The Transitive Property Proves The Mississippi University School Of Women Owls Basketball Team Is Better Than The Auburn Tigers
Full disclosure. This might be the dumbest blog I ever wrote. But let's have a little fun. It's March after all.
As you can see by my patchwork Canva art that would make John Nash proud, we have a nice little chain of who-beat-who in college basketball that starts at who beat Auburn and goes all the way down to some random DIII school of women who, while still lost, beat Mississippi Valley State in the second half.
You're everyday 17-degrees of Kevin Bacon. So by the transitive property, a school of women's DIII team's second half vs Mississippi State is better than the best team in the nation.
Now playing the who-beat-who game is a fun exercise in all sports, but college hoops especially. Someway, somehow, you can make a chain to say any team is better than anyone else. Safe to say I proved that beyond any doubt here. While there are 364 DI teams, my data shows 699 teams that played in a game worthy of College Basketball Reference logging. Want to know which of these 699 teams had the second-worst point differential this season?
No. It's not MS U for Women. It's the team they beat (in the second half). Mississippi Valley with a somewhat paltry -816. Not in franchise history. Just this season. Only Virginia-Lynchburg was worse:
Quite the road trip.
Now you might be wondering… "Wait, why did a women's basketball team play a men's team? What size ball did they even use?"
Turns out, this wasn't a women's team. Just a women's school. With a dude's team. I don't have any other explanation other than that. And I'm not willing to tell you how far into making the John Nash-esque graph I was before thinking I should check the actual box score to see if this was really a women's team (but if I was it was the entire thing). The important thing here is, this team is better than Auburn. And Duke.
This is all the time of yours I'm willing to waste for today.