Sports Illustrated‘s Seth Davis is a smart guy and gimmick columns are a time-honored tradition in sports writing, yet it is hard not come away a little befuddled at the strange results of a strained stock market metaphor in his latest Hoop Thoughts column. Since he makes some interesting short term predictions on eight different ACC teams, it is worth a closer look. Before we dive too deep in to picking nits, let us note an important caveat:
Remember, now, these ratings assess only where a stock is headed relative to where it is today. That yields a twisted logic. The better a team is, the higher it’s ranked, the more likely it is to yield a Sell. The opposite is true for teams that are unranked and unremarked upon.
This makes sense at face value: When there is little room for a team to get better, it’s hard to say that their stock is going to go up. At least, I thought that was the correct understanding of this caveat until I saw that Davis names Duke a “Buy.” Last time I checked, the Blue Devils were undefeated, captained by the front-runner for national player of the year, and top-ranked in both polls. I don’t doubt that Duke has it in them to play even better but it makes little sense in light of the caveat and the whole strained analogy to label them a “Buy.” Duke’s abstract stock and the buzz around this team can’t get higher. If we are going to adhere to the stated logic, then this team should probably be a “Sell.” Granted, Duke is a great team and they are performing incredibly well, but if we are going to go with this whole metaphor, we should at least commit to the bit and acknowledge that it would be impossible for future performances to do anything but match the performance so far. At this point, I think we can all acknowledge that we all think Duke is good and that this is silly, but for now, let’s go with it.
If the classification of Duke shows the limitations of this analogy, the concise bit of analysis accompanying the “Sell” verdicts for Miami and Maryland show why this is interesting. Maryland, despite a single loss at the very beginning of the season, is about to embark on a difficult stretch of conference play on the road. Unless they somehow sweep all these games, the Terrapins are going to seem worse than the team that only lost once during non-conference play. On a similar note, Miami’s looked a lot more vulnerable since its injury to Reggie Johnson and beginning the conference slate without their big center is unlikely to positively alter expectations for the Hurricanes. This makes sense.
Of course, things get slightly silly when we look at the “short buys” on North Carolina and North Carolina State. Since both teams have underperformed against preseason expectations and are loaded with talent, predicting an uptick for these two teams makes a lot of sense. However, while citing a favorable immediate schedule for the Wolfpack makes a lot of sense, it doesn’t hold up as well for North Carolina. The Tar Heels’ next two games are against Virginia and Miami, currently ranked immediately behind Duke in Ken Pomeroy’s ACC rankings. The game after that is an away game against Florida State, a venue that provided the most demoralizing loss of the season last year. Even assuming a Miami team faltering without Reggie Johnson and a Florida State team that struggles to find its way, this doesn’t seem like a particularly favorable schedule.
Things get really silly for the rest of the ACC teams that are mentioned. Boston College and Wake Forest make the “Ten Stocks to Dump (If you haven’t already)” list. There is little doubt that these teams aren’t very good, but does it really count as analysis when you point out that bad power conference teams have harder conference schedules than non-conference schedules? With a few exceptions, this is how scheduling tends to work in the major conferences: Teams that have little chance of making the NCAA Tournament pad their wins against small conference teams in November and December and then lose to their conference brethren in January and February. It’s as regular as the seasons. Yes, BC and Wake are probably going to lose more games as their schedule gets harder. Both teams are going to improve as the year goes on and probably be better than their incarnations from the previous seasons. Saying that it’s time to dump these stocks seems a bit pointless.
Now, let’s talk about Georgia Tech. With only two losses against decent teams in Illinois and California and a solid win against St. Mary’s, it’s understandable why some are bullish on the Yellow Jackets. Davis names Georgia Tech as one of his “Ten Sleeper Stocks,” with the qualification that most of the Yellow Jackets’ wins have come against bad teams and that he isn’t sure yet if this team is for real. He’s right to be skeptical. To say that Tech’s wins have come against bad teams is an understatement: By Ken Pomeroy’s count, the Yellow Jackets have the 340th strongest schedule in Division I. That’s about as bad as it gets, as Georgia Tech’s schedule to this point is beyond weak. There are legitimate reasons to be excited for this team, considering the improved play of Daniel Miller and Kammeon Holsey and including the contributions of newcomers Marcus Georges-Hunt and Robert Carter, but Brian Gregory’s team still has a lot to prove, and naming this team a sleeper only makes sense in the context that one’s expectations for this team are desperately low.
I get that the stock up/down thing is a fun gimmick and I’m glad I don’t have to hear about which character from The Wire each team in the conference is most like, but even in terms of making short term predictions about the buzz of each team, the metaphor barely holds together.