Strongest regional competitions

[Anupam Goli]

Originally Posted by AGPapa

AP Poll Preseason top 5 teams:
Florida State
Alabama
Oregon
Oklahoma
Ohio State

AP Poll Week 16 top 5 teams:
Alabama
Florida State
Oregon
Baylor
Ohio State

So the AP Poll went from Oklahoma being #4 to unranked, but other than that, the preseason polls seemed to do a pretty decent job. Four of the preseason top five were still in the top five at the end.

Don't look just at the top 5, look at the top 25. Also, does anyone else remember the fiasco that was Texas A&M beating South Carolina and rocketing up to top 5? That's what I mean by how these rankings are unnecessary.


Back to the point at hand:

So sure, you can't account for every factor (like student, mentor and sponsor loss), but preseason predictions can still do a fairly decent job. Good teams tend to be good from year to year. What are the chances that every team at a regional will be worse than the year before? Pretty slim. Some teams will get worse, but others will get better.

I agree with this. Part of what we do in Fantasy FIRST is try to predict who will do well on the field and with chairmans. Sometimes unpredictable things can happen, but for the most part things in FRC are pretty stable.