nkhooch

Maybe we should not take a strike almost every time.

pitching.

LSU pitcher is throwing?

That means that you view the purpose of commentary is to“carry water” for your side. Meaning you highlight information that puts your side in the best light. Picking out a few games to make a point is carrying water. Worse teams occasionally win games. Called upsets. Doesn’t mean the team that was upset was overrated. The games you keep cherry picking are in the data set. Over 55 games, the SEC wins 2/3 of the games and their lower end teams play in more of the inter conference games and our higher end teams play in more. If you created round-robin schedules with 10 teams each matching Top, Middle and Bottom tiers from each conference there’s a good chance that the ACC would finish in the bottom five of each of those tiers.

first. You would expect higher seeds to do better than that on a neutral field, much less at home. Could be as you said, teams feel more pressure at home. But, I am thinking that home field doesn’t mean much in softball. Be interesting to see some analysis on that.

To try and convince me she wasn't putting herself in financial jeopardy she would only tell me when she won big jackpots. She never mentioned when she didn't win and of course she lost multiples of those jackpots over time. He has sort of admitted that he isn't really trying to be objective. Just trying to spin the info to favor his side. ** Edited by nkhooch at 5/14/2026, 12:01:28 AM

we were a 3 seed host. Kentucky came to play. Took us 3 games to knock them out. We had to come back to win 5-4. Then next round, 14th seeded Florida came to Blacksburg and beat us 2 out of 3. That same year, FSU was the 2 seed. Unseeded Mississippi St knocked them out first round. Never figured out what home field was worth in softball. I'd be interested in any analysis you've seen that handicaps home field in softball. ** Edited by nkhooch at 5/13/2026, 10:15:05 PM

** Edited by nkhooch at 5/13/2026, 8:31:04 PM

Actually much better in all segments. We are competitive but in the middle of the pack. Doubt we would have fared well against the top 3rd. ** Edited by nkhooch at 5/13/2026, 8:14:40 PM

curious about the whole picture. Yeah, I hate it. But, it is what it is. There were 55 ACC vs. SEC games this year. The tables show the record of each tier of the conference against the other conference. So, ACC Top 5 (FSU, Duke, VT, Louisville, Stanford) were a combined 13-12 in their games against SEC opponents. - The SEC played 25 of the 55 games (45%) vs. the ACC Top 5 - The ACC played 23 of the 55 games (42%) vs. the SEC Bottom 5. - Most contests - South Carolina 7-4, Duke 4-4, VT 6-0, Auburn 3-3, Clemson 2-4, GT, 0-6

** Edited by nkhooch at 5/13/2026, 5:43:39 PM

be considered.

16 regions.

** Edited by nkhooch at 5/13/2026, 2:37:16 AM

** Edited by nkhooch at 5/13/2026, 2:34:16 AM

I also don't believe Martin would have replicated those stats against our schedule. LeGette could have played RF. And once they saw her offense, she could have also played DP and been a step up. And that's not a knock on Kylie who is also a really good hitter. As you said the key was that LeGette didn't show her potential in her part time play. In hindsight, we would have better off with LeGette in the lineup full time. But, we didn't know.

is dialed in now.

loud, be spirited, but show sportsmanship and don't get into it with other fans, even if they might deserve it.

But, if what they are telling us is true (and I have no reason to believe otherwise), yes. If we were #4, we would be playing the tournament at the #29 seed if they qualified as a host. We would likely dominate that tournament and them come back home for Super Regionals. If we were ranked #4 it would be so clear that we were in top 16, there is no way they could rank us #17 without looking totally foolish.

tournament who are grinding through the injustices of being left out. That's the life of bubble teams in NCAA sports. Thankfully, we never have that problem in softball.

this a lot better than the rest of us. And that's what really matters for the upcoming weekend.

games Rohs BA/OBP/SlgPct was .122/.271/.122. This year, in ACC play, her numbers were .367/.466/.531. Always a great SS but the improvement in those numbers is nothing short of miraculous. I don't think I've ever seen a player improve that much at the plate in a year. A credit to her and to our coaching staff. Wow!

I have considered bidding on the Pete lunch and talking with him. Not to criticize, because it's his decision to make. But, to explore what he learned from it. For, sure the vast majority of players who have transferred out would not have helped the team. Those evaluations were spot on. His track record is great on that. It's just 2 players. And two very different situations. ** Edited by nkhooch at 5/11/2026, 5:45:35 PM

In what universe is the win/loss record of a team not the most fundamental statistic? And where averages are not considered a statistic? Does your metric exclude those 3 RPI elements? I think the word "joke" might apply there. They may not be sufficient, but they are significant. You start with W/L record. In a closed system (where everyone plays everyone) that is sufficient and how post season play is determined. In an open system, where there are way more teams that can be played you have to figure out a way to give the teams a relative rank. You quickly see W/L record is not sufficient. You have to include the strength of the teams that the W/L record was achieved under. But, then you realize that you need the secondary impact of strength of schedule or someone playing a team like Grand Canyon will boost your strength of schedule without considering who Grand Canyon has played. Do you recall UNC starting off the year 17 - 0? What did everybody know? That it was against a weak schedule. And sure enough, they finished the season 15-19 when they started to play better competition. If there is a subjective component in the RPI it would be the weighting of the 3 components. You could stress test that by changing the weightings and seeing how the teams shift. But, for sure, all 3 components of the RPI are important. After that, you can add in scoring margins. You can see the importance of that. And it goes from there. Can you share one of the linear regression models? Just dependent and independent variables, not coefficients. Yes, a grad student could come up with models. But, you have to be able to communicate them. Coaches need to be able to have a clear understanding of what drives the metric so they can consider that in scheduling. And fans and analysts need to be able to discuss them. One positive of the RPI is that it is easy to understand. Yes, the NET is a more robust model. But, you know, that metric is NOT the sole determinant of NCAA tournament seedings and selections. It's an input.

than accommodating the possibility that we could host an NCAA softball tournament. I am pretty sure the only reason we have home hosts is because it would cost more to host a tournament on a neutral site and result in lower attendance. Non-revenue sports have to be creative on the cost front. If we held a higher seed, we would still benefit from a weaker first round regional regardless of where the tournament is.

with incomplete information. They have to. But, they also learn from the results of those decisions. That's how they make better decisions in the future. Any leader worth their salt would admit that. Yes, I am curious as to how he views this decision in hind sight. Not dwell on it, not say it was a wrong decision. It's not about right or wrong. Just if he learned something from it that would help him the next time.

and as opposed to calling it a joke (not a statistical term :-)). Massey is a good one and I am sure yours is too. As a statistician, you know that there is no perfect metric. Each metric has to decide what to include and how much to weight it. There is some subjectivity there. No way around it. You also know that there is a margin of error around any result. What's lousy is that there is a precise cutoff at 16. And our team keeps hovering around that. From what I have seen here, it may not have been the metrics/formulas that got us. People listed categories - wins against top 50, top 10, etc. as other things that were considered. The weighting of those is also subjective. The strength of the SEC conference clearly helps there and hard for us to compete with that in a slate of ACC opponents. That's likely the place where the SEC gets an advantage over every other conference. But, it's not that it's all unearned. They had the best OOC W/L pct of any conference. Pete said that he believed our schedule incorporated a number of strong OOC opponents. And that some of them did not turn out to be as strong as we hoped. But, please keep posting. There's always room for more data-driven commentary.

an even more potent offense with her in the lineup. ** Edited by nkhooch at 5/11/2026, 2:39:33 PM

criteria. VT knows the issue. They just have to decide how to manage it.

and then explained we didn't meet the requirements to host. Two separate issues.

known what LeGette was capable of, they would have figured something out. You don't let someone like that go because they aren't quite a good enough fielder. MLB is full of LF/RF/1B who are mediocre in the field but play full time because of their bats. And in tight late-inning situations you put in fielding replacements. Barry Bonds couldn't hardly run in his later years but they let him play leftfield anyway because of his bat. The only thing I can think of is that EL couldn't relax while having to compete on a game-by-game basis for a spot. And that pressure impacted her confidence at the plate. But, Aldridge and Yaeger started hitting and it was 3 people competing for 2 spots, day in and day out. This year, EL could have played right field if you didn't want to displace ZY or KA. And Mizzelle could have started next year.

ranking is and then say BUT, we didn't meet the requirements to host. And they could do that. Why would they want to take the heat for fudging the results if it's not really their doing? They can throw it back on the administration if that's the truth.

are a top 16 seed (1, 8 or 14) and then say that we cannot physically host because we don’t meet the requirements. Unfortunately, because we keep finding ourself on the hosting bubble, people won’t believe it.

The whole thing refuses to resolve itself. Oh well. The fact that we did not host was because of our relative performance metrics and independent of our ability to do so. If Pete’s happy with that, so am I. ** Edited by nkhooch at 5/11/2026, 12:21:19 AM

outfield. LeGette could have also DPd. I don't believe they realized how good she would be if she played full time. She didn't show that in her part time play. For whatever reason they just missed this one.

all about the RPI. It does hurt us that we don't get opportunities against top 10 teams. That makes it harder to absorb losses to lower level teams. But, hey we are the 17th best team in the country in this tourney.

strength of the team at the time we played them. So, to them it wouldn't matter how good UGA ended up being.