This is a weekly digest documenting the biggest upsets, craziest comebacks, and Alan Williams news of the past seven days. Note: This is the final Week in Review for the season. Conference tourneys start on Monday and future content will focus on that. Thanks to everyone for reading. Biggest upsets 3. Tennessee State 70, Morehead […]

One of the best things in college hoops is the seemingly impossible chase for a perfect record. I like it so much, I chronicle how many teams keep that dream alive as the season progresses (Collect ‘em all) knowing full well that number will eventually reach zero, usually long before March. While some claim a […]

You might think the title of this post should be “How much is Brandon Ashley’s absence hurting Arizona” because we can watch and see that Arizona is not as good without Brandon Ashley. I mean, they are playing without Brandon Ashley, for crying out loud. Most of the minutes formerly going to the 6-8, 230 […]

This is a weekly digest documenting the biggest upsets, craziest comebacks, and Alan Williams news of the past seven days. Biggest upsets 3. Arkansas Pine Bluff 64, Southern 58, Saturday. (7%) Southern was 21-2 in home SWAC games under Roman Banks coming into this one. But UAPB was rolling into Baton Rouge on a four-game […]

The Villanova/Creighton game yesterday was a demonstration of trade-offs. In their first matchup, Jay Wright elected to play what has become normal Villanova defense during his tenure. In a gross oversimplification, this involves taking away the paint and hoping his opponent missed three-point shots. Creighton made 21-of-35 attempts and scored a whopping 1.45 points per […]

This is a weekly digest documenting the biggest upsets, craziest comebacks, and Alan Williams news of the past seven days. Biggest upsets 3. Navy over Army (9%), Saturday. Heading into this one, Army was 8-3 with an outside shot of capturing the all-important Patriot League one-seed. (The top seed in the PL tourney gets to […]

Sometimes I think of home-site advantage as the simplest contribution of analytics. I don’t know when home-site advantage was first discovered or how it was estimated, but at some point, somebody had to do it and it was a major contribution to those interested in sports. I can’t imagine it took very long for people […]

This is a weekly digest documenting the biggest upsets, craziest comebacks, and Alan Williams news of the past seven days. Biggest Upsets 3. East Carolina over UAB (13%), Saturday. I don’t think I’ve said a word about Conference USA since we had to do the preseason poll for them again. One surprise has been ECU, […]

When you look at average possession length (APL) data, the thing that stands out is that slow defenses tend to be very good. Not slow in terms of the player’s speed, but slow in terms of forcing opponents to take a long time with the basketball. Syracuse, Florida, and Arizona currently have the three slowest […]

Last Friday, I commented on the plight of Longwood’s Jeff Havenstein. He started in Longwood’s win over Charleston Southern, but played just two minutes. These kinds of occurrences aren’t all that unusual, but they often involve some sort of tragedy, like a serious injury. In Havenstein’s case, it was a coaches decision. That got me […]