Deep breath in. Deep breath out.

Old theologian types of which I was probably supposed to learn 

Calvin at St. Thomas

Huddle up everyone, because we’re about to engage in what is colloquially known as “real talk”.

Here goes.

St. Thomas is good. Very good. Very, very good, in fact. Not “oh my gosh a win here would be impossible” good, but certainly “they look like the best team in Division III and it’s not even really close” good.

That’s not to undersell Calvin – they’re playing like a top-five team themselves lately (Massey has them fourth right now) – but the gap between the team that might be second best in the division (let’s say it’s North Central (Ill.)) and St. Thomas appears rather large.

Here are the numbers:

Raw Offensive Efficiency:

Average Sweet Sixteen team: 110.0

Calvin: 111.6

St. Thomas: 124.4

Let me put this gently: St. Thomas’ offense is more than two standard deviations above the mean EVEN WHEN ONLY CONSIDERING SWEET SIXTEEN TEAMS. Wow. They easily look like the best offensive team Calvin has seen this year.

Raw Defensive Efficiency:

• Average Sweet Sixteen team: 92.8
• St. Thomas: 91.4
• Calvin: 85.4

Calvin’s defensive efficiency is second best among remaining teams (an inconsequential 0.003 points per possession behind Randolph-Macon). St. Thomas is still good themselves – above average even for a Sweet Sixteen team – but they don’t appear to be much different than what Calvin has already seen with Rose-Hulman and UW-Stevens Point. A bit worse than the former, and a bit better than the latter.

Both teams play at a normal, though slightly below average, pace. St. Thomas usually gets about 66 possessions, and Calvin’s been playing at about 67 possessions/game pace this year. Average is usually 67-69 possessions so this game will feel neither fast nor slow*.

*St. Thomas appears to play a pressure defense (including what might be iterations of both a full-court and half-court press), so it might feel more frantic than a typical 66 possession game.

Numbers that might include actual things you’ve seen in a box score.

The Tommies are a really good three point shooting team. On the year they’re 200-472 which equals out to an outstanding .424 percentage. The good news is, that for all their success in making three point shots, they don’t shoot them all that often.

• Calvin average three point attempts per game: 16.0
• MIAA average three point attempts per game: 16.2
• St. Thomas average three point attempts per game: 16.3

The strength of the Knights’ defense is in the interior with all their size and length, so the ability to shoot over that could eat into their defensive advantage. If St. Thomas can continually get off good looks from range, it could be a bad night for Calvin.

Rebounding, as always, is going to be key as well. You simply can’t allow a team that shoots this well to receive second (and third) looks when they happen to miss. That’s a big part of what shut down UWSP last weekend. Calvin didn’t give up offensive rebounds to them until the game was pretty much out of reach.

Another interesting dynamic is going to be each team’s interior defense. On two point shots this season, St. Thomas has shot .569. Calvin’s defense has allowed opponents to shoot only .390.

Calvin’s offense has shot .508 on two-pointers, and St. Thomas’ defense has allowed opponents to shoot .501.

It doesn’t necessarily look like it at first glance, but this comes out to a huge advantage for Calvin. The average MIAA team shot .474 on two point attempts this season (let’s use that as a proxy for a D3-wide average), so we see that St. Thomas doesn’t look very good at defending the two point shot. The strength of their defense appears to rest on rebounding and forcing turnovers, so if Calvin can take care of the ball, they may be able to feast on the inside with guys like Tyler Kruis and Tom Snikkers.

Just for fun, Calvin’s offensive numbers vs. St. Thomas’ defensive numbers with respect to league average on the two-point shot suggest an expected two-point shooting percentage for Calvin in this game of .561.

St. Thomas’ offense versus Calvin’s defense would be expected to shoot .511 on two-point shots.

In conclusion

We could probably delve into a myriad of other numbers or scenarios, but we’re ultimately going to have to see what transpires on the floor.

The good news: Get past St. Thomas and you won’t see an opponent this tough again the rest of the tournament. Get past St. Thomas and you’re also probably the favorite to win it all.

My raw efficiency number suggest something like a 72-65 St. Thomas victory, and give Calvin a 37% chance to win.

The Massey ratings predict a 71-63 St. Thomas victory, giving Calvin a 22% chance to win.

Those wouldn’t be bad results, but there is reason to hope for better. This is a game Calvin can win – which would have been incredible to think about a year ago, that they could be on the road against the #1 team and have a real shot – but they really, truly can win.

They’ve been playing fantastic ball for several weeks now. St. Thomas better be as scared about Calvin as I am about them because if, they’re not, they’re looking past a really darn good Calvin team.

The Boss Back

"Somebody call the Brink(s) truck"
          -Rick Ross

I'm unsure whether it was (occasional FFTMAG author) Zac or me that quoted the above rap lyric after Jordan Brink hit his fifth three pointer of the ballgame on Saturday night, but it seemed apropos at the time. I might have even embeded video of the song -- had a family-friendly version existed -- and gone on to laud the incredible game that Mr. Brink had in Calvin's not-as-close-as-the-final-score-indicates 67-58 win over UW-Stevens Point.

But I'm not going to go on-and-on about how clutch Jordan was in scoring 21 points and hitting on all five of his three point attempts because that's not what this team is about. It's not about individual scoring efforts or any particular player carrying the team.

On Saturday it was Brink with the game-high 21 points, but last week against Rose-Hulman it was Tom Snikkers with 20. Against Hope in the MIAA Championship, Bryan Powell led the way with 18 and Tyler Kruis had a game-high 15 against Adrian.

So, in the last four games -- all with Calvin having their backs against the proverbial wall -- a different member of the team has come out on top in scoring. And it's been like that all year. If one guy has a good matchup, they all look to feed him. This team doesn't play selfishly, they're not out there looking to pad a stat line, and they quite clearly share a common goal.

In both rounds of NCAA Tournament play, the opposing team's broadcasters have commented on how impressed they were with Calvin's balanced box scores. The Knights have four guys averaging between 10.5 and 13.5 points, but rarely, it seems, do games play out that way. The four top scorers don't necessarily hit double figures each game, content to play a role when it's not working for them, but they're each capable of making plays and taking over a game if it fits inside the team flow.

And it's not even about the top scorers. Calvin is where they are for multiple reasons. They're one of the (if not the, singular) best rebounding teams in the country, and guys like Mickey DeVries and Dan Stout play big roles in that department. Stevens Point didn't get their first "real" offensive rebound until there were about five minutes left to play (the first credited offensive rebound came at about 10 minutes in the second half on a Tyler Dykstra block that ended up out of bounds). When teams don't get second chances, they don't score very much.

It's a team game and Calvin's playing it that way. I should be writing about every single guy wearing the maroon and gold, but I can't because my mind is really just "WE ON! WE ON! WE ON! WE ON!" right now. I'm just, wow, I love this.

Efficiency Numbers

Estimated possessions: 59.4
Offensive Efficiency: 112.8
Defensive Efficiency: 97.7

That's actually Calvin getting things done more on the offensive side than on the defensive side -- which is a little bit unusual -- but UW-Stevens Point is as good of an offensive team as they've seen all season, so that defensive number is still pretty darn good.

The Knights were up 14 with darn near 0:30 to play, but a late three pointer and a layup cut the game to single digits by the final buzzer. They have more or less clowned two opponents on their home court in the NCAA Tournament.

Calvin's last three games -- vs. Hope, at Rose-Hulman, at UW-Stevens Point -- have probably been their best three games of the year. This is the right time of year to peak.

In which the author quotes himself

This came all the way back on October 25:

19 to 21 wins heading into the MIAA tournament with a 12-2 or 11-3 conference record and a league championship. They’ll grab an NCAA tournament berth and make a Sweet 16 appearance.

It was 22 wins heading into the MIAA Tournament with a 13-1 conference record, a league championship, an NCAA Tournament berth, and a Sweet Sixteen appearance. I was way off.

Looking ahead

St. Thomas is up next. They're good, and that's an understatement. Perhaps I'll have numbers and other nerdy things to come.

On Tempo, Reality, and On To The Next One

This will be a slightly scattered post, so for that I apologize, but I figured I wanted to write something rather than nothing, so this qualifies.

Calvin did something that no one predicted they’d do which was beat Rose-Hulman by 20 points. On the road. In the NCAA Tournament.

This was billed as a defensive battle. According to Massey, Rose-Hulman was the #1 defense in the country and Calvin was #12. The predicted score was something in the 50’s for both teams. Rose-Hulman hit their mark by scoring 52 points, but Calvin exploded for 72.

72 isn’t usually an “explosion”, but this was against THE NUMBER ONE DEFENSE IN THE COUNTRY. Except, not realy.

The Engineers were the top team in terms of points allowed per game, but that doesn’t necessarily qualify them as the best defense. You see, RHIT typically plays at a slower than average pace and therefore gives the opponent fewer opportunities to score. They averaged about 58 possessions per game in the regular season compared to the typical average of about 68. Considering an average team maybe scores a point per possession, that’s 10 points per game of “defensive quality” that’s really just a result of them playing slower games. That still leaves them with a very good defense, but probably not #1, and probably no better than Calvin’s.

Tempo, Tempo, Tempo

Tempo

Rose-Hulman was dubbed the better defensive team, but Calvin actually had better numbers on a per-possession basis. Calvin’s defensive efficiency rating (points allowed per 100 defensive possessions) was 85.2 heading into the game and Rose-Hulman’s was 86.6. When it came to actually stopping the opponent on any given possession, the two were virtually identical. (It should also be noted that these two numbers are very, very good).

In order to do a more rigorous analysis, one would need to consider the strength of each team’s opponents, but both played Top-100 (ish) schedules (Calvin’s is #68 and RHIT’s #101 according to Massey), so it’s probably pretty close. If anything it would under-value Calvin relative to Rose-Hulman.

This is an example of why per-possession metrics (otherwise known as tempo-free metrics) give us a more accurate picture of team quality than per-game metrics.

Reality

Calvin is a good offensive team. Not spectacular when it comes to NCAA Tournament teams, but probably still at least average for a Round-of-32 team. So how then did they score 72 points against the not-#1-but-still-very-good Rose-Hulman defense?

They probably got a bit lucky.

Calvin doesn’t typically shoot at eye-popping percentages – they’re at .471 for the season – but on Saturday night they shot 82% in the second half to run away with it (61% for the game). It’s true that they got a few easy buckets in transition as they broke RHIT’s press a few times, but 82% is ridiculous and won’t happen again. I don’t mean to rain on the parade at all, but you’re not going to see Tom Snikkers, Tyler Kruis, Mickey DeVries, and Dan Stout combine to go 10-11 on jump shots very often. They all can knock down those shots, but they can’t knock down those shots at a 90%+ clip.

A little bit of positive randodm variation never hurt anybody (well, except for Rose-Hulman in this case), but if Calvin shot a more “normal” percentage then they might have 10-14 of those points off the board. That would have made the game a little bit more interesting at the end.

This isn't to devalue what Calvin did one bit -- I think they're the better team between the two, even on the road -- but if they were to re-play the game I'd pick the Knights by about five, not twenty.

On To The Next One

It's really unfortunate that Calvin is going to have to hit the road for this one rather than meeting UW-Stevens Point at a neutral site or at home. Traveling by bus nearly seven hours is rarely a recipe for success -- especially against a team like Stevens Point -- but the Pointers can be beaten.

UWSP has been without one of their better players, Tyler Tillema, for the second half of the season. That has hurt them quite a bit, but they were still strong enough to claim the regular season WIAC title. And teh WIAC champion is usually one of the best three or four teams in the country. I'm not sure the Pointers are playing quite at that level right now, but they sure are good and could beat anyone in the country on any given night.

Like Rose-Hulman, they play at a little big slower pace (though not as slow as the Engineers), but they (i.e. UW-Stevens Point) are more of an offensive team than a defensive one. Their defense is likely better than their raw numbers suggest -- given the fact that they play in arguably the best league in Division III -- as is probably their offense.

UWSP

Pace: 61 possessions per game

Offensive efficiency rating: 113.2

Defensive efficiency rating: 96.2

Massey strength of schedule: #2

Calvin

Pace: 67 possessions per game

Offensive efficiency rating: 111.5

Defensive efficiency rating: 85.3

Massey strength of schedule: #68

Calvin has the edge from a raw-numbers standpoint, but we would really want to adjust Stevens Point's numbers up to account for their schedule.

These raw numbers -- including for a simple home court advantage multiplier in favor of the Pointers -- suggest a three-point Calvin win. It would take something like a five point adjustment (in any combination of OEff or DEff) in favor of Stevens Point for the numbers to predict an even score. I have no idea what a reasonable strength of schedule factor should be, but let's just say this game looks like it should be quite close.

Massey is predicting a five point Calvin loss, for whatever that's worth.

The good news is that Calvin has been playing just about their best basketball of the season the last two weeks. They needed to win the MIAA Tournament to get into the NCAA Tournament so they've been in win-or-go-home mode for three games. These are their numbers:

	OEff	DEff	Margin
Adrian	121.9	71.5	50.4
Hope	110.9	82.1	28.8
Rose-Hulman	121.7	87.9	33.8

As a simple rule-of-thumb, efficiency margins of 28.0 and above mean "there's no way this team could beat you". That's not really true, of course, in a one-game setting but if a team could put an efficiency margin of 28 or better for a season, they'd be darn near undefeated.

As you can see, Calvin has treated Adrian, Hope, and Rose-Hulman* -- all teams who have spent time in the d3hoops.com Top 25 this year -- as a bunch of ragamuffin cupcakes.

*Caveats that Adrian wasn't the same team on March 1 that they were on January 1 and that Hope was more or less a Preseason Top-25 team.

We shouldn't expect Stevens Point to go down that easily, but whatever sort of thing Calvin has found recently, let's keep going with that.

Our Bracket of Death is Deathier Than Your Bracket of Death

I am, at the same time, both (1) thrilled about Calvin’s inclusion in the field of 62 for the NCAA Tournament and (2) not thrilled about their draw. It wasn’t completely unexpected that Calvin would have to start on the road – the writing was on the wall when they were regularly ranked fifth and sixth in the region by the Great Lakes committee – but there was a chance that they’d get a home game, and that, obviously, would have been more pleasant. But even after we look past the home/road decision, we see that Calvin has a tough road ahead.

First of all, let’s reiterate that the tournament timeline is different this year. We typically have Friday-Saturday pods of four teams on the first weekend that get us down to the Sweet Sixteen and then Friday-Saturday sectionals the following week that whittle the field down to the Final Four. This year, however, the tournament is being stretched so that the D-III (and D-II) championship games line up with the D-I Final Four weekend. So here’s our new one-year schedule:

Saturday, March 2: Round of 62 @ campus sites

Saturday, March 9: Round of 32 @campus sites

Saturday, March 16: Sweet Sixteen @campus sites

Friday, March 22: Elite Eight @ Salem, VA

Saturday, March 23: Final Four @ Salem, VA

Sunday, April 7: Championship Game @ Atlanta, GA – (Monday, April 8 should a “we don’t play on Sunday” team such as Calvin make it there)

So we’re usually looking at the four regions of 16 teams each as groups that will have to meet on campus sites until the neutral floor of Salem, VA (the traditional Final Four site), but this year we’re (I’m) more focused on the sub-regions of eight teams that will eventually meet for the Elite Eight round in Salem. This year’s committee was probably more hamstrung with the first three rounds – having to make sure most/all were within 500 miles to avoid the cost of flights – but were more free to move these groups of eight around to balance the bracket. Whatever, I can tell you’re bored.

Anyway, here’s Calvin’s sub-region with Massey Rank noted parenthetically:

Calvin (#8) at Rose-Hulman (#23)

Northwestern (Minn.) (#82) at UW-Stevens Point (#4)

Aurora (#72) at St. Thomas (#1)

St. Norbert (#28) at Wheaton (#10)

That’s four top-10 teams and six top-30 teams. When it comes to the tournament, everyone’s good, but this is a meat grinder. Obviously the national committee isn’t setting out to balance the bracket according to Massey Rating – they’re using the handbook criteria – but it sucks all the same. From the way the criteria looks, the seeding/hosting priority order in this group/region/sectional looks like (in order): St. Thomas, UW-Stevens Point, Wheaton, Rose-Hulman, St. Norbert, Calvin, Northwestern (Minn.), Aurora. So Calvin will likely be needing a major upset or two if they hope to host a future round. Potentially Calvin and St. Norbert could be flipped in the above order.

Just for fun, here’s the sub-region just below Calvin’s (the one that they’ll meet up with in the Elite Eight) looks like this:

Delaware Valley (#120) at Virginia Wesleyan (#16)

Rutgers-Newark (#67) at Christopher Newport (#37)

Wesley (#47) at Williams (#17)

Staten Island (#121) at Catholic (#24)

No top-10 teams and only three top-30 teams. I want to go to there.

The term “bracket of death” has been floated out with respect to the region that includes:

Spalding (#68) at Washington U (#12)

Transylvania (#39) at Illinois Wesleyan (#6)

Dubuque (#36) at UW-Whitewater (#2)

Centre (#61) at North Central (Ill.) (#3)

So yeah, sucks that there’s a possibility for a would-be, could-be Final Four matchup in the second round, but overall this isn’t really any more “bracket of death” than the one Calvin’s in. The two regions look equally difficult – save for the higher Massey-ranked teams all having home games in this second one. We’re talking about seven of Massey’s top-ten teams existing in these two sub-regions (plus the #12). That leaves only three top-tens to be spread across the other six sub-regions. Cool.

So it is, of course, true that “you’ll have to beat these teams sooner or later”, but knowing that Calvin is going to (likely) have to play all road games in perhaps the toughest section of the bracket is not an encouraging thought.

But one can’t think of it like that. We have a full week in between games, so it’s full focus on Rose-Hulman and then we can worry about Stevens Point when we get to that. I’ll break out some numbers on RHIT a bit later.

All The Marbles

David Rietema has been really good and I haven't given him enough ink.

I'm sitting here eating my lunch and waiting for the selections/pairings to be announced and trying to figure out why I haven't written on here following the MIAA Championship. I guess I'm just too pumped up about it to sit down and put together any thoughts. I don't even remember details of the game except Calvin was trailing early, then took the lead, then took a big lead, then the buzzer. I guess that's good enough.

All the credit and a hearty "well done" go out to Coach Vande Streek, the seniors, and the whole team for what they've done this year -- right up to the latest performance. The regional rankings last Wednesday were pretty clear: win the MIAA automatic bid or you're probably not getting in the NCAA Tournament. So, with their backs against the wall, Calvin goes and beats Adrian by 27 and then Hope by 20. Yawn, end of story moving on.

Outside of a rough weekend in Wheaton ALL THE WAY BACK IN EARLY DECEMBER, they pretty much dominated their schedule. Sure, there was the close three point loss to Hope on the road, but that's not a big deal. They surely weren't playing their best that afternoon, but the result wasn't unexpected or out of the ordinary.

They've given us every reason to believe that they can compete on the national stage, and now they'll get their chance.

Efficiency Numbers for the MIAA Championship Game

Estimated number of possessions: 69
Offensive efficiency rating: 110.9
Defensive efficiency rating: 82.1

Hope isn't at maybe the traditional level that we've been accustomed to seeing the last seven years or so, but they're still pretty good. If the NCAA Tournament was the top 62 teams in terms of how good they really are, Hope would be in. And yet Calvin utterly dominated them here. That's not meant to be a knock on Hope, just a comment on how good Calvin actually is. The Knights proved without a doubt that they were the class of the MIAA this year.

Anyway, the selection show is about to start...

Do. Or Do Not. There Is No Try.

This is basically Calvin's entire team resting because they thought there was a game but there wasn't.

We're all going to watch on Matchup Monday but, should Calvin fail to win the MIAA's automatic bid into the NCAA Tournament, they're not going to hear their name called. I mean, we're going to want it, and hope for it, and strain to hear it, but once we've exhausted all 19 fingers and toes (that's normal, right?)  ticking off Pool C candidates we're going to come to terms with the hard truth.

Calvin is locked into an in-region winning percentage greater than .900, but they're not going to get an at-large big. We've seen the regional rankings and we know this is the case -- we don't believe it -- but we know it.

So heading into this MIAA Tournament Calvin needed to heed the advice of Master Yoda. You either DO win the AQ or you DO NOT. There's really no room for TRY.

I was nervous as heck heading into Thursday's semifinal with Adrian. They've given Calvin everything they had (and more) over the last three years and it's never been easy. It's true that they're a shell of the team that came into MIAA play undefeated and ranked #7 in the nation, but that defense has been there all season, and it's that defense that's given Calvin fits.

But the Knights didn't mess around with an overmatched Bulldog team. They pretty much took it right to them on both ends of the floor and, though they didn't put the game away in the first half, quickly stretch the lead to a comfortable number.

Adrian never really made a run at Calvin in the second half and it was clear with 10 minutes to play that Calvin was going to coast to a relatively easy victory. They were efficient, tough on defense, took care of the ball, rebounded well, didn't foul, and shared the ball. It was, quite frankly, a better played game than we could have asked for.

But that's not enough. It doesn't really matter that Calvin won by 27 and not three the result is the same. It only counts for one win which is one short of two, and two's the number of wins they need in this conference tournament in order to make the big dance. There's no time to rest or get cocky because it's still win-or-go-home and you-know-who is coming to town on Saturday.

Efficiency Numbers

They were good.

Estimated possessions: 58
Offensive Efficiency: 121.9 (points per 100 possessions)
Defensive Efficiency: 75.5 (points per 100 possessions)

100 is roughly average on the efficiency scale, and Calvin has performed around 110 on the offensive end and 85 on the defensive end for the season. Needless to say beating those numbers by 10 on each end is a very good thing.

Definitive Proof That The NCAA's "New" SOS Calculation Method Is Wrong

We had a revelation this week courtesy of Dave McHugh of D3hoops.com (and Hoopsville). The NCAA Championships Committee has changed the way they're computing the strength of schedule component that is a part of the primary selection criteria for the NCAA Tournament.

Strength of schedule (SOS) is made up of two components: opponents' winning percentage (OWP) and opponents' opponents' winning percentage (OOWP). They're calculated in a similar manner, but the concept of OWP is easier to grasp and "see" so I'll focus on that one component for the purpose of this blog post (but you can apply the same principles to OOWP).

The NCAA realizes that home games and road games differ in difficulty, so they've decided to add in a multiplier (to both OWP and OOWP) of 0.75 for home games, 1.25 for road games, and 1.00 for neutral site games. This isn't a change from last year.

Anyway, the old way to compute OWP and OOWP (I'll also call it the correct way) was computed using the average of the opponents' W/L percentage. For example, if a team played two teams with records of:

at home vs. 3-1 (.750)
on the road vs. 4-2 (.667)

Their OWP was calculated to be [ (.750 x .75) + (.667 x 1.25) ] / 2 = .698.

The new way (I'll also call it the incorrect way) is computed using the sum of the opponents' wins and losses to come up with an overall percentage. So for the same two teams above it would be [(3 x .75) + (4 x 1.25)] / [(4 x .75) + (6 x 1.25)] = .690.

This small example is only to show that there is a difference between the two calculation methods. It's only a two-game portion of a schedule, and a .008 difference isn't huge, but let's consider another example.

Opponent	W	L	PCT	Location	MULT	Old OWP	New W	New L	New OWP
Team A	19	1	0.950	Away	1.25	1.1875	23.8	1.3	-
Team B	8	8	0.500	Home	0.75	0.375	6.0	6.0	-
Team C	8	8	0.500	Home	0.75	0.375	6.0	6.0	-
Team D	8	8	0.500	Home	0.75	0.375	6.0	6.0	-
Team E	8	8	0.500	Home	0.75	0.375	6.0	6.0	-
Team F	8	8	0.500	Home	0.75	0.375	6.0	6.0	-
Team G	8	8	0.500	Home	0.75	0.375	6.0	6.0	-
Team H	8	8	0.500	Home	0.75	0.375	6.0	6.0	-
Team I	8	8	0.500	Home	0.75	0.375	6.0	6.0	-
Team J	8	8	0.500	Home	0.75	0.375	6.0	6.0	-
Team K	8	8	0.500	Home	0.75	0.375	6.0	6.0	-
Team L	2	10	0.167	Away	1.25	0.208	2.5	12.5	-
TOTAL						0.429	86.3	73.8	0.539

So it's a road game against a really good 19-1 team, a bunch of home games against 8-8 teams, and a road game against a bad 2-10 team. The old method gives an OWP of .429 and the new method gives an OWP of .539. Which is right? It's hard to say, but all those home games against .500 teams makes it seem like it should be a below .500 OWP. I like the first method. But that's really not my point. The real point I'm going to make comes when we flip all those home games to road games.

Opponent	W	L	PCT	Location	MULT	Old OWP	New W	New L	New OWP
Team A	19	1	0.950	Away	1.25	1.188	23.8	1.3	-
Team B	8	8	0.500	Away	1.25	0.625	10.0	10.0	-
Team C	8	8	0.500	Away	1.25	0.625	10.0	10.0	-
Team D	8	8	0.500	Away	1.25	0.625	10.0	10.0	-
Team E	8	8	0.500	Away	1.25	0.625	10.0	10.0	-
Team F	8	8	0.500	Away	1.25	0.625	10.0	10.0	-
Team G	8	8	0.500	Away	1.25	0.625	10.0	10.0	-
Team H	8	8	0.500	Away	1.25	0.625	10.0	10.0	-
Team I	8	8	0.500	Away	1.25	0.625	10.0	10.0	-
Team J	8	8	0.500	Away	1.25	0.625	10.0	10.0	-
Team K	8	8	0.500	Away	1.25	0.625	10.0	10.0	-
Team L	2	10	0.167	Away	1.25	0.208	2.5	12.5	-
TOTAL						0.637	126.3	113.8	0.526

It's an all-road schedule against nine teams that are at least .500 and one team below .500. The old method says this is a decently tough schedule and gives it a .637 OWP. The new method says it's only a decently tough schedule and gives it a .526 OWP.

BUT WAIT! The new method gives a lower OWP value for the all-road schedule (.526) than it did when eight of the games were at home (.539)!

We we simply sum the games up like this (instead of taking the average of the percentage), we're not giving each game (opponent) equal weight in our OWP calculation. This is especially true in conjunction with the home/away multiplier (sometimes known as HAM). In the "new" method, the HAM doesn't make it so road games are "tougher" than home games, it just makes it so road games weigh more heavily than home games. This is probably the opposite of what should be true.

Want even more fun? Let's make all those games in the above example home games.

Opponent	W	L	PCT	Location	MULT	Old OWP	New W	New L	New OWP
Team A	19	1	0.950	Home	0.75	0.7125	14.3	0.8	-
Team B	8	8	0.500	Home	0.75	0.375	6.0	6.0	-
Team C	8	8	0.500	Home	0.75	0.375	6.0	6.0	-
Team D	8	8	0.500	Home	0.75	0.375	6.0	6.0	-
Team E	8	8	0.500	Home	0.75	0.375	6.0	6.0	-
Team F	8	8	0.500	Home	0.75	0.375	6.0	6.0	-
Team G	8	8	0.500	Home	0.75	0.375	6.0	6.0	-
Team H	8	8	0.500	Home	0.75	0.375	6.0	6.0	-
Team I	8	8	0.500	Home	0.75	0.375	6.0	6.0	-
Team J	8	8	0.500	Home	0.75	0.375	6.0	6.0	-
Team K	8	8	0.500	Home	0.75	0.375	6.0	6.0	-
Team L	2	10	0.167	Home	0.75	0.125	1.5	7.5	-
TOTAL						0.382	75.8	68.3	0.526

Yeah, so the "new" method gives an all-home schedule the exact same OWP as when they were all road games. That's because the HAM is only scaling the number of games in the new method, it's not actually changing the perceived difficulty of the game (the percentage).

This isn't just my opinion, this isn't just a different way to do things, this is simply wrong.