NCAA Men's Basketball 1999-2000
Top 25 Measures and Ranking

For current rankings, see Jeff Sagarin's rating index

Linear Rank 04-04	Rank 02-29	Rank 1998-9	Measures in BCUs 04-04	Men's College Basketball Team (won-loss: opponent strength / best win / worst loss) thru 04-03	AP Rank 03-13	ESPN Rank 03-12
1	7	3	877	Michigan State (32-7 NCAA:6-0 646/847/517)	2	2
2	2	12	865	Cincinnati (29-4 NCAA:1-1 617/881/598)	7	6
3	4	1	858	Duke (29-5 NCAA:2-1 607/848/677)	1	1
4	1	9	856	Stanford (26-4 NCAA:1-1 588/858/649)	3	3
5	8	111	844	Iowa State (30-5 NCAA:3-1 581/841/551)	6	7
6	3	16	822	Arizona (27-7 NCAA:1-1 624/933/501)	4	4
7	15	21	820	Florida (29-8 NCAA:5-1 614/858/710)	13	11
8	5	47	814	Oklahoma State (26-7 NCAA:3-1 599/881/527)	14	15
9	11	106	805	LSU (28-6 NCAA:2-1 558/806/581)	10	9
10	19	53	804	Oklahoma (27-7 NCAA:1-1 588/891/700)	12	13
11	8	41	803	Syracuse (26-6 NCAA:2-1 581/781/565)	16	14
11	10	6	803	Ohio State (23-7 NCAA:1-1 593/865/599)	8	8
13	6	20	801	Temple (27-6 NCAA:1-1 612/942/649)	5	5
14	17	39	795	Tulsa (31-5 NCAA:3-1 528/865/464)	18	19
15	13	66	792	Texas (24-9 NCAA:1-1 648/877/727)	15	18
16	14	15	788	Indiana (20-9 NCAA:0-1 660/878/579)	22	17
17	12	23	787	Tennessee (25-7 NCAA:2-1 608/897/545)	11	10
18	18	10	786	St. John's (25-8 NCAA:1-1 618/935/485)	9	12
19	16	7	781	Kentucky (22-10 NCAA:1-1 673/800/581)	19	20
20	21	18	775	Purdue (23-10 NCAA:3-1 641/848/569)	25	24
21	24	2	774	Connecticut (25-10 NCAA:1-1 623/858/599)	20	21
22	24	44	771	Illinois (22-10 NCAA:1-1 639/761/698)	21	23
23	34	11	770	Wisconsin (22-14 NCAA:4-1 698/852/607)
24	23	29	764	Kansas (23-10 NCAA:1-1 645/727/757)
25	22	5	754	Maryland (25-10 NCAA:1-1 623/935/637)	17	16
Current Home Court Advantage = 77 BCUs

1. For Men's College Basketball: Top 300 teams rankings
2. For College Football predictions & Top 25 rankings
3. For College Football all 200+ rankings

How to predict

Logit measures predict as follows:
(a) Note down the BCUs of the guest team.
(b) Note down the BCUs of the home team.
(c) Add the home court advantage BCUs to the home team.
(d) The team with more BCUs will win (guest or home+advantage)
(e) Teams in the complete ranking of Top 300 will win over unranked teams.

Notes:

• Home court advantage is worth extra BCUs (Basketball Competency Units). These are added to the home team's BCUs.
• An advantage of 70 BCU's gives a team "2-to-1 on" odds of winning.
• Based on Rasch analysis of published results of games between Div. I teams at time of computation.
• Intended solely as the demonstration of a measurement method.
• Game scores and rankings were provided by a variety of Media and Internet sources, including ABC, NBC, CBS, ESPN, AP, Yahoo and the websites of the schools themselves.

The Health Care Finance Administration (HCFA) has recently approved Rasch "paired comparison" methodology for the identification of misvalued procedures, see Total Physician Work. Leon L. Thurstone perceived the necessity that measures be independent of sampling and testing specifics. Measures based on paired comparisons meet this criterion. Bradley and Terry proposed this model but from a descriptive, rather than measurement, perspective. Consequently, they noticed, but did not capitalize on, the linearity of the measures produced. Georg Rasch perceived the linearity of measures produced from ordinal data by logit-linear models.

Since mathematical expression of such models obscures their immediate utility and ease of application, they are illustrated here by a simple paired comparison analysis of NCAA game outcomes. Obvious advantages include:
(a) all teams are ranked, not just the favored few
(b) all teams are located on a linear measurement scale
(c) all teams are given equal attention
(d) the data are easy to obtain, even for non-experts
(e) rare, idiosyncratic results can be indentified, and, even if left unremedied, produce minimal distortion.
(f) it is noticeable, in these data, that the conventional ranking services pay too much attention to won-loss record - and even particular wins and losses (the immediate details), and not enough to strength of schedule (the big picture).

Thurstone, L.L. The method of paired comparisons for social values. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 1927b, 21, 384-400.

Bradley, R.A. and Terry, M E. Rank analysis of incomplete block designs I: The method of paired comparisons. Biometrika, 1952, 39, 324-345.

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