[d4cohn]

The one factor the past two seasons that affects player availability, which in turn, can contribute to wild swings in team performance, is unique to these seasons and is COVID. Look no further than the false positive tests that Mills and others had, and how the team looked after Mills scraped off the rust against Colorado (we didn't lose the rest of the season).

That appears to be a valid assertion for 2020, but how have we seen the virus affecting us in 2021?  Injuries have been a much bigger issue so far.

No, the 2020 team, despite its 4-2 record, was not very good.  Just ask Sagarin.

The 2021 team can still go in a lot of directions, except 3-9 is extremely unlikely.  And 6 wins is very reasonably in play.  That was not a given going into this season.  So . . . hope.

That Sagarin rating for Stanford is based on results of games in which, for at least a portion of those games, players weren't available for non-injury reasons (metrics are impacted their input data). I also don't think Sagarin can take into account the mechanics of playing 4 road games in a month, and basically living on the road for a month in the middle of a COVID pandemic. Finally, that Sagarin rating is based on half a normal season's of games in which we started nearly two months after schools in other conferences. 

In the end though, I honestly don't care whether we were good or bad last year. I just find it impressive that we have won six out of our last seven road games, and in the process, beaten every Cali rival on the road (with only the home loss to UCLA), a road win at UW and home win against Oregon, and most if not all of this was accomplished under the difficult circumstances of the COVID pandemic.

[d4cohn]

The one factor the past two seasons that affects player availability, which in turn, can contribute to wild swings in team performance, is unique to these seasons and is COVID. Look no further than the false positive tests that Mills and others had, and how the team looked after Mills scraped off the rust against Colorado (we didn't lose the rest of the season).

That appears to be a valid assertion for 2020, but how have we seen the virus affecting us in 2021?  Injuries have been a much bigger issue so far.

No, the 2020 team, despite its 4-2 record, was not very good.  Just ask Sagarin.

The 2021 team can still go in a lot of directions, except 3-9 is extremely unlikely.  And 6 wins is very reasonably in play.  That was not a given going into this season.  So . . . hope.

That Sagarin rating for Stanford is based on results of games in which, for at least a portion of those games, players weren't available for non-injury reasons (metrics are impacted their input data). I also don't think Sagarin can take into account the mechanics of playing 4 road games in a month, and basically living on the road for a month in the middle of a COVID pandemic. Finally, that Sagarin rating is based on half a normal season's of games in which we started nearly two months after schools in other conferences. 

In the end though, I honestly don't care whether we were good or bad last year. I just find it impressive that we have won six out of our last seven road games, and in the process, beaten every Cali rival on the road (with only the home loss to UCLA), a road win at UW and home win against Oregon, and most if not all of this was accomplished under the difficult circumstances of the COVID pandemic.