Maybe the adjustment was reasonable, but you need to reduce the magnitude of it a little so that it had less effect in the top half of your ratings. I was a bit surprised when you revealed what you had decided as I expected a lot smaller adjustment given that your ratings were already working pretty well.
So I did some more tinkering.
I think awarding 0-0.85 points (currently 0-0.77 pts) for wins against teams w/ under 0.500 records (to complete the continuum up to WVWTs) is merited. I don't think these points are really shaking up the top quartile, as those teams already have multiple WVWTs. So I'll keep this scoring mechanism in place.
The 50% SLB last week may have been too heavy. In general is the most subjective part of the system. I can tinker with this all day, to manipulate results. For example I can increase this past week's correct pick percentage to 74% by weighting SLBs in favor of Top 4, 8, and 16 losses and giving none for the rest. And of course there is no guarantee that method will improve results for a given week in the future.
The SLB is a necessary evil because when a team loses to another by one possession, most times the outcome can indicate relative strength. The choice is how much credit to give for demonstrating relative strength. I want to preserve the integrity of this system as much as possible while still including the SLB. The method though has to be applied the same, top to bottom. Therefore isolating Top 16 losses (though it may produce better results) is not fair.
I'll reduce the 50% to 25% this week. This gives an edge to teams that actually won vs teams that lost close (and teams like LSU will take a hit as a result despite their three top 4 losses, two by one possession).
I'd like to hear your thoughts L.C. when you get the chance.