Sagarin Predictions: Week 8

Very little change in the rankings as we won pretty much according to plan on Saturday. Illinois is an interesting case, the Predictor model seems to like them a lot more than the Golden Mean, but we're still better than a touchdown favorite on the road.

Yes, that Wisconsin line is still that large. The only potential explanation I can provide is that they've lost close games and had a few blowouts in their favor, while we've been blown out once and haven't really taken it to any teams this year, to the tune of 4+ TDs. Such is life when you're dealing with models that take into account margin of victory. It will start to get closer if we are as close to the Badgers as most of us think we are.

Week 7 can be found here.

As always, these are for entertainment purposes only.

I take the GOLDEN_MEAN score, found here, and add the home-field advantage to the home team to come up with predicted spreads/favorites. Same as last week, I've noted the PREDICTOR spreads as well, in blue, to see a comparison.

vs Purdue -14.5 (-13.5)
@ Illinois -12 (-8)
vs Iowa -1 (-3.5)
vs Ohio State +8.5 (+7)
@ Nebraska +9 (+12.5)
@ Wisconsin +10 (+10)

Predicted Record 8-4 (5-3)

Likely wins (>6 point difference in favor of Minnesota): vs Purdue, @ Illinois
Likely toss-ups (within 6 points): vs Iowa
Likely losses (>6 point difference in favor of opponent): vs Ohio State, @ Nebraska, @ Wisconsin

I'm right with what SS said last week, if anyone is willing to give me that line against Wisconsin right now, I'm all over it. I anticipate us being underrated by a lot of the models that do focus on margin of victory through Kill's entire career. For us, a dominating performance involves grinding out a second half once we are up 2 or 3 scores and shortening the game, not lighting up an opponent 56-14. That doesn't mean we are less likely to win against a high-scoring up tempo team, just that we will be undervalued by models which value the blowouts like that. This probably partially explains why we have outperformed expectations (the final point spread come kickoff time) in 8 consecutive B1G games or whatever our streak is.

bleedsmaroonandgold said:

I'm right with what SS said last week, if anyone is willing to give me that line against Wisconsin right now, I'm all over it. I anticipate us being underrated by a lot of the models that do focus on margin of victory through Kill's entire career. For us, a dominating performance involves grinding out a second half once we are up 2 or 3 scores and shortening the game, not lighting up an opponent 56-14. That doesn't mean we are less likely to win against a high-scoring up tempo team, just that we will be undervalued by models which value the blowouts like that. This probably partially explains why we have outperformed expectations (the final point spread come kickoff time) in 8 consecutive B1G games or whatever our streak is.

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Yep, we are 8-0 against the spread in big ten games starting with last year's Northwestern game.

jaymil said:

Yep, we are 8-0 against the spread in big ten games starting with last year's Northwestern game.

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Past results are NO predictor of the future. The games haffta be played.

Gopher07,

Thank you for posting this. Always enjoy reading it.
Buck