Testing the angles!
a follow-up to Part I: Won-Lost Records coming into the game
In part one of the series we focused on won-lost records or "pairings" of such coming into a game. After creating a number of charts based on historical data, we were able to come up with some situations that had been strong over the ten year span from 1991 to 2000. Among these key situations were the following recommended plays:
- Back Mediocre teams against Good teams -- 58.4%
- Back Poor home teams against Excellent away teams -- 57.8%
- Back away Mediocre teams against home Mediocre teams -- 63%
- Back Poor/Mediocre away teams against Good home teams -- 60%
- Back Excellent home teams against Excellent away teams, at least for the second quarter of the season
- Back Winless teams from week 5 on -- 62%
- Play against Poor home teams in weeks 2 thru 4 -- 59%
Well, fortunately as we had not included the 2001 data in our original searches, we can test the above angles against the most recent season. To refresh memories, here are the team categories we set up:
- Poor -- teams with a winning percentage of under 40%
- Mediocre -- teams with a winning percentage of 40% to 49%
- Good -- teams with a winning percentage of 50% to 59%
- Excellent -- teams with a winning percentage of 60% or higher
Running these guidelines through all the match-ups from week 5 on from the 2001 season produces this:
| Home Team |
Away Team |
Won
(vs Spr) |
Lost
(vs Spr) |
Home
W% |
| Poor |
Poor |
7 |
6 |
53.8 % |
| Poor |
Mediocre |
5 |
2 |
71.4 % |
| Poor |
Good |
11 |
5 |
68.8 % |
| Poor |
Excellent |
9 |
9 |
50.0 % |
| Mediocre |
Poor |
1 |
4 |
20.0 % |
| Mediocre |
Mediocre |
0 |
3 |
0.0 % |
| Mediocre |
Good |
2 |
1 |
66.7 % |
| Mediocre |
Excellent |
3 |
7 |
30.0 % |
| Good |
Poor |
2 |
9 |
18.2 % |
| Good |
Mediocre |
2 |
6 |
25.0 % |
| Good |
Good |
6 |
1 |
85.7 % |
| Good |
Excellent |
7 |
7 |
50.0 % |
| Excellent |
Poor |
11 |
6 |
64.7 % |
| Excellent |
Mediocre |
7 |
7 |
50.0 % |
| Excellent |
Good |
5 |
9 |
35.7 % |
| Excellent |
Excellent |
15 |
17 |
46.9 % |
So, here's what we've got:
Mediocre teams against Good teams: 8-3
Poor home teams against Excellent away teams: 9-9
away Mediocre teams against home Mediocre teams: 3-0
Poor/Mediocre away teams against Good home teams: 15-4
Excellent home teams against Excellent away teams (wk 5-9): 5-8
From a separate table:
Winless teams from week 5 on: 10-2
Go against Poor home teams in weeks two to four: 9-6
All the angles put together combine for a 59-32 (64.8%) record.
Five of the seven have winning years, one of the seven has a losing year, and one has a roughly break-even year. It should be mentioned that angles one and four share data so the 6-2 mark of Mediocre away teams against Good home teams counts twice in the total. It should also be noted that there was one game between two winless teams last season, the week five meeting of Dallas and Washington, and this was not included in the above.
So far, so good then. It's gratifying to see the promise of the above discoveries at least held up well (better than historically) in 2001. We've only just scratched the surface though as far as our ambition to "Quantify Motivation" goes...stay tuned for more articles in the series.
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