10,000 sims: Northeast Conference

The NEC is one of the toughest conferences to use computer models to simulate and it all revolves around LIU Brooklyn. For one there’s the fact that the Blackbirds seem to be awfully underrated by tempo-free statistics. Pomeroy expresses this by saying LIU finished fifth nationally in luck last season. Then there is the matter of the suspensions. We know they’re coming, but no one can tell you the true impact of them.

I tried to model LIU’s suspensions in the simulations and then I decided that this exercise was suffering from a classic case of overfitting. Thus I’ve decided to show you the results of the 10,000 simulations for Dan Hanner and Ken Pomeroy’s numbers without any additional consideration being taken for LIU. I think they’ll be illustrative enough.

First Ken Pomeroy’s results. Once again, this is the chance of winning the league including ties:

1. Robert Morris – 65.1%
2. Wagner – 27.3%
3. Quinnipiac – 16.4%
4. LIU Brooklyn – 12.2%
5. St. Francis (NY) – 4.4%
6. Sacred Heart – 1.8%
7. Central Connecticut – 0.7%
8. Mount St. Mary’s – 0.2%
9. Monmouth – 0.03%
10. Bryant – null
11. St. Francis (PA) – null
12. Fairleigh Dickinson – null

For the record: 23% of the simulations ended in a tie for first place. Still, RMU won 46.8% of its titles outright. When I did account for suspensions LIU’s chances didn’t drop too much. Their average win total actually remained the fourth highest. The top six teams averaged 10 wins per season or more, with the Colonials leading the pack at 14.3. Robert Morris went undefeated 1.1% of the time, while FDU went winless 1.3% of the time.

Now onto Hanner’s numbers:

1. Robert Morris – 79.4%
2. Wagner – 29.6%
3. St. Francis (NY) – 5.7%
4. LIU Brooklyn – 3.2%
5. Quinnipiac – 2.6%
6. Sacred Heart – 0.8%
7. Mount St. Mary’s – 0.05%
8. Monmouth – null
9. Central Connecticut – null
10. Bryant – null
11. St. Francis (PA) – null
12. Fairleigh Dickinson – null

Here Hanner continues his trend of being particularly enthralled with one mid-major team per conference. This time it’s Robert Morris, which is ranked 59th in the country. Let me express how improbable that sounds. No NEC team has finished in the top 100 in the nation in the entire KenPom era, which goes back to the 2002-03 season. The best was Wagner’s 112th finish last season (the RMU team that lost to Villanova and LIU’s first NCAA team were both ranked 118th.) Now, Hanner is saying that a team is projected to be in the top 60 in the country. (It’s worth noting that Pomeroy has RMU at 73rd overall.) I just don’t see either happening. Still, ratings like that are what produce numbers like these. In this scenario RMU averaged 15.7 wins per conference season and went undefeated 7% of the time.

We’ll know more about these teams by the time we get to conference play. I’m hoping that will allow us to make even better assumptions about the conference race and figure out just how good the top of the league can be. Starting out though, the computers think that this is Robert Morris’ league to lose.