March 11, 2009 –
by Lukas
The Big 12 has flown somewhat under the radar compared to fellow BCS conferences this year. The conference featured neither multiple high-soaring teams at the top of the league a la the Big East and ACC nor the down-to-the-wire bubble mayhem of the Pac-10 and Big Ten, nor even the generally uninspiring and sloppy play of the SEC. Once Blake Griffin went down and with it Oklahoma’s likely No. 1 seed, the focus switched to the bubble race. Fortunately for fans of Texas A&M, Oklahoma State and Texas, their teams are looking pretty solid in terms of an at-large bid for the NCAAs, but unfortunately for the conference officials, there is a good chance that Selection Sunday will not spring any major surprises. Read More »
Posted in Big 12, Reviews/Previews
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Tagged Baylor, Colorado, Iowa State, Kansas, Kansas State, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech
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February 13, 2009 –
by Brendon
Bracketing challenges: The two most difficult aspects to this bracket were near the top and at the at-large cut line. The former was centered around the second, third and fourth seed lines. Several of the teams being considered for these lines — Marquette, Kansas, Louisville, UCLA, Xavier, Wake Forest — lost during the mid-week, which made identifying good options more difficult. Through a process of elimination, the last spot on the second seed line came down to Clemson and Villanova, the two teams that met in the first round of last year’s NCAA Tournament. Clemson gets the nod with one fewer loss on the season and one more win against the RPI top 50. The margins are that small from team to team. Read More »
Posted in Bracket Junkie, National Perspective
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Tagged ACC, Arizona, Arizona State, Atlantic-10, Baylor, Big 12, Big East, Big Ten, Boston College, Brigham Young, Butler, Cincinnati, Clemson, Creighton, Dayton, Georgetown, Illinois, Kansas, Kansas State, Kentucky, Louisville, LSU, Marquette, Maryland, Miami (Fla.), Michigan, Michigan State, Minnesota, Mississippi State, Missouri, Mountain West, Nebraska, North Carolina, Northwestern, Notre Dame, Ohio State, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Pac-10, Penn State, Providence, San Diego State, SEC, Southern Cal, St. Joseph's, Syracuse, Texas, Texas A&M, UCLA, Utah, Villanova, Virginia Tech, Wake Forest, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Xavier
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February 9, 2009 –
by Brendon
Edit: I’ve made a couple of small changes with the bracket that put it better in line with bracketing principles. 1) I made the mistake of placing Dayton in a Dayton regional, which obviously can’t happen. 2) I also decided that I’d be better off forcing a change in regional assignments to avoid having the “Opening Round” game winner play on Thursday. To resolve both issues, I switched Pittsburgh’s pod to Dayton and Louisville’s pod to Philadelphia. I’ve also moved Princeton opposite Connecticut and the “Opening Round” game winner opposite Pittsburgh. These principles become more crucial when we are looking at the final brackets and aren’t as essential in February, but it’s still good to go by the book right now.
Bracketing challenges: There were a few separate challenges in compiling this bracket, which was perhaps the most difficult of the season for me so far, since there was so much movement. The first challenge was placing the eight ACC teams, since six of them fell on seed lines that are on the same side of a bracket. That caused me to move Boston College up one and Virginia Tech down one from each team’s true seed line.
The second challenge was due to the many losses that teams in the field suffered this week, including several surprising ones — either because of the margin or the opponent. This is something that we’ll get into in greater depth as we do the conference breakdowns, but I’ll just point out a few of the specific challenges that this created. Marquette’s loss to USF dropped the Golden Eagles into a position where they were vying with UCLA for the last No. 3 seed. How far does one move a team down when it losses a close game to a far inferior team on the road? Marquette won out over UCLA on this one. Another was Tennessee’s narrow loss to Auburn, which dropped the Vols to the No. 8 seed line, a line that also includes Texas and Syracuse, two teams that also lost and were in poor form on Saturday. Gonzaga’s 18-point loss at home to Memphis was another example of a team for which it was difficult to determine a true seed after a bad loss. Read More »
Posted in Bracket Junkie, National Perspective
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Tagged ACC, Arizona, Baylor, Big 12, Big East, Big Ten, Cincinnati, Clemson, Davidson, Florida State, Georgetown, Gonzaga, Kansas State, Marquette, Maryland, Memphis, Michigan, Mid-Majors, Mississippi State, Nebraska, Oklahoma State, Pac-10, Penn State, SEC, Tennessee, Texas, Texas A&M, UCLA, Villanova, Virginia Tech, Washington, Wisconsin
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February 6, 2009 –
by Brendon
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Bracketing challenges: The most difficult team to place in this bracket was Purdue. On Tuesday, the Boilermakers lost at Ohio State in overtime without their best player — Robbie Hummel. It’s the second time Purdue has lost a close game on the road without the sophomore star. Usually those losses would be discounted slightly with the expectation that Purdue will have a full-strength Hummel by the time March comes around. The problem with that assumption is that Hummel is suffering from a stress fracture in his back, an injury that won’t fully heal until the offseason. Hummel is expected to be day-to-day from here until Purdue’s final game of the season. Because of the chronic nature of the injury, I’m treating those losses as if they were full-strength losses — with a slight discount for the Penn State loss, because Purdue was without Chris Kramer for that game. Losing close road games to Penn State and Ohio State is not particularly egregious — certainly better than Michigan State’s home losses to Penn State and Northwestern — but Purdue would probably be listed as a No. 4 seed if doctors expected Hummel to be fully healthy by March. Instead, the Boilermakers are the top No. 5 seed on my board.
Note: San Diego State is in the field as an automatic bid from the Mountain West after winning at UNLV on Tuesday. The Aztecs would be right between Baylor and Southern Cal in the “Last In” list if they were considered an at-large.
The Bubble: The bubble was a little awkward this week because of several results in conference play. Even with San Diego State’s inclusion as an automatic, the standard for inclusion in the field on Friday feels less stringent than it did on Monday thanks to many losses by teams around the bubble. In the end, I’m very comfortable with the top 32 at-large teams. It’s the last two — Baylor and Michigan — that I could take or leave.
Michigan’s impressive win over Penn State put both teams right around the cut mark. Because of the Wolverines’ win Thursday and their more impressive play out of conference — wins over Duke and UCLA — they’re in and the Nittany Lions are out, not that it was necessarily and either/or proposition. Baylor is running out of reprieves. Scott Drew’s team has now lost four straight games, all against teams seeded No. 7 or better in this projection. Baylor now enters a stretch of five games — at Texas Tech, Oklahoma, Texas A&M, at Oklahoma State, at Iowa State — where the Bears will need to win at least three to stay in the field. Read More »
Posted in Bracket Junkie, National Perspective
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Tagged ACC, Arizona, Arizona State, Atlantic-10, Baylor, Ben Howland, Big 12, Big East, Big Ten, Bo Ryan, Boston College, Brigham Young, Bruce Pearl, Butler, Chase Budinger, Chris Kramer, Cincinnati, Clemson, Connecticut, Davidson, Dayton, Derek Glasser, Florida, Florida State, Georgetown, Gonzaga, Illinois, Iowa, Iowa State, James Harden, Jay Wright, Jerome Randle, Kansas, Kansas State, La Salle, Louisville, LSU, Miami (Fla.), Michigan, Michigan State, Mike Montgomery, Minnesota, Mississippi State, Missouri, Mountain West, Nebraska, North Carolina, North Carolina State, Northern Iowa, Northwestern, Notre Dame, Ohio State, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Oregon State, Pac-10, Patty Mills, Penn State, Pittsburgh, Providence, Purdue, Rhode Island, Robbie Hummel, Rutgers, Saint Joseph's, Saint Mary's, San Diego State, SEC, Siena, South Carolina, Southern Cal, Syracuse, Temple, Tennessee, Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Tom Izzo, Tywon Lawson, UNLV, Utah, Utah State, Villanova, Virginia, Virginia Tech, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wisconsin-Green Bay, Xavier
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January 28, 2009 –
by Brendon
Wednesday night is typically when we hit the critical mass of games during the college basketball workweek, and this Wednesday’s slate gives the college basketball fan several chances to evaluate teams vying for the last handful of NCAA at-large bids. Here are the games that mean the most to the teams closest to being in or out of the field.
(Note: We’re using our Beta version of what we’re calling the Baseline Tournament Index (BTI) to determine where a team stands. We’re really excited about its accuracy in modeling recent brackets, but we do have some adjustments to make before it’s ready for public dissemination. So, this is a first peak.) Read More »
Posted in National Perspective
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Tagged Andy Rautins, Arinze Onuaku, Baseline Tournament Index, BTI, Cincinnati, Georgetown, John Beilein, Kansas, LSU, Michigan, Mick Cronin, Mookie Jones, Nebraska, Ohio State, Providence, Syracuse, Tennessee, Thad Matta
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January 25, 2009 –
by Brendon
Here’s a follow-up on what I wrote on Saturday nightin terms of the tradeoff teams make in exchanging forcing turnovers for keeping their opponents off the foul line. I was interested to see which teams are best at combining forcing turnovers with not fouling. I created a simple statline for an average game with 70 possessions, 70 points for each team, an average field-goal percentage, offensive rebounding percentage, turnover percentage, etc. Using that statline as a baseline, I was able to calculate the value of a forced turnover (1.25 points) and the value of a free-throw attempt allowed (-0.68 points).
Based on that information, I calculated how many points per game a team gains or loses based only on its turnover-forced rate and it’s free-throw-allowed rate. I’m calling the junk stat ACUSLP for “accurate slapping.” I found that the nation’s two best teams at forcing turnovers without fouling are also probably the two best teams in the Big South — Virginia Military Institute and Liberty. Read More »
Posted in National Perspective
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Tagged Al Horford, Bill Self, Billy Donovan, Clemson, Connecticut, Duke, Florida, Fran McCaffrey, Gary Williams, Georgetown, Illinois, Iowa, Joakim Noah, Johnny Dawkins, Kansas, Kansas State, Liberty, Marreese Speights, Maryland, Michigan, Mike Krzyzewksi, Mississippi, Nebraska, Ohio State, Oklahoma State, Oliver Purnell, Oregon, Rutgers, Seton Hall, South Carolina, South Florida, Stanford, Tennesse, Texas Tech, Virginia, VMI
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January 22, 2009 –
by Brendon
Fatigued after a long night of basketball-watching and writing, I’ll try to keep tonight’s edition of “The Nights in Hoops” brief despite a full slate of action.
The biggest story of the night was the fall of the last of the unbeatens. Virginia Tech went to Winston-Salem and knocked off Wake Forest, 78-71, built primarily around good 2-point shooting (19-for-29, 65 percent) and 37 free-throw attempts. Despite making just 22 of those freebies, the Hokies were able to come away with the victory. The 2-point performance was especially notable against Demon Deacons team that entered the game 10th in the nation at 2-point defense (40.4 percent). Read More »
Posted in Reviews/Previews
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Tagged A.J. Price, ACC, Alabama, Arizona, Arizona State, Atlantic-10, Auburn, Baylor, Big 12, Big East, Big Ten, Blake Griffin, Brigham Young, Butler, Clemson, Colonial, Connecticut, Danny Green, Darrin Horne, Deon Thompson, Duquesne, Florida, Florida State, Frank Haith, George Mason, Georgetown, Horizon, Illinois State, Iowa, James Harden, Jarvis Varnado, Jeff Pendergraph, Jodie Meeks, Jonathan Kale, Kansas State, Keno Davis, Kentucky, LaceDarius Dunn, Louisville, LSU, Marcus Thornton, Matt Janning, Miami (Fla.), Michigan State, Mississippi, Mississippi State, Missouri, Missouri Valley, Nebraska, North Carolina, Northeastern, Northwestern, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Oliver Purnell, Pac-10, Providence, Randall Hanke, Rhode Island, Richmond, Russ Pennell, Rutgers, Saint Joseph's, SEC, Seth Greenberg, Seton Hall, South Carolina, Southern Cal, Tasmin Mitchell, Terrence Williams, Travis Ford, Trent Johnson, Tyler Hansbrough, UNLV, Villanova, Virginia Tech, Wake Forest, Washington, Wayne Ellington, West Virginia, Wichita State, Wink Adams, Wisconsin, Wisconsin-Green Bay, Zam Frederick
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