Offensive Power Rankings for 2008

[Madison]

Originally Posted by XaulZan11

To build on what others have said about the shortcommings of the OPR, watching the actual matches is a ton better than just looking at the OPR. The OPR attempts to predict how well a team scores per match, and is just decent at it. Relying on only the OPR is like a weatherman predicting the weather simply looking at on the month's average weather, instead of actually looking at the weather patterns, air pressure and all the other stuff weather people look at when making the forcast. By looking at the averages I'll know tommorrow it will be fairly warm, but won't tell me if I should bring a jacket, umbrella or sunglasses. OPR is nice because it gives a rough or general idea about a team very quickly and easily, but to get a good idea about a team, you need to actually watch thier matches.

I would use it only in prescouting where there is no matchs online of the team. In this situation it is better than no information at all.

EDIT: One of the shortcommings is that the OPR attempts to predict something that can be found--the team's contribution to thier alliance--by watching the team's matches. It is nice that is very easy to find, but its not like it is predicting something that we cannot find.

Teams may interpret "scoring" differently in their scouting systems. If Team A cannot hurdle, but can place the ball on the overpass and Team B cannot place the ball, but can knock it down, together they can hurdle. Individually, their contributions, however, would not indicate that possibility and would reflect only points scored by receiving a bonus at the end of the match or by knocking balls down in hybrid mode.