The x-factor of this team -- demonstrated

Okay I hope I can explain this well. If you look at all teams there are 2 variables we can quantify and and make some reasoned attempt to correlate that are critical and correlative to winning. They are talent and experience. Bill Self has spoken to the experience (age) of this team and to age in general and the benefit of having older, more experienced players. I have done a plot for at least the last 10 years that I call "the Seniority Scale." It is exactly what Self is speaking of, correlating age to wining. I have taken it a step further and I have made a reasoned attempt to quantify it. It is a challenge because there is another correlative factor and that is raw talent. My Seniority Scale graph is below. It is essentially the average age of the players weighted by minutes played versus the winning percentage. The logic being that more experienced teams tend to win more games. Obviously better talent wins more games as well. So I machinated and crunched and did all manner of derivative algorithmic jujitsu to come up with what are essentially "iso-talent" lines on the seniority scale graph. So you can plat a teams seniority scale (which is defined exactly) and plot against the win percentage. If the iso-talent lines are right, it will tell you where the talent level of that team is.



But now I need to revamp all of this because I have come up with a 3rd factor in winning in addition to talent and experience. I have called this the "mental toughness" but you could just as well call it the X-factor. As it turns out, this one is calculable and it is extremely significant. Before I throw the graphs at you, let me try to explain it. Whether you use the DPPI, KenPom, Sagarin or any other algorithm, is does mot matter. Obviously I am using the DPPI. When you look at t team in any given year, you derive their rating (along with the ratings of all Div 1 schools) and you calculate the probability of winning for every game. For each team you sum up these probabilities and this is the projected total number of wins for that team. Well obviously if the probability for a game, for instance, is 50-50, someone actually wins and someone actually loses. Thus, the winner won 1 game where the probability is only 50% of winning and thus they GAINED half of a game. Well since the ratings for every team are based on all these outcomes, the actual wins should be pretty close to the projected wins by definition. And in total (since it is a zero sum game) at the end of the season, for every team that actually won more games than their projection, there was another team that won commensurately fewer games than projected. Adding the difference between the projected and the actual wins is zero when adding all teams together.

Here is where it gets important. Some teams win more than their projected wins and some teams win less. And this nest statement is the core takeaway from this. The teams that win more than projected tend to always, year in and year out, be teams that have the best coaches and also this x-factor. I have called this x-factor mental toughness because mathematically it is defined by teams that tend to win the 50-50 games more often than not or teams that win the close grind it out games more often than not. There are a number of potential factors that go into winning more than projected, coaching perhaps being the most significant. But also things like mental toughness in grinding out close games, team togetherness and chemistry, etc. Whatever it is it is that ability to always win more than the projection. If you look at this factor over entire careers, the coaches that have the highest ratio of actual to projected wins emerge as all of the hall of fame and great coaches. So there is no doubt in my mind this is a real, very real factor. The problem from my standpoint is that it is hard to predict. I can demonstrate it's existence and validity beyond the shadow of any reasonable doubt. Plus it passes the all important smell test or subjectivity test. The challenge is making it predictive. That is where the difficulty comes in. But that discussion is for another day. Today I want to discuss the 2022 Jayhawks.

The 2022 Jayhawks, now that we are 1 game away from the last game, have demonstrably the best x-factor of any KU team under Bill Self. Now here is why this is so important. Believe it or not, the 2022 Jayhawks rank 9th among Bill Self's 19 teams in offensive efficiency. They rank 19th in defensive efficiency. Yes, they are 3rd in the country this season in offensive efficiency and 20th in defensive efficiency. That just indicates how ridiculously spoiled we have been under Self. And finally this team ranks out on the seniority scale/talent plot as an average talent team under Bill Self. There have been 7 more talented teams, 8 less talented teams and 3 about the same level of talent.



So how in the heck can an average talent team (by KU/Self standards) be on the verge of winning a NC. Yes, they are super seniorated. We are essentially tied as the 2nd oldest team under Self and that is a pretty significant factor. But based on the DPPI they were projected to win only 29.1 games (counting tonight's game). Yet if we win tonight we will have won 34 games or almost 5 games more than projected. This 5 games over projection would be the best inder Self and this is what I call mental toughness or the X-factor. Again, it is sort of an amalgam of a number of things including superior coaching, team chemistry, mental toughness to win close grind it out games and more. You can see that every Self KU team had a positive x-factor save 2006. This is a testimony to the superior coaching of Self. Because for every one of these positive ratios, some other team has a negative ratio.

So in summary, this X-factor is definable (retrodictively or looking back) it is measurable and it is significant in a teams success, super significant potentially. In fact, for the 2022 Jayhawks it is really the secret sauce. This rteam has decent talent but average by KU standards, they have age and experience which clearly contributed to their wins, probably adding 4-5 wins. But this team also had an incredible X-factor that is worth almost 5 wins. That makes this team special.

Wow...my head is hurting...gray matter needs a couple of games of SUDOKU before I re-read this!

Thanks for the obvious thought and work that you've put into this!

Secret Sauce indeed!

Rock Chalk Jayhawk! Go KU!

After a couple graduate econometrics classes long ago, I arrived at the individual conclusion that some aspects of human group dynamics aren't quantifiable.

I come down to a handful of adjectives : Determined, purposeful and cohesive.

What a great group of ambassadors for the University of Kansas.