Get the MBB cross-source team crosswalk

Build a wide, one-row-per-team-per-season crosswalk linking ESPN, Fox Sports (Bifrost), Bart Torvik (barttorvik.com), and KenPom (hoopR::teams_links bundled data) men's college basketball team identities, keyed on espn_team_id. Yahoo columns are NA placeholders. ESPN is deduped by team_id (first occurrence kept).

Fox is joined on the full normalized mascot name (with a curated alias bridge for cases where Fox and ESPN differ). Torvik and KenPom are each joined on the normalized school/location name after a curated alias pass for common divergences (e.g. "UConn" / "Connecticut", "Ole Miss" / "Mississippi", "LIU" / "Long Island University"). No authentication is required for any source.

Every source is read as of season:

• espn_conference is the conference each team was in that season, under that season's name, from the SDV conference reference (load_mbb_team_group_seasons() and load_mbb_group_seasons()). The ESPN team list itself is today's Division I list, so a team that was not in a Division I conference that season has an NA espn_conference.

• fox_section comes from Fox's per-conference standings for that season (league/standings?groupId=&season=), which start in 2017-18: earlier seasons get NA fox_*. Fox lists teams under the conference they joined the NEXT season, so fox_section is set to NA where it disagrees with espn_conference, and for any Fox conference with fewer than two agreeing teams that stay put the next season. fox_team_id is kept.

• bart_* comes from Torvik's {season}_team_results.csv (2008 on; earlier seasons get NA bart_*).

• kp_* comes from teams_links for that season (2002-2026); a season it does not carry gets NA kp_*.

A source that fails raises an error instead of returning a crosswalk whose columns are silently all NA. Torvik answering with no teams (blocked or empty) for a season it covers, Fox returning no standings for the season, and a missing conference reference raise an error of class crosswalk_source_error.

Usage

mbb_team_crosswalk(season = most_recent_mbb_season(), fox = NULL)

Arguments

season

Season year (4-digit, ending year, e.g. 2025 = 2024-25). Defaults to most_recent_mbb_season().

fox

An already-fetched frame with fox_team_id, fox_team_name and fox_section, or NULL (default) to fetch season's Fox standings live. Pass an empty data.frame() to skip Fox.

Value

A hoopR_data tibble, one row per ESPN team:

col_name	types	description
season	integer	Season year.
espn_team_id	integer	ESPN team id (canonical key).
espn_abbreviation	character	ESPN abbreviation.
espn_display_name	character	ESPN display name (school + mascot).
espn_short_name	character	ESPN short name.
espn_location	character	ESPN school/location only.
espn_mascot	character	ESPN mascot/nickname.
espn_conference	character	Conference that season, under that season's name (NA if not in a Division I conference).
fox_team_id	character	Fox Bifrost team id (NA if unmatched).
fox_team_name	character	Fox team name (NA if unmatched).
fox_section	character	Fox conference that season (NA if unmatched or unconfirmed).
bart_team	character	Torvik team name (NA if unmatched).
bart_conf	character	Torvik conference abbreviation (NA if unmatched).
kp_team	character	KenPom team name (NA if unmatched).
kp_conf	character	KenPom conference abbreviation (NA if unmatched).
yahoo_team_id	character	Yahoo team id (NA placeholder).
yahoo_team_name	character	Yahoo team name (NA placeholder).
fox_match_confidence	numeric	1 for matched, NA for unmatched.
bart_match_confidence	numeric	1 for matched, NA for unmatched.
kp_match_confidence	numeric	1 for matched, NA for unmatched.
match_method	character	Combination of matched sources, e.g.
		"fox+bart+kp" / "fox+bart" / "bart+kp" /
		"fox_only" / "bart_only" / "kp_only" /
		"espn_only".

See also

Other MBB Crosswalk Functions: load_nba_team_crosswalk(), mbb_player_crosswalk(), mbb_schedule_crosswalk()

Examples

# \donttest{
  try(mbb_team_crosswalk(season = 2025))
#> Error in .bb_source_error(sprintf("Torvik %d: no team rows (%d rows, columns %s); a blocked or empty response must not ship as NA bart_* columns",  : 
#>   Torvik 2025: no team rows (19 rows, columns doctype_html_public_w3c_dtd_html_4_01_transitional_en_http_www_w3_org_tr_html4_loose_dtd, year); a blocked or empty response must not ship as NA bart_* columns
# }