SportsRatings

Just started up the Dance Chance again a few weeks ago, hope to do a rundown of the latest version more regularly. This week: Three teams are near-total-locks for a bid and big favories for a 1-seed. Auburn is way up and Baylor is way down. And Miami of Ohio is the year's biggest question mark. No one will be surprised that Arizona , Duke , and Michigan are near-locks for a bid and all around 75%+ for a 1-seed. Michigan's huge lead in Strength projects them to win out going forward game-by-game, while Arizona's amazing Success score keeps them on top. The Wildcats are coming off two 20+point wins as is Duke.  Right now they're all very likely 1-seeds the question being who will be the overall 1-seed? Remember Duke plays Michigan in Washington DC in February. The Wolverines play Nebraska and Michigan State this week, that will be another big decider. And tonight Duke plays Louisville while Arizona travels to BYU . Gonzaga is a distant 4th 1-seed, and in fact their 1-...

After dominating the college basketball season thus far and ranking #1 in Strength by a whopping 10 points over #2 Gonzaga—a team they beat by 40—Michigan has suddenly become a terrible team, barely beating Penn State and then losing—at home!—to Wisconsin this afternoon.  It's hard to reconcile the team that beat San Diego State 94-54, Auburn 102-72, and Gonzaga 101-61—all in a row, neutral courts—with a team that can lay two eggs in a row like that. Michigan had played poorly before, but not since their 2nd game, an 85-84 overtime win in Detroit over Wake Forest.  The chart above shows their sudden downfall. Once a clear and distant #1, they're now playing like the #75 team in the country. Once a team that looked to go undefeated, now they'll be lucky to break .500 in the Big Ten. There's a small chance the Wolverines pull out of this slump, but what more evidence do you need? Two games in a row, almost the exact same performance level. It's pretty clear thei...

Georgia and Ole Miss are kicking off for the 2nd time this year. Ole Miss beat Tulane in the first round 41-10. That was the 2nd time this year they held Tulane to 10 points, having beat them 45-10 earlier in the year. Alabama beat Oklahoma in the Playoff after losing to the Sooners earlier in the year.  Indiana will face Oregon for the 2nd time this year next week. In other words, to make the finals, Indiana has to go 2-0 against Oregon, and Oregon has to beat the only team able to beat them so far. That's 4 rematches, and pretty much all of them could have been avoided by shuffling teams around a bit. But aren't the rankings sacred? You have to follow them. Ok, then they should shuffle the rankings based on how the brackets will avoid rematches as much as possible. First of all there shouldn't have been 5 SEC teams in the Playoff. My 3-strikes-and-you're-out rule would have eliminated Alabama. Then, just move teams up or down a seed—not interfering with the bye week o...

Can we make this a rule? Never let a 3-loss team in the Playoff again. Don't expand the Playoff to let 4-loss teams in, just make it a limit: 3 strikes and you're out. So teams might not want to play in their conference title game? Ok, but they don't get in if they do that. They have to play, and win, to get in the Playoff if they already have 2 losses. Teams might make their schedules easier if they can't get 3 losses? Well not long ago, having 2 losses was a dealbreaker and teams still scheduled tough games occasionally. And even after Playoff expansion teams were making easy schedules too. It won't change much to make a hard limit. Notre Dame should have been in rather than Alabama. No 3-loss team can claim they were the best team for the entire season. They lose their chance with that third loss, period. Indiana 38, Alabama 3 pretty much makes it clear, if it wasn't otherwise clear.

All the talk since Miami's upset of Ohio State has been the track record of the teams with a bye week. 0-5 so far! It's the only explanation for Miami beating The Great Ohio State! Now add in Oregon beating Texas Tech and it was at a fever pitch. Maybe we have to do something about it! If Indiana's 38-3 win over Alabama didn't settle the matter, here's the truth: there is no "Layoff penalty" or slow-start penalty. The fact is, among the six games lost by the team with a bye, only ONE was an upset. And that was due to Miami having a great defense and Ohio State a less-than-stellar offense. Going back to last year, remember that the teams that got a bye were all the conference winners, and two of them weren't even close to being among the best teams. Arizona State, ranked #12 in the Committee's Final Rankings, got a bye as the Big 12 winner, and lost to Texas, ranked #3 and heavily favored Boise State, ranked #9, got a bye and lost to #4 Penn State, ...

 Miami's huge 24-14 upset of Ohio State re-distributed the National Title Odds , giving most of the Buckeye's ~25% to Miami but also helping Indiana quite a bit by eliminating their toughest roadblock: Init R1 R2* R2* Total Seed Team Rec Odds Odds Odds % Chg % Chg 1. Indiana 13-0 45.2 43.8 47.8 +4.0 +2.6 2. Ohio State 12-2 26.8 24.6 0.0 -24.6 -26.8 3. Georgia 12-1 3.1 2.6 4.2 +1.6 +1.1 4. Texas Tech 12-1 7.7 8.9 11.0 +2.1 +3.3 5. Oregon 12-1 12.0 13.3 14.6 +1.3 +2.6 6. Mississippi 12-1 1.6 2.0 3.1 +1.1 +1.5 7. Texas A&M 11-2 0.6 0.0 0.0 0.0 -0.6 8. Oklahoma 10-3 0.3 0.0 0.0 0.0 -0.3 9. Alabama 11-3 0.5 0.8 1.3 +0.5 +0.8 10. Miami FL 12-2 2.2 4.0 17.9 +13.9 +15.7 11. Tulane 11-3 <0.1 0.0 0...

November's action at UFC 322 on November 15 and UFC Fight Night 265 on November 22 completely shook up the Welterweight MMA rankings, leaving the weight class with a new #1, three newcomers in the top five and four in the top ten. Most significantly, Islam Machachev successfully jumped from #1 at Lightweight to tops at Welterweight, dominating Jack Della Maddalena for five rounds and knocking the former champ to #3. Not that the #2 spot was safe, as Belal Muhammad dropped his 2nd straight fight, falling to Ian Garry who took over the top-challenger spot, jumping from #11. Former #3 Sean Brady also lost, getting knocked out in the first round by unbeaten Michael Morales who jumped from #13 to #4. Carlos Prates joined the top 10 at #8 after handing ex-champ Leon Edwards his third straight loss via a 2nd round KO.  Welterweight - 170 lb. limit Nov Rank Dec Rank Fighter WC Rating Rated Record Org November results; •December schedule -- 1  Islam Mak...