Conference Bias in the Polls: No Mountain-West Love

"The Nation's Best Point Guard" apparently.

I did a very quick study on how conferences/teams are underrated or overrated in the polls.

First, I combined the ESPN and AP Polls from Monday.

Here's a simple formula based on regression to add the vote totals from both polls for NCAA basketball:

Total Adjusted Votes= AP votes + (2*ESPN Votes+26)

The top-27 in this method is shown left.

All teams worse than #27 were given a simple "#40" as a placeholder . I then compared each of these team's rankings to my own ranking system, which is very similar to Ken Pomeroy's...I can just fiddle with it as I please :). From this, it's pretty easy to see that teams that have won a lot of close games are overrated and vice versa (if you trust us stat-geeks on the principle of 'luck').

To convert Luck (Win% - Expected Win%) to ranking deviation (Poll rank - my rank), I found the following easy equation:
Expected Ranking Deviation = 140 * Luck% - 0.38

So for each conference, I found the average luck of my top 49 (I stopped at 49 because that's where Murray is ranked) and found the following. I split the rankings into three categories

-Murray State (the only OVC team here, and the most overrated team in the country)
-Conferences (with at least 2 listed teams in the poll)
-Other Conferences (the total of each of the conferences with one bid)
 

Like so:

	#	Top 40 Avg Luck
Murray State	1	0.138
A10	2	0.016
WCC	3	0.009
MVC	2	0.004
Other Mid-Majors	5	-0.002
BE	9	-0.002
MWC	2	-0.007
B12	6	-0.012
ACC	5	-0.014
P12	2	-0.033
B10	6	-0.040
SEC	4	-0.048

Then I used the Expected Ranking Deviation formula to come up with each 'conference's average expected ranking deviation:

	#	ExpRkDiff
Murray State	1	18.9
A10	2	1.9
WCC	3	0.9
MVC	2	0.1
Other Mid-Majors	5	-0.7
BE	9	-0.7
MWC	2	-1.4
B12	6	-2.0
ACC	5	-2.4
P12	2	-5.0
B10	6	-6.0
SEC	4	-7.1

Then I simply subtracted each team's Expected Ranking Difference from their Actual Ranking Difference to give us an estimate of conference bias. The results are pretty intuitive:

	#	Top 40 Luck	ExpRkDiff	ActualRkDiff	Bias
Murray State	1	0.138	18.9	33.0	14.1
B10	6	-0.040	-6.0	-2.0	4.0
BE	9	-0.002	-0.7	3.0	3.7
ACC	5	-0.014	-2.4	1.2	3.6
SEC	4	-0.048	-7.1	-7.0	0.1
WCC	3	0.009	0.9	-0.7	-1.6
MVC	2	0.004	0.1	-1.5	-1.6
B12	6	-0.012	-2.0	-4.3	-2.3
P12	2	-0.033	-5.0	-8.0	-3.0
Other Mid-Majors	5	-0.002	-0.7	-5.4	-4.7
A10	2	0.016	1.9	-6.5	-8.4
MWC	2	-0.007	-1.4	-12.0	-10.6

The only real surprise to my eyes is the Big 12 having a bias of -2.3. Murray State is overrated by their ridiculously easy schedule which they haven't beaten to a pulp. The only four other overrateds are the rest of the power conferences minus the Pac-12, who is still in "recovery mode."