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2007 Most Improved Teams | |||||||||||||||||||
Making my Most Improved list has generally been a blessing for teams, as they usually make big turnarounds. In 1999, the #1 most improved team in my Preseason Rankings was Hawaii and they simply had the NCAA's largest turnaround on record, going from a winless season in 1998 (0-12) to a 9-4 record and a bowl victory one year later!!! The year 2000 was a VERY successful season for My Most Improved Teams. Of the Top 14 Most Improved Teams that year, TEN went from a losing season to being bowl eligible!!!! South Carolina was my #6 Most Improved Team and went from 0-11 in 1999 to beating Ohio St in a Jan 1 bowl game and finished with an 8-4 record in 2000. Tulane was #1 on the list and went from 3-8 to 6-5 and was bowl eligible. UNLV was #2 and went from 3-8 to an 8-5 season with a bowl victory. Northwestern was #4 and after a poor 3-8 season, rolled on to become Co-Big 10 Champions! LSU came in at #10 and went from 3-8 to 8-4, including a bowl win. Also on 2000's list were teams like Washington (#16), which went from 7-5 to 11-1, a four game improvement and Clemson (#20), which went from 6-6 to 9-3 and played in a Jan 1 bowl game. In 2001, of the 20 teams that made my list, only ONE team had a weaker record and that was Tulsa. NINE TEAMS went from a losing season to becoming bowl eligible, including such surprises as Wash St, Colorado, Alabama, Iowa, Stanford and USC. Colorado went from 3-8 to just missing out on the National Title game. Wash St was picked dead last in the Pac 10 preseason poll after their 4-7 season in 2000, but made my Most Improved list and went 10-2 and just missed out on a Pac 10 Title. Of the 20 teams on this list in 2002, NINE went from non-winning records to being bowl eligible. Those teams were: USC, Penn St, Connecticut, California, North Texas, Tulane, Oregon St, West Virginia and Minnesota. Of the 20 teams on my list, only TWO had less wins in 2002 than they did in 2001! USC went from 6-6 to finishing 11-2 and #4 in the polls at the end of the year. In 2003, 4 of my Top 8 Most Improved Teams went from a losing season to being bowl eligible and 8 of the top 20 went from .500, or losing seasons, to being bowl eligible. Rutgers, which went from 1-11 to 5-7, just missed. The biggest turnaround was with Memphis, which was the #8 Most Improved Team on my list and went from 3-9 to a super 9-4!!!!! In 2004, there were a total of TEN teams, that did not have a winning record (including bowls) in 2003, that finished with a winning record and NINE of them were on my list. My #1 Most Improved Team, Texas A&M, went from 4-8 to the Cotton Bowl. My #3 Most Improved Team, UTEP, went from 2-11 to a super 8-4!! Iowa St made the list and went from 2-10 to 7-5 and a bowl game, tying for the Big 12 North Title!! Not only did 12 of the 21 go from a non-winning season to a bowl game, but only TWO had more losses than the previous year. In 2005, my Top 16 Most Improved Teams made incredible strides. This is despite the fact that one of the 16 teams was Tulane whose season was disrupted by Hurricane Katrina and played 11 games in 11 different venues. The Top 16 Most Improved Teams on my list in 2005 had a combined record of 66-111 (37%) in 2004 and improved to 102-84 (55%) in 2005 and, if you take Tulane out of the equation, the record jumps to 100-75 (57%)!!! Penn State went from 4-7 to the #3 team in the country and nearly played in the National Title game. Oregon went from 5-6 to #6 in the NCAA after the regular season, finishing at 10-2!!! UCLA went from 6-6 to a super 10-2 season! W Michigan went from 1-10 to 7-4, a HUGE turnaround. None of my Top 16 teams in 2005 had winning records in 2004 but ELEVEN were bowl eligible in 2005. Last year was another great year for this list. My #1 Most Improved Team last year was Arkansas which went from 4-7 to SEC West Champs and rose as high as #5 in the polls!! Wake Forest made the list in 2006 and went from 4-7 to 11-3 and was ACC Champions. Houston was also on the list and went from 6-6 to CUSA Champs! Ohio went from 4-7 to MAC East Champs! Troy went from 4-7 to Sun Belt Champs! Kentucky went from 3-8 to 8-5 including their bowl win over Clemson. Hawaii went from 5-7 to a super 11-3. Tennessee went from 5-6 to 9-4 and could have been SEC East Champs had they not let a pair of 4Q leads vs LSU and Florida slip away. Kent St went from 1-10 to a bowl-eligible 6-6. The Top 10 teams on last year's list were a combined 33-79 (29.5%) in 2005 but improved to a combined 71-57 (55.5%) in 2006!!! The 22 teams overall on the list were a combined 82-164 (33.3%) winners in 2005 and turned around and combined for 150-132 (53%) winners in 2006!! Of the 22 teams only 2 won less games than they did in 2005 (Mich St, San Diego St). With this type of success through the years, you might think that it is very easy to pick teams that had losing records the previous year and have them become bowl eligible the next season. I went back to 1992 and took a look at all the teams that finished with losing records in a season. In that span, there have been 765 teams that finished with a record below .500. Of those 765 teams, only 215 of them managed to finish ABOVE .500 the next year which comes out to just 28.1%. Teams now play a 12 game season so a 6-6 record equals bowl eligibility. To be fair, out of the 765 teams an additional 41 earned a .500 mark the next year. So of the 765 teams, 256 or 33.5% managed to go from a losing record to at least .500 or better the next year. The combined record of all teams that had a losing record from 1992-2005 was 2285-4052 or just 36.1%. The next year those same teams showed a slight overall improvement in their records to 2810-3734 or 42.9%. So on the average, a team that had a losing season in that span improved by 6.8% over the previous year's record. Naturally, the teams I feel are Most Improved are in my Top 10. My Top Ten Most Improved Teams over the last 5 years had a combined record of 197-383 (34%) the previous year and improved to 318-292 (52.1%) the next year. That is 18.1% better than the previous year and almost TRIPLE the normal improvement for a teams with losing records. In the last 5 years I have had a total of 104 teams on my Most Improved List. I have picked 12 that have had .500 or above records the previous year and of those 12, nine improved their record including USC in 2002 which went from 6-6 to 11-2. The teams that made my list combined for a 427-791 (35.1%) record the previous year and in the year I chose them as an MIP team they were a combined 632-644 (49.5%) or an increase in winning percentage of 14.4%. Of the 105 teams that made my Most Improved List the last 5 years, 88 have won at least the same amount of games as the previous year while 84% improved their win total. In the last 5 years, I have listed 93 teams on my MIP list that did not have a winning season the previous year. Of those 93 teams, almost all improved their record the next year, but even more impressively, 53 of the 93 teams were bowl eligible the next year which is 57%! Taking a closer look at the last 5 years, I found that 271 teams had losing records from 2001-2005, and of those 271 teams, just 65 or 24% managed to have a winning record the next year. Of those 65 teams, 37 of them were on my Most Improved List or 57%!!! Close to 60% of the teams that have gone from a losing season to a winning season have been on my list. | |||||||||||||||||||
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