I was actually expecting worse from the bottom of the MAC thus far. CMU and WMU are bad, as expected. They’ve played tough schedules so their poor record thus far is as expected. EMU has exceeded my expectations. They played IU tight then beat a solid Illinois State squad. They lost by just 1 on the road at NKU. Shame they couldn’t pull that out. Then MSU beat them pretty good. They are playing WIU as we speak. That’d be a solid win. Vegas had them favored by 1/

NIU beat Washington to open the season which is probably the biggest surprise of the year for me this season in the MAC. That’s possibly a Top 100 win. They’ve played more like I’d expect since that game (badly)

Akron is the big letdown. They did win today but looked horrible in their last two loses. Wins by Toledo and Kent today will put them just outside the Top 100 in a lot of the rankings. Miami is in that area as well.

Ball State and BG aren’t good either, but they’ve at least managed to be competitive in all of their games

Yes ... Gates did play for Heath. And BTW, Gates is also left-handed!!!

Flo sports is an online subscription service. Lots of high schools broadcast o. Their platform. I don't know if they have an app; I've only ever used them through a browser.

Belmont rebounds from a 30 pt drubbing by LSU with a win over a very good Drake squad…

Iona beat ranked Alabama.

I saw some of Drake - Belmont. I'm not sure Drake is so great. The guy they had guarding 6-11 Muszinski (sp?) looked like he was around 6-4 so moose rang him up for around 30. (After LSU held him to 5)

As far as Illinois State being good? Can't vouch for that. They were 7-18/4-14 last season (10th place) and 10-21/5-13 (9th place the year before). They were really good in 2016 but truth be told, haven't made the big dance since the 1990's when Stallings was the coach.

One of the RPI had Drake ranked #1 in the nation a while back... so much for the early season computer rankings. I'm pretty sure Gonzaga could give them a game.

The biggest positive for Belmont is that Drake is in the MVC which is the conference they are moving to next fall, bolting the OVC's well-deserved sinking ship. That's what the OVC gets for snubbing the University of North Alabama when they upgraded to FCS/D-1. But the win over Drake will restore some confidence after the boat-racing Belmont took at LSU which could have been taken as a preview of life after Muszinski who only had 2 points after the first few minutes. LSU was not even ranked but pretty sure they could beat Drake by 30 as well.

Switching between LSU and the Belmont - Iona game. Belmont in charge, early.

LSU - Penn State to OT.

"One of the RPI had Drake ranked #1 in the nation a while back... so much for the early season computer rankings. I'm pretty sure Gonzaga could give them a game."

Greencat, RPI rankings that have only taken into account the first one or two game's results are essentially worthless. Sure. But, that isn't what I'm talking about. I'm talking about ranking services that have numerous ways to balance both recent performance with past performance.

Since I'm here, if anyone is interested, I will discuss the four that I like and, if anyone else has some they find useful, please let me know.

Sagarin and Pomeroy: Both of these are relatively close in their valuations. Both draw quite a bit of info from the previous years performance until there is enough data to only rely on this years info. I like Sagarin's better because, and this is just my opinion, Pomeroy seems to be a bit biased towards the power conferences. Also, Sagarin has a category listed as RECENT that puts more emphasis on, you guessed it, recent performance of a team. In defense of Pomeroy, if you are willing to pony up $20 or so each year, a whole range of options become available to examine and play with the data.

Massey Aggregate Rankings: I like this one because they have almost 30 different ranking systems that they average into a score for each team. It gives you a varied methodology component that one system just can't provide. It should help eliminate blind spots when examining the data.

Last but not least, my favorite site is Bart Torvik's site. It really has lot's of fun ways to examine and play with the data and, it's free. If anyone has access to Pomeroy's paid site and can compare it to this one, let me know what you think. It has lot's of cool little metrics to examine like F.U.N. Which is kind of like a luck measurement but, as this explains, sometimes it's not luck.
http://adamcwisports.blogspot.com/2015/12/introducing-fun...

Greencat, Of course, none of the sites I have listed exclusively use data from just this year.

Sorry for the thread drift y'all... I think Borna is spot on, good to see LSU pick up a close win as apposed to being ticked off when they play us!

Thanks for this post. I recalled someone (possibly you) posting Bart Torvik's site on the recruiting board awhile back but I couldn't recall the name! Similar to what you stated, I mostly use Sagarin early in the season as the RPI is pretty useless this early. (A couple weeks ago, I saw Kent at #1!)

...

With regards to Illinois State, I definitely wouldn't call them "good." My use of the word "solid" is very intentional. Anytime a directional can beat a team from the MVC, I will happily take it! My bar for EMU is very, very low.

I just looked at LSU's schedule and they've got a trip to undefeated Wake Forest between now and our game there. That'll be an interesting game. Belmont appears better than any of Wake's wins thus far.

As has been noted on this site before, computers need data. To connect 360 teams they really need everyone to have 7 to 9 games against other D1s. So early in the season you have then average in preseason expectations, which slowly fade out in their weight over the first half, which defeats the main advantage of a computer in that it is unbiased and treats everyone the same, or you get a result that goes against human intuition.

Massey doesn't put systems with no bias in his comparison for the first couple of weeks. Now there are a handful that are running off of unbiased game data alone on the right side of the comparison. Minor differences in the question that the computer is trying to answer still lead to different results. Let alone the difference between an power ranking and an SOR ranking.

LSU by a bunch over Wake. WF hasn't really played anybody of note.

Oregon State is 1-5. The rest of that schedule, meh at best.

LSU over Wake 75-61. Going to take a good game by us to keep it below the 18 we lost to UK.

Indiana over Marshall 90-79.