It probably isn’t a surprise to anyone that I am a fan of Ken Pomeroy. In many ways his website is what got me on the path of calculating, tracking, and comparing advanced statistics. While I calculate many of the same things that he does—with a few variations in some instances—I still love his website for a few reasons. First off, he runs numbers for every division one team whereas I am limited to just the Big 12 due to time and being unsophisticated when it comes to all things IT. That way comparing ISU players to the rest of the nation is easily done. I love his team pages with the layout of the schedule, team breakdowns, and player breakdowns all on the same page.
Perhaps one of the biggest reasons most people, and I fall in the same grouping, visit his site is for his ratings. Each day he refreshes his ratings for every division one team. This is interesting because you can see jumps and falls in a team’s rating as a result from just one win or loss.
I wouldn’t call it a “beef” with Pomeroy, but one thing I have always wished I could see on his site in an easier format is previous rankings for a given team. It is currently shown on each team’s game schedule as their ranking on the day of the given game but it can be hard to easily see and compare next to other teams.
So I did what anyone would do and I started tracking this on my own and even made some pictures to better see the direction that a team has been headed most recently. Since December 3rd of this season I have recorded the Pomeroy rating for every Big 12 team every day (except December 30th which I forgot about while enjoying Memphis and December 25th where the ratings were not updated—I guess basketball stat nerds celebrate Christmas as well).
Below is where we’re at so far (you will probably have to open the image in a bigger window) with the ups and downs of each Big 12 team through the eyes of Pomeroy’s rating system (I omitted Texas Tech and TCU because they have yet to crack the top 200):
Note: This has been updated through 4/11/2013 and now has the y-axis flipped so the better rankings are higher on the chart. I excluded West Virginia, Texas, Texas Tech & TCU not to insult them but to be able to see the other six schools in more detail.
nice work! love the chart
So we actually went up after losing to Okie State? Interesting. Also interesting that Okie State has stayed relatively even, even with their “up and down” results.