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Post by chipNdink on Sept 11, 2006 12:56:24 GMT -5
As an appetizer, here is the Pablo top baker's dozen this week 1 Penn State 2 USC 3 Texas 4 Washington 5 Nebraska 6 LSU 7 Wisconsin 8 Utah 9 Stanford 10 Santa Clara 11 California 12 Ohio State 13 UCLA Florida is the biggest team missing (at 15), but they are probably a victim of UCLA's sleepwalks through Texas St and Denver See, I told you, you had the wrong Huskies at #4 last week.
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Post by brybry on Sept 11, 2006 14:04:33 GMT -5
I have seen USC play twice this year and I think they are the best team in the PAC 10. I have seen Washington, UCLA and Stanford and USC is without question the best of those three. I have not seen Cal, but they look like they will be in the Pac 10 title hunt as well. It is going to be a great Pac 10 season this year. I love my Ladies of Troy but I'm not sure if they're top 5. They look like they have the serving and passing skills that many other top 10 teams are lacking. I'm hoping that will make a big difference. Their middles need to pick up their level or else SC will get burned by the big hitting teams. Kaczor looks like a 1st teamer at the moment. Copenhagen has vastly improved and she's probably the key to SC's success. I'm really looking forward to seeing Cal. Pressey and Beck are super talented. And it seems like Cutura plays like a 1st teamer also.
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Post by sucker for spandex err...nvm on Sept 11, 2006 14:25:27 GMT -5
BryBry, I think SC 's passing is much better than you give them credit for. Gysin has really stabilized their passing. I agree their middles have to pick up the pace. My real concern is the lack of depth on the bench. A problem that won't be solved til next year's recruits come in.
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Post by IdahoBoy on Sept 11, 2006 14:36:33 GMT -5
Anyone else not able to connect to the AVCA website? www.avca.org
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Post by pedro el leon on Sept 11, 2006 14:37:25 GMT -5
^^I think he said that they pass better than most top 10 teams. I have yet to see USC play, can't wait to see em when they come to seattle.
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Post by OverAndUnder on Sept 11, 2006 15:01:12 GMT -5
I've noticed moderate to severe lag time on the AVCA site for a while now. I wonder if they've changed their webhost provider or if they've gone with a cheaper package with a lower throughput.
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Post by OverAndUnder on Sept 11, 2006 15:03:24 GMT -5
Maybe Mary Wise is tying up all the bandwidth downloading a pirated DIVX copy of "You Got Served".
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Post by Gorf on Sept 11, 2006 15:14:12 GMT -5
Anyone else not able to connect to the AVCA website? www.avca.orgI'm getting in fine, earlier today I had a bit of a problem. I think its "just" the load level of so many people trying to check the site for the new poll being released. I'm hopefull that their servers / service will be more able to handle high load levels when the site is updated and released by the company in Kentucky that has taken over the AVCA in recent months.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
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Post by Deleted on Sept 11, 2006 15:31:06 GMT -5
Somebody broke the AVCA's website and my money is on Gorf.
How 'bout them Utes, p-dub?
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Post by VBSID on Sept 11, 2006 15:36:06 GMT -5
The SIDs were told that the poll will be out "sometime today." I wouldn't look for it until 8pm ET or later. Same with NPOW. They are having many issues with the website.
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Post by The Bofa on the Sofa on Sept 11, 2006 15:39:29 GMT -5
Somebody broke the AVCA's website and my money is on Gorf. How 'bout them Utes, p-dub? One of these days, I've got to update my anti-Ruffda correction factor to make sure it includes Utah
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Post by Ye Olde Dawg on Sept 11, 2006 15:50:20 GMT -5
You are going to start a thread at some point for the main course, aren't you? They will be out in full tonight. I support keeping it a premium service (although I think Rich is making available to everyone) You know, I was thinking of asking about RichKern.com or here, but I didn't get it to come out nicely. Having the full details on RichKern is much better. I have just done some analysis on strength of schedule, and in the end, UCLA's schedule hasn't been overwhelmingly strong, comparable to Oregon's but not up to Nebraska or Minnesota. Slightly better than Purdue's, which is why UCLA is ahead of them. It doesn't seem like UCLA's preseason schedule is a whole lot worse than say, Washington's. At least, not going by last year's Pablo rankings. It seems like a stiff price to pay for a lackluster performance against a preseason patsy. Whatever. I'm glad to hear RichKern.com will be updated, and I'm sure all of these questions will be sorted out as the season goes on.
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Post by Rich Kern on Sept 11, 2006 16:14:53 GMT -5
They will be out in full tonight. I support keeping it a premium service (although I think Rich is making available to everyone) Only about the top 30-40 will be available on the free side. Only the premium side will have the full list.
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Post by The Bofa on the Sofa on Sept 11, 2006 16:18:17 GMT -5
Glad you asked.
I was doing some playing around with strength of schedules earlier today, and have created a little spreadsheet that will compare two schedules using Pablo rankings. Basically, I use Pablo ratings to estimate how the opponents would fare in a head to head, round-robin matchup. By this measure, the UCLA schedule is actually quite a bit stronger than Washington's (with a balance of .588, which means that UCLA's opponents are predicted to win 58.8% of the matches against Wash's, so they are better overall)
However, it's not just an issue of SoS, it is what you do with it. Blowouts over weak teams don't help at all, and can hurt a little, but not too much (for a team like Washington, there isn't any difference between a match against #150, 200, or #300 - they all penalize the same amount, but that isn't large). So Washington's rating is dictated mainly by their performance against Ohio, Portland St, and, particularly, Texas. A 5 game match against Texas is going to keep them fairly close to Texas, at least for now, especially considering the lack of other real meaningful data.
Now, whereas blowouts against weak opponents don't make a big difference to the rating, non-blowouts are a different story. Pablo doesn't care that you play weak opponents if you blow them away. But you have to beat them soundly. Empirically, the cutoff I have determined for a blowout is a 3 game match with an average of less than 24 points allowed. If you don't do that (give up too many points or go more than 3 games), then Pablo concludes it wasn't a blowout and holds you responsible for them. Thus, the difference between UCLA and Washington is not in the schedule, but in the fact that UCLA has matches against weaker teams that actually count in Pablo (went to 4 games), whereas Wash has blown all the weak opponents out of the water so Pablo basically ignores them.
This blowout issue could potentially affect teams that would go to the bench in blowouts, but I have tried to set the bar low enough so to minimize that problem. For example, a match that goes 30 - 18, 30 - 18, 30 - 28 is still well above the threshold for a blowout (heck, it could be 30 - 18, 30 - 23, 30 - 28 and still be consider enough)
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Post by vbcrazy on Sept 11, 2006 17:59:59 GMT -5
It's up...any surprises?
Rank School (First-Place Votes) Total Points 2006 Record Last Week 1 Nebraska (47) 1486 7-0 1 2 Penn State (10) 1423 8-0 2 3 UCLA (1) 1358 9-0 3 4 Washington 1235 8-1 5 5 Texas 1196 5-2 7 6 Florida 1184 6-1 6 7 Stanford 1101 6-1 8 8 Santa Clara 1100 6-1 4 9 Southern California 1032 9-0 10 10 California 870 9-0 13 11 Wisconsin 867 6-1 11 12 Hawai'i 836 5-3 9 13 Tennessee 778 8-1 12 14 Purdue 761 9-0 14 15 Ohio State 524 8-0 19 16 Ohio 523 6-2 17 17 Missouri 484 6-3 15 18 LSU 424 8-1 22 19 BYU 413 7-1 16 20 Pepperdine 339 4-4 18 21 Utah 265 6-2 24 22 Michigan 239 10-0 NR 23 Cal Poly 162 6-3 25 T-24 Arizona 98 7-2 21 T-24 Kansas State 98 8-2 NR
Others Receiving Votes and appearing on two or more ballots: Long Beach State 89; Louisville 84; New Mexico State 81; Texas A&M 73; Dayton 28; San Francisco 24; San Diego 19; Minnesota 16; Duke 13; Notre Dame 10; Arkansas 8; Kansas 5; Northern Iowa 5; Maryland 4; Rice 4.
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