Topsy-Turvy College Basketball world in 2020

I have been pulling my hair out trying to get a meaningful algorithm with such a topsy-turvy schedule where a good number of teams still have not played and many schools have played 3 or fewer games. Not only is the number of games inadequately low but the results have been swinglng wildly. KU is an fine example of that. KU defeats 195th ranked NDSU by 4 points then a few days later destroys 262nd ranked Omaha by 45 points. But without question, the craziest two numbers in the current DPPI are the rankings of Duke and Kentucky.

Duke is ranked 166th
Kentucky is ranked 181st.

How does that happen? Thanks to the spanking of Omaha, Kansas has clawed it's way back to 20th. But Our old rival Mizzou is making a push and is up to 14th. KU @ 20th is 3rd in the Big 12 behind Baylor (2nd) and West Virginia (3rd). The bottom of the Big 12 is looking grim with TCU at 112th, Iowa St. at 184th and Kansas St at 288th.

And as the season continues and COVID cancellations continue, it'll just get weirder. Normally in a year, it's not unusual for teams to have bad luck losing key players to injuries. A start on a top 20 team goes down, and in reality, maybe they're a top 50 team in that player's absence. Now you have the reality of either an entire team having to quarantine for 2 weeks or a significant portion of a team going down all at once.

Injury and bad luck are always part of the mix and it tends to work itself out. This year, with reduced numbers of games, it's really nuts.

At some level, I'm mentally treating this season as a big exhibition show. What would be really interesting would be if teams that have to cancel had those games treated like forfeits (totally unfair, I know).