billmac91;1005955; said:
Obviously, we're in much better shape than last week, as all we need is an Oklahoma win or Pitt win, but I just don't see us overtaking WVU in the BCS standings.
I agree, overtaking West Virginia assuming they beat Pitt is incredibly unlikely. They ran up an impressive number on UConn, which will if anything sway poll voters to them, as well.
I redid my calculation with the latest Sagarin ratings (which are only on Sagarin's personal web site as of this moment, not yet up on the USA Today site).
Surprisingly (to me), the odds of OSU getting to New Orleans went up from my post-LSU calculation. West Virginia won a game that they were pretty heavily favored to win, it was their only realistic upset chance left... but that was more than balanced by the Missouri win over Kansas.
The reason is that Missouri is still a decided underdog to Oklahoma, while Kansas would have had a better shot at beating Oklahoma, according to Sagarin. I'm not sure I agree with Sagarin on that point, but the numbers are what they are, and I committed before the games were played to using those particular numbers, no matter how convenient or inconvenient they might be to Ohio State's hopes.
The full details are linked at the bottom of this post, but the "payoff" is:
Probabilities for each possible matchup:
66% Ohio State vs West Virginia
29% West Virginia vs Missouri
3% Ohio State vs someone else (Georgia, LSU, etc.)
2% Ohio State vs Missouri
Each individual team's chance to make the game(*):
West Virginia - 95%
Ohio State - 71%
Missouri - 31%
Someone else (both West Virginia and Missouri lose) - 3%
(*) The sum of all percentages is 200% because there are two teams in the game.
OSU odds to BCS title game: 71%