Thursday, November 12, 2009
Alabama is going to win it all
Or at least they have a very good chance. That’s all I can conclude from the odds put on them to go all the way. Witness: Up until a couple days ago, Bodog had the Tide at 20-1, with only 11 teams having better odds. They since dropped them to 40-1, but there are only 20 teams better than that. BetUS currently has them at 15-1, where only eight teams are better. In what may be the most ridiculous proposition ever offered on a college hoops team, Bama is a cool 5-to-1 to make the NCAA title game at BetUS.
This pattern is repeated at other semi-reputable and semi-legal on-line establishments such as the World Sports Exchange, VIP, and sportsbetting.com. All this for a team that didn’t receive a single vote in either pre-season poll. Outside of JaMychal Green having a shot at making all-SEC first team, there’s nothing to suggest this squad has much more than a 50/50 chance of even making the tournament.
What could be causing this? At first, I thought that it must be wealthy Alabama alums just throwing away money in the name of school pride, but Alabama alums won’t even be paying attention to hoops until about the second week of January. Perhaps it’s that people think they are betting on football (Florida is rather highly thought of as well). Or maybe Anthony Grant’s coaching skills have a lot more value than I think.
Monday, November 09, 2009
The Book
It’s possible there will be semi-regular posting here at some point, but not just yet. In the meantime, please purchase a copy of College Basketball Prospectus 2009-10: Major-Conference Preview (with some non major-conference content). It’s remarkably cheap, yet just as informative as last season. Throw some money our way so it can happen again next year. John has a more convincing sales pitch here.
Wednesday, November 04, 2009
Wesley Johnson took 39% of his team’s shots
In some future time, that will be the headline from a game like Syracuse’s exhibition loss to Le Moyne on Tuesday. The actual outcome of the contest, while surprising, isn’t terribly significant. Michigan State memorably lost to Grand Valley State in an exhibition two years ago and ended up as a five-seed. Heck, last season Utah lost to Southwest Baptist in a game that counted and also was given a five-seed come March. There’s not much to be learned from early November games against D-II competition.
But it’s worth noting that Johnson’s performance, or more specifically his role in the Orange’s offense, was in every sense of the word, huge. That 39 percent figure doesn’t include four turnovers and seven free throws also credited to him. It’s still early to draw conclusions from this, but it’s conceivable that this season’s battle for highest usage among players on power conference teams will be between Johnson and his former Iowa State teammate Craig Brackins.
Johnson’s reason for leaving ISU was the imminent style change that was expected with the hiring of Greg McDermott after Johnson’s sophomore season. Regardless, it appears that it was a move for the best. Given the incredible appetite for shots that both Johnson and Brackins have demonstrated since their split, it’s difficult to imagine how the two would have continued to happily coexist.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Schedules are up!
Since exhibitions are being played, it’s about time I got the 2010 schedule pages up. There are surely some errors. If you see one, please let me know. (As always, games where an opponent is TBA are not included.)
Monday, February 16, 2009
Defensive Fingerprint
Defensive Fingerprint attempts to objectively identify the style of a team’s defense. Inputs into the system are the departure from the D-1 norm of the following defensive characteristics…
- assist percentage (triple weight, higher means a more likely zone team)
- 3-point attempt percentage (triple weight, higher means a more likely zone team)
- free throw attempt percentage (double weight, higher means a more likely man team)
- turnover percentage (single weight, higher means a more likely man team)
- defensive rebounding percentage (variable weight depending on offensive rebounding percentage, higher means a more likely man team)
All of these things are thrown together producing a number which will forever remain a secret. The number is then used to book the defense into one of four categories in an attempt to describe what type of defense the team employs…
- Mostly man: The team probably plays man defense on the vast majority of its possessions.
- Inconclusive: The data does not support identifying defensive tendencies.
- Some zone: It’s likely that this team plays a significant number of possessions in a zone defense.
- Mostly zone: It’s likely that this team plays most of its possessions in a zone defense.
A system such as this will have quite a few misses on blindly guessing a defensive style. It could be improved by using stats adjusted for the quality of competition, but for now I’m using the raw stats. Also, consider that labeling a defense simply by zone or man is an oversimplification. Some zone defenses are aggressive enough to function statistically as man defenses, and vice versa. But if you notice a label that looks out of place, let me know. This system will undergo some iterations.