According to Ken Pomeroy, Roger Ayers is the best referee in college basketball.
Here’s how Pomeroy devised his rankings:
In order to assess the quality of a game, I’m using the Thrill Score from FanMatch, imperfect though it may be. But it would seem to capture the things that are important here: opponent quality and game competitiveness. The only other thing we need to account for is the officials’ schedule. The busiest officials can top 100 games in a season. I’m going to value quality over quantity, so I’d prefer not to reward officials for bulk scheduling. In that interest, I’m taking average Thrill Score over the top 50 games that an official works in a season.
Keep in mind, Kentucky is 7-11 in their last 18 games with Ayers on the court.
Based on this approach, here were the top 20 officials last season.
Official Rating
1 Roger Ayers 63.2
2 Mark Whitehead 61.4
3 Mike Eades 60.6
4 John Higgins 59.0
5 Mike Roberts 58.6
6 Doug Sirmons 57.7
7 Bryan Kersey 56.6
8 Keith Kimble 56.6
9 Jamie Luckie 56.3
10 Pat Driscoll 56.1
11 Tom Eades 56.0
12 Joe DeRosa 56.0
13 Terry Wymer 56.0
14 Pat Adams 55.6
15 Brian O’Connell 54.7
16 Kipp Kissinger 54.2
17 Ted Valentine 53.7
18 Verne Harris 53.1
19 Randy McCall 52.6
20 Jeffrey Anderson 52.5
Ayers also tops the current rankings for this season:
Official Rating
1 Roger Ayers 50.8
2 Mike Eades 50.4
3 John Higgins 48.1
4 Terry Wymer 46.7
5 Ted Valentine 45.7
6 Jeffrey Anderson 45.6
7 Jamie Luckie 44.5
8 Keith Kimble 44.3
9 Michael Stephens 43.1
10 Brian Dorsey 43.0
11 Bo Boroski 42.6
12 Doug Sirmons 42.2
13 Steve Olson 42.1
14 Verne Harris 41.7
15 Pat Adams 41.5
16 DJ Carstensen 40.8
17 Pat Driscoll 40.5
18 John Gaffney 40.4
19 Kipp Kissinger 40.4
20 Ray Natili 40.3
