re: 2025 Auburn Basketball is Historically Strong

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Kinda like he did in 2019 when Auburn went to the Final Four and was one bad foul call away from playing for the national championship?

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I can’t predict how far they will go. I’m just saying some people like to point out that he’s only gotten past the first weekend once in his 10 or 11 years of coaching at Auburn. There is that one outlier season from a prior decade, but those people always say it’s not like we don’t have a robust set of data indicating that the second round has been his ceiling as of late. I say to those people that this year is different: Auburn is insanely good and will absolutely get out of the first weekend this year. I don’t think that’s a controversial take?

Duke and Houston are good statistical teams because they are playing very weak schedules.

Auburn is just an anomaly

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Not sure why you'd say they aren't really that good.

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I don't see where he said that anywhere.

He said they have played a weak schedule.

o.k. So you "inferred" he was saying they "aren't really that good"?...........or maybe he was saying they have played a weak schedule. Which they have.

It was a bama fan being sarcastic.

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Response : Duke and Houston are statistically good. Duke and Houston are good statistical teams because they played weak schedules

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I'm a little unclear how else you would read that sentence given the overall flow of this thread and the teams involved

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Have they played a weaker schedule? Yes or no?

Is it easier to pad stats playing a weaker schedule? Yes or no?


ETA That's how I personally took it and I agree.

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Of the 20 teams before us to rate 32.00 or higher… 20/20 reached the Sweet 16 18/20 reached the Elite 8 16/20 reached the Final Four 14/20 reached the National Title Game 11/20 won the National Title Game

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So considering that AU is the highest rated of any of those teams, anything short of a national title this season should be considered a complete bust. No pressure.

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So explain how Houston has such a high rating?

They have played four ranked teams all season. They lost three of those games. So you don't think playing weaker competition has anything to do with their kenpom rating being so high?

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You can actually do that on Torvik

vs Top 50 teams

#2 - Houston (6-3) (#5 off, #16 def)
W by 31 vs BYU
vs by 30 @ K-State
W by 14 @ WVU
W by 6 @ Kansas (OT)
W by 1 vs UCF

L by 5 vs Auburn (led with 2 mins left)
L by 5 vs Alabama (OT)
L by 1 vs Texas Texas (OT)

They lose really close games to good teams when they lose (2 of them in OT). It isn't as if they kill bad teams and then lose all the games to good teams by 10+. KenPom and Torvik don't care who won or lost, they are measuring performance on a possession by possession basis. If you win 7 games by 2 each and lose 4 games by 20 each you are going to be ranked lower than a team that wins 4 games by 20 each and loses 7 games by 2 each........because basically KenPom and Torvik see the 4-7 team as much closer to being 11-0 than the 7-4 team.


Houston is barely top 10 in metrics that measure theirs wins and losses

Wins Above Bubble
#1 Auburn
#2 Alabama
#3 Duke
#4 Purdue
#5 Texas A&M
#6 Tennessee
#7 Florida
#8 Houston

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that is my point. They crush lesser teams. It is easy to be efficient against lesser competition.

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Sure, but they are also very good against good teams.

vs Top 75 only : #3 (10 games)
vs Top 50 only : #2 (9 games)
vs Top 25 only : #8 (5 games)

Duke is the same

vs Top 75 only : #2 (8 games)
vs Top 50 only : #3 (6 games)
vs Top 25 only : #7 (4 games)

I'm not knighting for Houston, they definitely play a style that makes them a metric darling (mainly when they get huge leads they keep playing great defense whereas other teams - both of us for example - generally give up a bunch of cheap buckets the last 5 minutes in blowouts). Basketball metrics could certainly use a "garbage time" layer like football ones do.