Season Schedule

Both teams this year not projected as top teams in their conference.  We're not either.  We've seen the MAC conference preview ratings.  Here's another "reasonable" example of preseason ratings.  (There are others out now, mostly similar)

This service makes a data driven numerical predictive rating and runs 1000 of simulations based on it. 

MAC by this projection has 4 teams a bit better than BSU and Miami in the top 6.   By their rating the top group is enough better to make us a slight underdog against them at home. 

Table linked above shows all CBB teams.   Ball State/MAC projection   

www.teamrankings.com/ncaa-basketball/team/ball-st-cardinals/projections 

Here is an article discussing their rankings and down the page another table they present with breakdown of factors they use.

The overall college ratings seem to be the usual methodology which is an educated guess how many points better (positive rating) or worse (negative rating) each team is compared to a “perfectly average” college basketball team on a neutral court.

The eight columns of the table following the overall rank, represent the relative impact of specific factors in our preseason ratings model, along with a final “market adjustment” applied to some teams.

LAST YEAR: How good a team was last season (based on final predictive rating)
PROGRAM: Recent historical performance, excluding last season
RET OFF: Returning offensive production, compared to last
RET DEF: Returning defensive production, compared last
RECRUIT: Value of incoming freshman recruiting class
TRANSFER: Value of incoming Division I transfers (JUCO transfers ignored)
COACH: Recent coaching changes expected to have a positive or negative impact
MARKET: Adjustment if our ratings-based projection for a team is far off the betting market or our rankings differ greatly from the AP poll

The initial ranking seems to be based heavily on last years results, and recent program history, as expected a poor rating for us.  That makes any improvement based on how much returning talent, a negative rating adjustment, and on transfers, where we seem to have a relatively high positive  adjustment.  Freshmen additions either not rated heavily or neutral.  The relatively good adjustment for transfers is built into our rating compared to others.  But they do ignore JUCO.

I'm sure there is some good data here, but an optimistic bsukid rating is ignored...

So despite their sales pitch about the historical accuracy of their preseason predictions, I am not convinced until I see some actual performance, and one that includes more detail on the roster plusses and minuses.  Like other ratings if they are looking at Sparks and Hart based on last year,  they will not see as much plus as we expect. Not clear to me how they factor Watts.  All 3 should be significant.  And, of course they have horribly under rated the Ben factor.