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American Athletic Conference Advanced Analytics Rankings

There comes a time in every sport where an attempt is made to strip away all of the preconceived notions and long held assumptions about statistics. To take a long, detailed look at what matters in creating outcomes and what doesn't. The term de jour for this process is advanced analytics, and I am wholeheartedly in the boat.

James Guillory-USA TODAY Sports

With the Bearcats starting spring practice at the end of this month (February 27th) there is a bit of a ticking clock to give the 2014 season a thorough review, which I intend to do starting next week. Part of that process involved compiling the two tables you see below. The main reason being that helps to place the performance of a particular aspect of the Bearcats team, passing downs efficiency for example, in context both nationaly and in comparison with the rest of the conference.

Both tables below are listed in order of overall rank according to SB Nation's Bill Connelly's S&P+ rating system, a play by play based measure of efficiency and explosiveness. With S&P, much like offensive rating in basketball, a mark of 100 is almost perfectly average. The number in parentheses represents the conference ranking of a given attribute. A glossary of terms for these tables are available here, here and here.

Note: I have included Navy in this ranking even though they didn't play a down of AAC football for two reasons: 1) All of these numbers are opponent adjusted so this is not an apple and oranges situation vis-a-vis schedule its a pretty accurate indication of the relative strength of these teams. 2) I plan on using this information a lot throughout the off season in our preview stuff

Offensive S&P Rushing S&P Passing S&P Standard Downs S&P Passing Downs S&P Drive Rating Success Rate IsoPPP
Cincinnati 112.5 109.4 (3) 130.0 (1) 115.0 (2) 138.1 (1) 115.7 (3) 45.0% (3) .91 (2)
Navy 111.5 120.6 (1) 92.2 (6) 116.7 (1) 95.4 (6) 117.0 (1) 48.9% (1) .87 (3)
East Carolina 109.1 111.6 (2) 107.3 (2) 108.5 (3) 115.3 (2) 117.0 (1) 47.1% (2) .85 (4)
Memphis 100.0 92.6 (7) 102.8 (4) 96.5 (4) 102.3 (4) 112.3 (4) 39.7% (6) .92 (1)
Central Florida 97.2 93.8 (6) 104.0 (3) 94.0 (7) 111.3 (3) 103.0 (5) 40.3% (5) .85 (4)
Houston 94.2 103.4 (4) 80.4 (8) 95.5 (5) 83.2 (8) 98.4 (7) 41.3% (4) .82 (7)
Temple 89.8 90.3 (8) 83.0 (7) 92.2 (8) 75.4 (10) 99.6 (6) 36.1% (8) .80 (8)
Tulsa 86.8 89.4 (9) 99.9 (5) 94.3 (6) 97.3 (5) 73.2 (11) 39.0% (7) .80 (8)
Tulane 85.4 87.0 (10) 77.4 (10) 87.0 (9) 73.5 (12) 92.4 (8) 35.5% (10) .78 (10)
South Florida 79.1 72.7 (12) 80.3 (9) 73.6 (12) 87.0 (7) 76.3 (10) 33.6% (11) .84 (6)
Connecticut 78.9 79.7 (11) 72.7 (11) 76.5 (11) 77.0 (9) 80.0 (9) 32.7% (12) .78 (10)
SMU 72.9 97.7 (5) 70.0 (12) 85.0 (10) 75.3 (11) 52.0 (12) 35.8% (9) .70 (12)

Defensive S&P Rushing S&P Passing S&P Standard Downs S&P Passing Downs S&P Drive Rating Success Rate IsoPPP Havoc Rate
Memphis 113.8 110.3 (1) 106.9 (1) 107.2 (2) 112.6 (1) 129.0 (1) 35.4% (1) .78 (6) 17.8% (3)
Central Florida 106.3 102.9 (4) 96.7 (5) 98.4 (5) 103.9 (3) 115.8 (3) 38.4% (4) .72 (1) 20.0% (1)
Temple 105.1 103.3 (3) 106.9 (1) 107.5 (1) 104.5 (2) 101.1 (6) 37.6% (2) .72 (1) 17.6% (4)
Navy 102.1 99.8 (7) 99.9 (3) 101.4 (4) 102.7 (4) 116.3 (2) 46.7% (11) .74 (3) 10.6% (12)
East Carolina 99.0 107.3 (2) 82.2 (9) 94.4 (8) 85.3 (10) 105.7 (5) 38.3% (3) .82 (9) 15.4% (5)
Cincinnati 97.9 90.8 (9) 94.1 (7) 96.9 (6) 85.8 (9) 108.3 (4) 43.6% (8) .81 (8) 15.2% (8)
Tulane 97.6 102.0 (5) 99.1 (4) 102.4 (3) 95.4 (6) 96.3 (7) 41.7% (5) .82 (9) 18.4% (2)
Houston 94.5 86.5 (10) 94.3 (6) 90.4 (10) 93.6 (7) 94.0 (8) 42.1% (7) .74 (3) 15.3%(6)
Connecticut 91.7 99.8 (7) 93.1 (8) 96.5 (7) 98.2 (5) 77.1 (10) 41.8% (6) .78 (6) 12.6% (10)
South Florida 88.3 100.7 (6) 81.4 (10) 92.0 (9) 93.0 (8) 78.7 (9) 46.1% (10) .75 (5) 13.2% (9)
SMU 79.7 76.3 (12) 77.4 (11) 78.4 (11) 79.4 (11) 75.7 (11) 49.5% (12) .98 (11) 11.0% (11)
Tulsa 78.7 76.5 (11) 74.4 (12) 76.9 (12) 75.5 (12) 75.3 (12) 45.0% (9) 1.12 (12) 15.3% (6)