June is only 5-25 against winning teams
I'm sorry to do this. But you cannot and should not throw out a stat like that without something to compare it to. Meaning, sure it sounds bad. But is it really? Try to hang with me here.
We start with the question, what IS a winning team exactly? Answer: A team that wins 7 or more games, right? Actually, no. They need to have been at least an 8 win team in this scenario, because in beating them they still need to end with 7 wins, and therefore a winning record, in order to count.
So I’m not going to drag you through the math – you’ll just have to trust me -- and will jump straight to the conclusion. But let me restate the problem real quick. The question again is how many games against winning teams should a team ranked in the mid 50’s like SMU have won? The answer is roughly 25%. Aha!, you say. I’ll give you that 25% figure before pointing out that we only won 17% (5 wins and 25 losses). Not so fast. If you have to include JJ’s first year’s record -- and I don’t think it’s fair if you do so since this was a total tear down job, but if you gotta, we’re no longer a mid 50’s ranked team. We’re a mid 70’s ranked team. And the expected win percentage for a team ranked in the mid 70’s against winning teams goes down significantly from that 25%. Now the 17% actually starts to look far less bad.
Conclusion: JJ is probably no worse – and may even be better – against winning teams than can be expected.