Contest winner
03.11.12
Congratulations to Tommy Lemoine of Manchester, New Hampshire who earned himself a lifetime subscription to my site by virtue of winning the Mountain West tourney contest. Tommy is a recent Michigan State grad and here was his winning scorecard:
| Question | Pick | Result |
| What will be San Diego State’s largest lead against Boise State? | 12 | 11 |
| How many points will Hank Thorns score against Colorado State? | 17 | 19 |
| How many points will Michael Lyons score against New Mexico? | 17 | 13 |
| How many offensive rebounds will UNLV get against Wyoming? | 7 | 6 |
| How many points will Colorado State score in the second half against San Diego State? | 30 | 30 |
| How many rebounds will Drew Gordon get against UNLV? | 11 | 13 |
| How many three-point attempts will New Mexico and San Diego State combine to take? | 36 | 37 |
The total error for the seven questions was 11, which was good enough to beat out six other contestants by one point. Although after missing Michael Lyons’ point total by four in the third game of the tourney, it appeared Mr. Lemoine was done for. Even he admitted he thought he was doomed at this point. In an interview, Lemoine described the emotional roller-coaster of the next three nights…
I thought I was surely out of the running when Michael Lyons scored 17 points on Thursday, giving me an absolute difference of 7 through only 3 games. Things became a little less bleak when UNLV grabbed 6 offensive rebounds that night. When I was dead-on with Colorado St.’s 30-point second half against SDSU (I couldn’t believe it—that was almost entirely a ‘gut’ pick), I figured I had a shot.
As for the Championship: the ESPN box score originally had each team pegged for 18 three-point attempts when last night’s game went final. I thought they’d called Tapley’s garbage-time shot a two—I even convinced myself his foot was on the line—but a few minutes later they credited it a three, bringing the combined attempts up to 37. Indeed, I thought that lone, stat-padding shot attempt might cost me the contest. I’m grateful and happy it did not.
Mr. Lemoine also admitted, as all great champions do, that he “got very lucky”. There was some luck involved of course - while he would have won whether Tapley’s late shot was ruled a three or a two, Lemoine benefited from an inconsequential garbage-time three-pointer by Colorado State’s Dorian Green at the final horn of the fifth game that allowed Lemoine to nail the Rams’ second-half total on the number. (No joke, the handshake line had started before Green released his shot.)
Nonetheless, Mr. Lemoine put himself in position to win with good picks and now owns a subscription to my web site through December 31, 2099, and as he puts it, “looks forward to a lifetime of tempo-free statistics.”
Congrats to Tommy and thanks to all the people that entered the contest. I hope to do more of this in the future.
Log5 vs. seeds 2012
Conference tourney season ends today, seemingly hours after it started. And that means it’s time to look back on the successes and failures of the system. The chart below attempts to summarize the performance of the log5 method vs. the seeds. For instance, 12 teams won a title that were deemed the most likely to win its conference tournament by log5, while ten teams won a title that were the top seed. It wasn’t quite the convincing victory that log5 scored last season, and there’s still some business to take care of today. To this point, though, only a single one-seed (Long Island U.) won its tourney while not being favored by log5. Last season there were none.
Mountain West tourney summary: the title game
03.10.12
New Mexico beat San Diego State 68-59 in a 68-possession game Saturday night. I was there. This is what I saw.
Good defense or bad offense?
Before Chase Tapley entered beast mode late in the game, the Lobos were putting up some gaudy defensive stats. The Aztecs weren’t taking many threes and facing the usual New Mexico resistance in the paint. They also committed an abundance of turnovers, finishing with 15. That’s not an absurdly high total for the game, but they all occurred before the 5:39 mark by which point the Aztecs fate was sealed. Eight of these were of the non-steal/unforced variety, which begs the issue as to how much of San Diego State’s struggles were due to the Lobo defense and how much of it was due to the Aztec playing below it’s usual level (which granted, is not what you’d call an elite level.)
Determining the answer to this question is, of course, extremely difficult and why it’s dangerous to read too much into one game. The Aztecs were pretty good at taking care of the ball this season, and New Mexico, despite having an effective defense, wasn’t great at forcing them. It’s fair to say New Mexico played defense well, but some of those turnovers fell into their lap.
Consistency? Consistency!
After the game, Steve Alford specifically lauded his team’s consistency over the course of the season. I figured it was the lack of consistency that kept the Lobos from being ranked by the people that seem to value that kind of thing. However, reality indicates otherwise. In 17 games against conference teams, New Mexico had a scoring margin of +177, suggesting they’d lose three of those games. Instead, they lost four, hardly the hallmark of an inconsistent team.
Looking over New Mexico’s body of work, it’s still hard to imagine why they entered the tourney unranked while UNLV and San Diego State found a home in the polls. Their loss to Santa Clara on Thanksgiving was inexplicable, but using an outcome from November 24 to discredit the Lobos is equally as difficult to understand.
About Chase Tapley
Circling back to the first sentence, Tapley fueled a five-possession stretch with less than three minutes to go where the Aztecs scored 15 points (Chase personally contributed nine of those). If you still doubt why margin of victory is more predictive than close-game performance – this is it. Despite the video-game like outburst, San Diego State only got within seven after this run. Teams less dominant than New Mexico would have been surrendering a lead at that point, and thus seriously jeopardizing their chance to win. The Lobos suffered no such fate.
And kudos are due to Tapley – on a night when the Aztecs’ offensive star Jamaal Franklin was frustrated into a six-turnover performance, Tapley hoisted 39% of his team’s shots while he was in the game and got his 25 points efficiently. That’s something none of his teammates could say.