Over on Phog Blog I've made a coupleposts where I use Ken Pomeroy's seasonal offensive and defensive efficiency ratings and the raw efficiencies from his Game Plan pages to calculate single-game adjusted ratings. I thought I'd use those calculations to do a brief statistical preview of this afternoon's huge Big Ten clash. There won't be a lot of actual analysis here, because I haven't seen either team play a whole game this year. But I think it's fun to look at the stats anyway.
First, a brief description of what the numbers mean. If you're not familiar with Pomeroy's efficiency ratings, see here. That page has a formula for using two teams' ratings to make a score prediction (there's also a home-court advantage, which is explained here. Instead of using TeamA and TeamB's ratings to find a prediction, I simply pretend we don't know TeamA's rating, use the actual results in place of a prediction, and solve. This gives the level at which TeamA performed in the game. I can then use these single game ratings in various ways.
Below, for both teams I've included a graph that charts the offensive and defensive ratings for each game of the season. Keep in mind that for the defensive rating, lower is better. For both offense and defense, I've included a trendline showing roughly how each unit has progressed over the year. Also, the dotted line shows the national average efficiency.
I've also included the average ratings for their last ten games, to give a snapshot of how the team is playing right now. To give these numbers some context, I show where this would rank in the full-season stats, and what team's full-season rating is the closest. At the end, I plus these ratings back into Pomeroy's formula to get a score prediction based solely on recent pay.
OK, with all that boring stuff out of the way, on to the prediction. As always, keep in mind that there is a TON of variation in sports, and it would be foolish to think that any exact score prediction will be correct.
From the graph, it seems that Ohio State's defense progressed for a while, but recently is on a downward turn. You can see that the last 4 games have included 3 of Ohio State's 6 worst offensive performances of the year. So, while they're "last 10 games" offensive rating is good, things aren't as rosy as they would seem. Defensively, they've been having decent performances, but no real lockdown performances recently. None of their top 7 defensive games have come in the last 10.
Wisconsin's offense shows a similar arc to Ohio States, in that their best games came in the middle of the year. But they haven't had the same downward turn - 5 of their past 6 games have rated above 120, which is very good. Their defense is very similar to Ohio States - both show relatively flat trendlines that hover around 90. Good but not spectacular.
Outlook/Predictions
Pomeroy: Ohio St 69, Wisconsin 64
"Last 10" Ratings: Ohio St 73, Wisconsin 69
Trendline: Ohio St 68, Wisconsin 66
If this game were being played on a neutral court, I would pick Wisconsin in a squeaker, almost entirely due to Ohio State's faltering offense. Unfortunately for the badgers, it's being played in Ohio, so all the numbers say it should be Ohio State in a squeaker instead. However, I had a dream last night. In my dream, a Wisconsin-fan friend of mine bested Greg Oden in a game of beerpong. I think it's an omen that Oden will have a subpar game, and tOSU's offensive struggles will continue, so I'm going against the computers (and against my rule of picking the home team whenever two top-10 teams meet).
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