RyderDA wrote:We come into the season with hopes and expectations for all our teams. We're basically at the halfway point, so it's time to ask: how is the season panning out versus your expectations?
I'll start: Some surprises for me in CanadaWest. Schedule could be playing a factor in some of this, but:
- Lethbridge is far stronger this season than they have been for years. Whomever posted in the original CanWest Poll that Lethbridge should be under consideration was prescient. I did not see it coming.
UBC is impressive, but Connor Morgan is such a key element that the team is much weaker without him
The Bears are back stronger than I expected they would be
My Dinos are much better than I had expected. I though we would be hobbled by a lack of depth in the "bigs" but the huge depth in the guards more than makes up for it.
All I can say about Saskatchewan is "how the once-mighty have fallen"
I've got a bit of free time so I ran a few more PPP calculations. Comparing PPP from this season to last season:
Lethbridge is indeed a good team this year and they have improved quite well since last year, their improvement is almost entire on the offensive end.
UBC is actually worse than last year all around but they are still such a good team that they can still look so impressive.
I have Alberta as the 2nd best team in terms of PPP but they are also the 2nd most improved team from last season. If you like how good Alberta is, you should consider the similar improvements from Laurentian and Cape Breton, who combined make up the 3 most improved teams from last year.
Calgary is similar to UBC, they're a good team but they are about the same as they were last year because although their defense has improved their offense is actually worse.
Sask is awful no matter how you look at it. They had the 2nd worst drop from last season.
Here are some visuals. Page 1 is the changes in offense and defense from last year. Page 2 looks at how good each team is last year with respect to their improvement from last year. Page 3 is the 2017-2018 PPP from December 4th.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/14Zv ... vbF50/edit