Halftime: looking at the season so far

[jumped ship]

Since I'm only half-working today, and following last night's big W, I thought it'd be nice to get a thread started on the season so far and looking ahead -- since we are a bit over halfway home.

Best Wins - Oregon, @Auburn, @CSU (for personal reasons), @Stanford
Worst Losses - Utah, @Cal

Biggest surprises - King & Yaz
Room to improve - Fortune & Dom (shown a lot already)

Offensive POY - Jelly
Defensive POY - Wes

As we've said, that Utah loss hurts a lot. I am feeling very optimistic about this team, but can't help holding on to a "what if" feeling after close losses to ISU, SMU, and Utah. If the Buffs continue the down the stretch attitude they showed against the Oregon schools, the next time we face an ISU or SMU, we will win.

Prediction for rest of regular season: 9-4 (losses against Stanford, @Oregon, @USC, and @UCLA) and tied for 3rd in conference behind USC and Zona, with Oregon
Overall record: 25-9 (2-1 in PAC tourney)
Post-season: 6 seed, lose in round of 32

The above is definitely optimistic, but it's driven by the way Jelly and Wes are anchoring the O&D, added to Dom and Yaz showing more consistency each game, and my personal belief that Fortune is a late season tourney guy. We are also the best P5 rebounding team in the ENTIRE COUNTRY. It's feasible.

 

[MtnBuff]

Wes is still up and down on the offensive end but he continues to step up his game and is becoming a monster on the defensive end.

More importantly the disfunction that was this team last year seems to be gone. They aren't folding when the game is tight, they are playing like a team that wants to play together and to win. Attitude isn't going to get in the way of this team reaching it's potential.

 

[WasianCU]

It seems to be improving of late, but the scoring droughts that they go through need to stop if they are going to make serious noise this season.

 

[L Buff]

Not sure I'd pick Furd to beat us in our house after we beat them in theirs. And the Cal loss wasn't a bad one IMO after a 9 day layoff and the fact that the Bears are better than expected.

But a good post nonetheless ... and it's hard to believe that we're already more than halfway through the CBB season.

 

[Buffnik]

Here's the current RPI Forecast from Live-RPI:

Final Record Expected RPI Probability (Buffs are 13-4 right now on RPI, not 14-4 due to the D2 win)
26-4 7.0 0.03%
25-5 9.9 0.18%
24-6 13.9 1.44%
23-7 18.1 5.19%
22-8 22.7 11.73%
21-9 29.1 20.00%
20-10 37.5 22.87%
19-11 48.6 19.71%
18-12 61.5 11.97%
17-13 75.2 5.05%
16-14 90.7 1.50%
15-15 107.5 0.30%
14-16 126.0 0.02%

Here are the schedule and probabilities of winning for Colorado.
These are the probabilities that are used in the simulations.
They are based entirely on Jeff Sagarin's PREDICTOR.
The projected records are calculated by combining these probabilities and may be different than summing up the projections for each individual game.

1-20 Washington (75.3) P12 A 0-0 49% -0.4
1-23 Washington St. (154.5) P12 A 0-0 65% 4.4
1-27 Stanford (63.4) P12 H 0-0 70% 5.8
1-31 California (47.1) P12 H 0-0 57% 2.1
2-4 Oregon (17.9) P12 A 0-0 32% -5.1
2-6 Oregon St. (61.2) P12 A 0-0 47% -0.8
2-11 Washington St. (154.5) P12 H 0-0 84% 11.1
2-13 Washington (75.3) P12 H 0-0 71% 6.3
2-17 USC (16.2) P12 A 0-0 28% -6.6
2-20 UCLA (64.6) P12 A 0-0 46% -1.1
2-24 Arizona (20.4) P12 H 0-0 40% -2.8
2-28 Arizona St. (63.4) P12 H 0-0 69% 5.5
3-5 Utah (46.5) P12 A 0-0 41% -2.7

http://www.rpiforecast.com/teams/Colorado.html

So, the computers say that the Buffs are most likely to go 7-6 the rest of the way, with 8-5 being the next most likely.

Projected wins: @WSU, Stanford, Cal, WSU, UW, ASU
Projected losses: @UW, @UO, @OSU, @USC, @UCLA, UA, @UU

What flips that from 6-7 to 7-6 the rest of the way (or 8-5 even being more probable than 6-7) is that it's statistically unlikely that the Buffs drop ever single game it has over a 40% shot at winning. And all games but the Cal game (57%) that the Buffs are projected to win are at well over a 60% confidence.