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Division I College Basketball RankingsSportsQuant College Basketball RatingsThe SportsQuant rating algorithm was originally developed with college football in mind for the simple reason that college basketball has the good sense to crown a champion after a post-season playoff. Nevertheless, for years computer rankings have played a prominent role in major college basketball -- most notably through the Ratings Percentage Index (RPI) which many experts use to predict the tournament field. Ranking 335 teams using a handful of games (roughly 30) involving each is extremely difficult and inherently ill-defined. Many ranking methods are based solely on wins and losses. Others are based on point-scoring and margin of victory. Both types of models are sub-optimal for ranking college basketball teams. Win-loss models often predict that undefeated teams (even those who played a very weak schedule) will never lose and are infinitely better than even the best one-loss teams. Luckily, this is of less concern than football (for which there are usually unbeaten teams every year). However, win-loss only ratings are inevitably unstable -- especially for almost-unbeaten teams from weak conferences (such as Gonzaga which plays in the West Coast Conference). At the other extreme, point-scoring models discount the value of winning and can rank a mediocre team with a few blowouts ahead of a solid, yet unspectacular team with a better record against a tougher schedule. Our rankings are the first to combine both wins and losses AND point-scoring data to extract the most from a limited slate of games. In addition to modeling win-loss and point-scoring data, our rankings explicitly account for home-court advantage and implicitly consider strength of schedule. Rather than rehash the details here, we cite Annis (2007) and Annis and Craig (2005) for in-depth explanation of the ranking procedure. (Aren't we ever so narcissistic?)
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