January 13, 2024
On January 2nd, Inside Hitter published a calendar schedule for January NCAA D3 Volleyball matches. It included the calibrated preseason rankings for each team and showed for every game, which team was rated higher per the IH Preseason Rating. There were 32 games played matching D3 level teams through Saturday night January 13th. IH predicted every winner on the schedule.
Let’s hope everyone can check our math and see the validity of the rankings, at least early on in week one. IH expects a 90% win rate overall with its rating system on any given night or match.
And they said you would never use any of the math you learned in school? LOL.
How good are ratings? 538 had a great scoring system to measure quality of ratings. Brier Scores – i.e. 25-(100P(w) -100)^2/100, where P(w) = Forecasted probability of the team that actually won the game according to any model. Since your rating points are forecasted set deltas (d) between two teams playing, then the probability for any team to win a match can be generated reasonably well by P(w)=1/(1+e^-.54d), d being + for the FAV and – for the DOG. A model going 33-0 the first week doesn’t really show anything, other than a little luck for the resilience of Nazareth, in particular, and recognizing Cal Lu at home playing a near equal probably gets the job done.