might as well have been randomly drawn out of a hat.

[The Bofa on the Sofa]

sankyu said:

There may be a clue in Washington's opponents after the Texas match:

Name	Scores	Pablo (last year)
Davidson College	30-25, 30-14, 30-19	212
Morehead State	30-20, 30-18, 30-17	285
Liberty	30-13, 30-17, 30-17	256

I'm sure none of those matches helped their Pablo rank.

Washington is in fact #26, about 2400 points ahead of Morehead St. Given they were on a neutral court, the Morehead match probably didn't help at all, and, in fact, probably hurt them a little (I have found that Pablo does better if you penalize teams just a tad for very weak competition, even if it is a blowout)

Meanwhile, Wisconsin got a big boost from their win over Oklahoma (not sure why they are behind them, though)

Pablo gets 93% right in retrospect this week, which is typical at this time.

[The Bofa on the Sofa]

tigerspwn said:

Arkansas?
Iowa State?
Illinois?
Oklahoma?

This might as well have been randomly drawn out of a hat.

As I said in my previous post, this ranking (and the rest of the 320 odd teams) accounts for 93% of the W/L in the country over the last two weeks.

If you think this is drawn out of a hat, you are likely not familiar with what national volleyball is like.

Look at the top 12 and compare it to the AVCA or RichKern opinion polls, and remember, Pablo knows nothing about volleyball except who played who, where they played, who won, and by how much.

The fact that Pablo can identify most of the top ten teams after only two weeks of play is, to me, extremely impressive.

Yeah, there are funny results there, but for me it is actually a lot of fun to see who shows up that we didn't expect.

If you would actually look up some results, you might not be so surprised. Illinois is 6 - 0 right now. Arkansas is 6 - 0. Why is it surprising that they are ranked? Oklahoma's losses are to Arkansas (ranked ahead of them) and Wisconsin (who aren't, oddly, as I noted above).

Iowa St is ranked well behind Michigan, who they lost to, and just ahead of San Diego, who they lost to in 5.

This is not a random list by any means.

[The Bofa on the Sofa]

UConn

So I have been trying to see where UConn is getting their ranking, and I think I have it figured out. It is based on their win over Portland St. Portland St is ranked 27th, with its only losses to #7 Oregon and #3 UConn (in Pablo, of course). The 5 game loss to Oregon really helps pull Portland St up. But more important, I think, is Portland Sts win over #86 Irvine. Although Irvine is 0 - 5, all 5 losses have come to teams ranked well-ahead of them, and that includes a 5 game loss to #31 San Diego. Thus, Portland St's win over Irvine looked a lot like those for Iowa St and Michigan. For that reason, Pablo puts Portland St pretty close to Iowa St and San Diego, but below Michigan. Then, UConn has a good win over Portland St, which is better than Michigan's win over San Diego, so UConn goes ahead of Michigan.

In the end, it's not too surprising to see UConn up pretty high based on those results.

[JT]

You know... it'd be interesting (I think) to replace the names of the teams with randomly chosen ones, reduce the match-score information to be just a games won/lost pair, and a "close" "solid" "blowout" value, and then give that information to those who say Pablo messed up.

I mean... would they still feel that a school is ranked improperly when it's (e.g.) "U-Frobish" rather than "Cal-Poly"?

[Deleted]

U-Frobish? Are you kidding me? They can't even wear their knee pads on the correct limbs!

[The Bofa on the Sofa]

U-Frobish is ranked 28th this week