Monthly Archives: December 2016

When an upset happens in the first week or two of the season, it’s usually the result of one or both participating teams being misunderstood in some way. Before Arkansas State won at Georgetown the first week of the season, it was with the thought that the Red Wolves were a below-average Sun Belt team and that the […]

In the absence of an imminent court-rushing, coaches not shaking hands at the end of a game is a serious breach of post-game etiquette. Fran McCaffery’s refusal to follow decades of hoops tradition and not offer parting pleasantries to Brian Jones Tuesday night was caused by another breach of etiquette – when the winning team […]

If you watched one game on Saturday, I’m guessing it was Kentucky’s 103-100 win over North Carolina. But if you watched other games you probably saw a lot of points being scored in those contests as well. Looking at all days since the 2000 season where at least 50 games were played, Saturday featured more scoring than […]

I have a love/hate relationship with player comps. There are clearly some good things about them but some of the utility in identifying a player’s group of comparables is removed by the human tendency to first match players based on things like race, ethnicity, or even hair style. While I haven’t studied it, I expect that […]

Late Thursday night, Saint Mary’s suffered its first loss of the season at the hands of UT-Arlington, reducing the number of unbeatens nationally to eight. Going back to the 2000 season (because that’s as far back as my database goes) that’s the fewest number of unbeatens at this point in the season. Perhaps equally interesting […]

There hasn’t been much talk about the player of the race yet. I know it’s the first week of December, so it’s highly premature to discuss such matters, but that’s never stopped anybody before. Last year at this time many people had already narrowed the race to Buddy Hield and Denzel Valentine. The problem this season […]

There were 1,062 games between Division-I teams in November. Here are the wildest things that happened during the month: Best Comebacks 3. November 21: #110 Winthrop 84, #71 Illinois 80. (0.5%) Illinois jumped out a 14-2 lead and tried to keep a solid Winthrop team at arm’s length the rest of the way. Winthrop scored the next […]