Margin of Victory

Wins and losses are not binary.

At least, I don't think so. How you play matters. How you look against weaker competition matters, too. It's easy to get caught up in the tired schtick of "THEY AIN'T PLAYED NOBODY, PAWL", but the quality of a team is not reflected in who you played; it's how you played them.

Virginia Tech has now walloped three teams in their last four outings: Pitt, Wake Forest, and Syracuse. If they were sitting at 4-4 having snuck by these teams as point spreads suggested they should have, I might be writing a different story.

But instead the Hokies crushed them, outscoring their opposition by a total of 106-44. So their .500 record should be seen under a much different light. Tech is scoring a lot more than they are giving up, a fact that we shouldn't toss aside or overlook. It's actually a very encouraging sign because scoring margin is one of the biggest predictors of future success.

Why? First, a brief look back into the history of sports rating systems.