Big 12 Team Graphs - Why I am even more optimistic about the Big 12 race

There are many methods for measuring trend. The first graph is the composite overall win projection improvement. It shows how much better the team has done in Big 12 play as compared to how well they were predicted to do based on their pre-conference performance. The thing you need to be aware of in this graph is it a relative graph to other teams. So improvement may be more about another teams fall than your improvement. You can see that Kansas St. has exceeded their projection by a whopping 3.6 games. This essentially means they have improved for some reason since the start of Big 12 play. KU is next. Of our three main competitors, OU is basically flat and West Virginia and Texas Tech are down ever so slightly. This bodes well for us. When you look at the following individual team game graphs, The first one to look at is Texas Tech. It shows clearly the impact the loss of Zach Smith has had. They have underperformed every game since he has been gone. Clearly they are not the same team that did so well in the pre-conference play. Now let's look at KU. Trending is a tricky business so saying KU is trending positively is a little more complicated than looking at the slope of the graph but we'll ignore that for now and look at the slope. It sure seems like KU is trending up. We have played the toughest half of our schedule and we are trending up. That is very good. Our most serious competitor seems to be OU at this point. OU seems to be trending slightly down. So we are 1 game up on them, we have played a tougher portion of our schedule and we are trending up. I like the looks of this. West Virginia is an interesting story. Every year they are the least consistent team. I am beginning to belive these numbers are a true reflection of the coaching and the style of play. Without going into the gory detailed explanation, inconsistency is worse for a good team than a bad team. So not only is West Virginia trending down but their low consistency would lead to an additional loss that is not in the rating. They are only projected to get 10.5 wins and the trending and inconsistency says they are far more likely to go to 10 than 11. OU is projected to get 12.3 wins but the downtrending would edge toward 12 more than 13. KU is projected to get 13.3 wins and is far more likely to get 14 than 12. So the analysis says KU has a 68% probability of winning a shared championship but the trending says we have a better chance of being over than than under. But of course, it is all about what happens on the court so let's get it done.