The Morning Commute for Friday November 22, 2024.

Welcome to the Morning Commute

I’m rarely irrationally mad at things people say online. Especially when it comes to Dan LeBatards extended crew of commentators. I have a lot of respect for the brand LeBatard and his team have cultivated even is much of their content isn’t for me. Maybe spending less time on social media sites has helped, if you haven’t noticed I’m pretty much managed to quit Twitter/X and have only been spending a smattering of time on BlueSky (Facebook is a near non-starter even if I still have an account).

But the other night during the college football playoff I saw Jessica Smetana’s skeet on Bsky.app regarding Missouri’s #23 ranking:

Ok but in all seriousness, Missouri at 23? Are they just running out of teams to rank?

The easy answer to this is… YES! They are running out of teams to rank.

However, I’m going to argue Missouri’s case to still be (rightfully) included here, and it’s something I really wish we could get away from, and that’s punishing teams for losing to teams they’re supposed to lose to.

It happens all the time in the AP Poll, it happens all the time in nearly every poll. A ranked team goes on the road and loses a close game to the home team ranked higher than they are and the road team gets dropped in the rankings. Like… why? The home team was supposed to win, they were favored to win, they were the odds on favorite to win and they won. So why should the team that lost drop in the rankings when, it would seem to me at least, they were accurately ranked to begin with?

Mizzou is a top 20 team in SP+, which like KenPom.com measures the quality of a team. Mizzou isn’t perfect, but no team is. The Tigers have been disappointing in terms of their preseason expectations, but South Carolina needed a last minute drive to end in a touchdown to beat the Tigers when they were 14 point favorites. And they went UP in the rankings, so why would Mizzou drop?

College Football is currently very flawed in that there seem to be a lot of good teams but few great ones. But within the SEC and the Big 10 there are a lot of very good teams and beating them on their home field is hard to do. Missouri has 3 losses, all on the road, all to ranked teams. Nobody was fussing about Illinois being 25th and they have a home loss to unranked Minnesota and two blowout losses to Oregon and Penn State on the road, oh and they’re 54th in SP+.

I guess my point is this: Missouri is currently where they should be. If South Carolina is a top 20 team then the Tigers should be a top 25 team.

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Yesterday at Rock M and Rock M+

It was FOOTBALL Thursday as we’re gearing up for Saturday’s trip to Starkvegas:

• Dan’s between the numbers post looked at MSUs defense:

They let you stay on schedule (123rd in early downs EPA), and let you move the chains (127th in late down EPA). Their defense is terrible at controlling the game, ranking 133rd in Parker Fleming’s ECKEL rate, measuring how often teams allow quality drives. (Mizzou’s defense is sixth in that metric.)

• Meanwhile Quentin looked at the togetherness Mizzou continues to exude even though the goals of the season have slipped away a bit:

There isn’t a singular source behind these elite success levels amidst adversity, but if one thing could shoulder most of the responsibility, it could be the “brotherhood” that Drinkwitz and other members of the program reference so often as the driving force behind achieving success and rebounding from defeat.

You can take umbrage with Drinkwitz on a number of things, but I don’t think the culture of the program is one of them.

• Sammy’s Bowl Projection post still has Las Vegas and Nashville as two of the more popular desinations.
• Adeen’s Analytic MVPs came a day late but not a dollar short as he got to detail Luther’s play against SC.
• In non-Football news, Dennis Gates and Caleb Grill met with the media to talk about some upcoming games:

I know what we’re going to get from Mark Mitchell, what we’re going to get from Caleb Grill, what we’re going to get from Tamar Bates. We know what we’re going to get from those guys. It’s about now having consistency around those guys … we know what we’re going to get from Josh Gray. Now, how will our other guys be able to fill in?

• Over at Rock M+, I’m continuing to work to improve the site and it’s becoming evermore functional by the day, so much so that we’re full on publishing articles which are all currently available for free. We’ll eventually turn on the paywall for those types of posts but I wanted to give folks an idea of what we’re doing.
• We’re also getting ready for basketball after a week off.

The most notable is Elijah Fisher, a former five-star talent whose first two collegiate seasons were forgettable at Texas Tech and DePaul. Yet the native Canadian knows Smart and is entrusting him to get his career on track. At 6-foot-6 and 220 pounds, the wing’s frame and athleticism will easily be among the top tier in the WCC. The questions are about skill. Fisher, who averages 17.7 points and 4.3 rebounds, is a slasher by trade and at ease on the break. Nearly 58 percent of his shots are taken at the rim, and he’s an average (1.17 PPP) finisher.

Come in and join in the fun!

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