A Decade of Statistical Hollywood

DAYTON (OH) -- It's hard to be good at something, but on occasion it's even more difficult to demonstrate a proficiency in repetitive failure when the whole world knows you've been slaving away to alter your trajectory. The harder you work, the further you fall behind. Others around you are enjoying greater successes with far lesser ambition, and the only thing you have to show for it is the windburn as they pass you by.

None of it makes sense to you. Your bloodlines are strong. The DNA is rich with kin from the past that set benchmarks instead of tripping over them. More frustrating, confusing, and downright maniacal are the random but consistent flashes of aptitude that lead you to believe there is a wherewithal inside you to not only cross the finish line but break the tape.

No one gets out of the blocks better and nobody wheezes harder at 50 meters. Most of the time, you never even make it to the tape and are carried off in a stretcher like a limp noodle.

That boy running the sprints is Flyer men's basketball. The blocks are the non-conference schedule, and everything beyond 50 meters -- let alone the white tape at the end -- is the demilitarized zone of the A10 schedule.

Or better yet, it's like a scene out of the film "The Running Man". Flyer basketball has been on the run for a decade, unable or unwilling to plant a flag in the ground and confront Professor SubZero, Fireball, and Dynamo for turf rights.

So who are we? We're Whitmann, Price, and Haddad "basking under the Maui sun." It's a great life -- if only we were still living.

PERFORMANCE CONSISTENCY

The Flyer Faithful have been almost homicidal in recent years about the routine collapses in the Atlantic10. Inside our own bubble however, perhaps we over-state the severity of the problem? Turns out, fans are actually under-stating it.

We've analyzed every A10 program over the last 10 years by studying the non-conference and conference records of every team and every season for the sole purpose of measuring the delta between winning percentage inside and outside the A10. We call this delta "Performance Consistency." Another definition: how often a team performs to their average. Regardless of talent, a specific team should see results both inside and outside the A10 that more or less reflects the talent within their program. Stronger teams that do well in the pre-conference schedule should see similar success reflected in the A10. Likewise, weaker teams should be weaker throughout the entire year. But this isn't about specific teams -- it's about programs. Which is why we've combed the stats over 10 years to marginalize all of the random highs and lows in order to gauge an accurate temperature of every institution.

ABOUT THE DATA

The data spans every season from 2004-05 to the current records of every team as of this writing for the 2013-14 season. That's 10 years.

For simplicity, we have counted all non regular season A10 games as non-conference games b/c they did not count in the official A10 standings. These games may include a few postseason games such as the NIT or NCAA, but may also include some A10 postseason tournament games.

We've included Xavier and Temple in the comparison for obvious reasons but use their 2013-14 non-conference and conference records from the Big East and AAC. We feel their performance in both leagues this year would reflect similarly were they playing an A10 schedule.

We cannot account for the unbalanced "pod system" of scheduling. This is largely a mechanism of athletic directors and coaches. Some teams obviously play (and choose to play) more difficult pods than others, but those are usually choices so we allow no white flags here.

St. Louis has played one less season in the A10 than the Flyers, so their averages are based on only nine seasons.

We did not include A10 newcomers George Mason and VCU because they have not played an A10 schedule over the last decade.

THE DATA

In analyzing the data, the most striking conclusion was this: programs with the smallest deltas (differences) between their non-conference and conference winning percentage were the blue bloods of the league, while the programs with the largest discrepancies between non-conference and conference winning percentage were the perennial bottom-feeders of the A10.

With one exception: Dayton.

The Flyers are dead last of all 13 A10 teams and the margins are so profound that is difficult to digest.

RANKINGS: 1-3

As most would expect, Temple and Xavier were the best in the league at finishing stronger than they started. They were the only two programs in the A10 to actually compile a better A10 record than non-conference record, creating a positive "A10 DELTA" value. Perhaps a bit surprisingly, St. Joseph's was third. While the Hawks have had more up-and-down seasons than the Flyers, their small negative delta represents the program's talent displaying a consistent product on the floor based on the talent at hand. When Phil Martelli had weaker teams, they were weaker all season. Stronger Hawk teams performed well all year.

RANKINGS: 4-6

Once again, these are the programs most fans would expect to be in the top half of the standings. They are consistent winners with a product that performs well both inside and outside the conference.

St. Louis has already won six more A10 games than the Flyers, despite playing only nine seasons in the league.

All three teams have had individual seasons of lower performance than the Flyers, but in those seasons each team's record inside and outside the league accurately reflected the talent on hand. Despite the highs and lows, all three programs have won more A10 games than Dayton.

RANKINGS: 7-9

As we can see, the delta continues to get larger. But not to anyone's surprise, the teams ranked here are generally more under-performing as a whole than those in ranked in the Top-6. Notice that not much separates all three teams however in terms of delta value: just 0.022. Even in the bottom half of the standings, things remain quite competitive.

What's interesting is Rhode Island has won just eight fewer A10 games than Dayton, while LaSalle has won just seven fewer. All of this in spite of both programs experiencing several apocalyptic seasons of overall futility.

RANKINGS: 10-12

There's no getting around it: these programs have been the dead weight of the A10 for years. Still, the overall deltas of each team are in the same zip code, especially when comparing Fordham and Duquesne. Taken one step further, the Rams and Dukes achieve deltas that are quite similar to UMass, Rhode Island, and LaSalle. Only when we look at St. Bonaventure, a program that has had improbable obstacles to overcome in the last 10 years, do we start to see some separation. Still, even these bottom-feeders were somewhat consistent, year-to-year, start-to-finish, based on the talent on hand.

RANKINGS: 13

Do your best to digest that A10 Delta value. It's not only the worst in the league by a mile, it's nearly twice as poor as 10 of the other 12 teams in the A10. Not only is Dayton consistently inconsistent, we're setting a benchmark that may never be equaled.

What should jump out most is the non-conference winning percentage -- it's the best in the A10 over the last decade and it's not even close. That's no small feat for two reasons: there have been some stellar programs in the A10 over this time frame, and the Flyers have played some of the most difficult non-conference schedules in the league. That winning percentage is not just an inflated number from feasting on non-league cupcakes. Just the opposite is true.

Things completely derail in the A10 however. The Flyers are exactly .500 in the A10 over the last 10 seasons (75-75). Marinate on that for a moment: Dayton has lost every other A10 game for a decade -- despite playing half of them at UD Arena.

So what's the massive delta telling us? It says that no other team in the league gets worse at a more pronounced pace than the Flyers from the beginning of the year to the end. Granted, our program ceiling started (and oftentimes finished) higher than other teams in the A10 such as St. Bonaventure or Duquesne, but the purpose of the data is to measure the consistency of a given product with a given set of goals.

CONCLUSIONS

Forget Dayton for a moment. Had we not talked stats and I just ranked every other program in the A10 based on overall performance and program strength, I'm not sure I could have ranked the first 12 schools any better than the stats ultimately dictated. Perhaps a school could move up or down a spot, but the rankings are an uncanny and accurate reflection of the state of each program over the last 10 years.

Then you include Dayton and the entire house of cards falls apart. It is the statistical wet dream of every mathematician -- the only team that not only looks out of place but purposely so. And yet it's a stark reality for Flyer fans young and old that continue to hang on long enough to see the day when things finish as they started.

The Flyer Faithful have sat through worse. This is not 4-26. But the frustration is similar because as the program elevates itself, so too do the expectations. No one person is at fault. This is not an Archie Miller problem or a Tim Wabler problem. It's beyond any one person and most of our imaginations.

It's a problem that filters down to the very chromosomes of our DNA. It's like hiding a birth mark: after a while you stop the charade, accept it, and move on.

Unfortunately, fans may start to move on too. It hasn't been one axe blow to the head, but death by a thousand cuts. When promised that "Arbeit Macht Frei", we work our fingers to the bone then get sent to the ovens.

Some trains were not meant to be boarded. We're cooked -- in every way a fan base can possibly be.

What we all want to hear: "Captain Freedom to wardrobe."