The untrained eye: Saint Mary’s vs. BYU
01.29.12
Saint Mary’s beat BYU 80-66 in a 71-possession game Saturday night. I was there. This is what I saw.
Randy Bennett’s track record on defending the three-point line is incredible.
For eight consecutive seasons, Saint Mary’s has finished in the top ten in three-point attempt defense. They’re on their way to a ninth consecutive season. I’m not sure why this stat doesn’t get more run, but the ratio of three-point percentage defense references to three-point attempt defense references is approximately 950:1 in the media, yet they’re equally important.
Sure, opponents convert threes at a decent rate against the Gaels (35.6% this season), but since they’re not taking that many three-pointers, it isn’t a big issue. Not that anybody is going to overcome a 23-point second-half deficit to Saint Mary’s anyway, but SMC’s ability to prevent three-point attempts makes it easier for them to protect a lead.
BYU normally takes a third of its shots from beyond the arc but in two games against Saint Mary’s just 20% of their shots have been threes, and the Cougars have been playing with a double-digit deficit for most of those 80 minutes. BYU has needed to shoot threes and they haven’t been able to do it. Kudos to Gaels’ head coach Randy Bennett, a man with an unwavering and yet largely unnoticed defensive strategy.
Saint Mary’s now roots for BYU
Here’s how things stand in Pool A of the WCC
St. Mary’s 3-0
Gonzaga 0-1
BYU 0-2
The Gaels will clinch Pool A, and essentially the top seed in the WCC tournament, should BYU be able to regroup and knock off Gonzaga Thursday night. Otherwise, despite being unbeaten in WCC action, they may need to fight off Gonzaga in Spokane on February 9 to finally break the Zags strangehold on WCC regular-season titles.
Officials: Can’t live with ‘em. Pass the beer nuts.
You are probably aware of the kerfuffle that took place earlier on Saturday when Karl Hess missed a blatant goaltend towards the end of the West Virginia/Syracuse. As is customary when these cases come up, Hess’s schedule was cited as a contributing factor to the missed call. Hess worked every day this past week except Friday. No doubt, a few days off here and there would make Hess a better official. However, officials are like people in any other profession in that some are better than others. Kendall Marshall is much more tired than Stilman White and the end of every North Carolina game, but that is hardly reason for Roy Williams to play Stilman White.
Where am I going with this? Well, the Saint Mary’s/BYU game was not an officiating masterpiece. In fairness, it would have been a challenging game even for the best officials. The home fans are going to have a beef with the officiating no matter what when the home team is down by 12 at the half in a big game. And for whatever reason, many of the fans in the Marriott Center were armed with projectiles which eventually forced the officials to call a technical on the crowd early in the second half. In addition, the game was extremely physical with 48 fouls called and there could have been 10 more.
That said, the game probably could have been handled better. Randy Bennett got a bizarre technical at one point while yelling instructions to his players. BYU head coach Dave Rose picked up his second technical in seven years on the job late in the game. If coaches could freely talk about officiating, I’m guessing neither of these two would have had flattering things to say about this game.
This season, the officials in this crew had worked 24, 27, and 27 games respectively; compared to the 57 that Hess has worked. Yet there were still knowledgeable people unhappy with the officiating. The simple fact is that we don’t know how fresh the officials were in this game – surely they’re like a lot of people in that they each have jobs that take up too much of their time. The time that this crew isn’t reffing, they are expending energy and losing sleep being lawyers or accountants or whatever, while Karl Hess’s crew is reffing games. That’s not to say the way officials are assigned games couldn’t be improved. But while simply asking the best officials to cut back on their schedule might feel good, it isn’t going to solve much.
Ken’s Rules Corner
01.27.12
Ken,
I was at the UNLV-UNM game [Saturday] and saw something I’ve never seen before. A UNLV big man takes an elbow to the face on defense which results in a flagrant 1 foul. He has to be removed from the game. UNLV puts in guard Kendall Wallace who hits both the free throws and then is immediately subbed out for a big man.This occurred with about 17 minutes left in the 2nd half. Statistically the ESPN Box gives Wallace one minute played, however the UNLV box gives him 0. For reference, when a player has less time that a full minute the UNLV box normally lists their minutes as 0+. Even the UNLV play-by-play doesn’t list Wallace’s entrance or exit from the game.
Robert
This was actually the second consecutive game where I’d seen someone come off the bench to take flagrant free throws. Last Thursday, Utah’s Alex Mortensen shot free throws without entering the game after Solomon Hill’s ejection-worthy elbow early in the second half against Arizona. Mortensen would reappear in the game during garbage time, therefore he didn’t get the zero-minute designation in the box score.
Having officiated one college basketball game in my life, I feel like I have a slightly-advanced knowledge of the rules of the game. I’m no Jim Burr, mind you, but I have a larger interest in the rules than most folks that cover the game. As you may know, part of the flagrant foul rule is that if the offended party is injured, the coach of the offended team can select anyone on the roster to shoot the free throws.
Art. 3. (Men) When an injured player is unable to attempt a free throw try(s), one of the four remaining players on the playing court shall be selected by the opposing coach to attempt the free throw try(s) unless the committed foul was either intentional personal or flagrant. In such a case, the injured player’s coach shall select any player or team member to attempt the free throw try(s)
The only other time I recall a zero-minute, two-point performance was in the 1997 Final Four when Rick Pitino sent Derek Anderson in to shoot technical free throws when he was sidelined while recovering from a torn ACL. Which brings me to my own personal rules obsession: I’ve never seen anyone use the Pitino move since, and that stuns me because there have to be times when a team’s best free throw shooter is not on the floor when a T is called.
Like the flagrant/injury scenario, technical free throws do not have to be shot by someone who was on the floor when the call was made. Unlike the flagrant/injury situation, pulling this kind of stunt for a technical foul comes at a slight cost. The substitution isn’t a freebie. If a player subs in to shoot the free throws, someone must go to the bench, and the departing player can’t come in again until after the next live ball.
So if a benchwarmer is a stud free throw shooter, the coach is forced to make some sort of lineup change to accommodate him shooting technical free throws and returning to the bench. Still, unless a coach has an extremely short bench it seems like there would be cases where this is a worthy trade-off. Besides, how often do you see a shooter sub in for technical free throws even to stay in the game? It doesn’t seem like it ever happens, and I don’t understand why.
Either coaches aren’t aware of this possibility or they are very particular about their substitutions. One would hope if Scott Wood isn’t on the floor when a technical is called against an N.C. State opponent, that Mark Gottfried would have him shoot the free throws anyway.
How much is air worth?
01.24.12
Wyoming hosts San Diego State tonight (if the Aztecs make it to Laramie) and it got me to wondering about the importance of altitude. The Aztecs won at New Mexico last week, and while observers were impressed with the win in the Lobos’ building, nobody really mentioned that they had to overcome the thin air of Albuquerque (elevation 5300 feet) as well. There are a few studies out there that have looked at the difference in a high-elevation team’s winning percentage between home and road games. For some reason, I’d rather know how many points altitude is worth.
Wyoming has played San Diego State home and away every season since 2000. In 12 games in Wyoming, the average margin as been +1.0 for Wyoming while the games at San Diego have produced an average margin of +9.4 for the Aztecs. The difference of 10.4 points can’t be explained by raw home court advantage alone, which has long been calculated to be around four points. There are 2.4 points left unaccounted for. This is only a 13 game sample, though, and the error bars are large enough so that we can’t get too carried away about the results.
A bigger sample is available if we look at the University of Colorado during its time in the Big 12. For 15 consecutive seasons the Buffaloes played a home and away series with Kansas, Kansas State, Missouri, Iowa State, and Nebraska. In 75 games at Boulder over that span, the average margin was Colorado +1.5 and in the 75 games at lower elevation, Colorado’s average margin was -13.0, for a whopping 14.5 point difference, leaving 6.5 points unexplained.
Six points seems a bit much to account for altitude but there’s another possibility to consider as well. Teams residing at altitude might have an increased disadvantage when they go to lower locations. I’m not a runner and I don’t completely understand the concept of “living high and training low” but it seems to be accepted as an optimum way for endurance runners to train.
Obviously, teams living at high elevation can’t take advantage of this because they also train at high elevation. This might explain the additional disadvantage for these teams when they play at lower elevations. Perhaps higher elevation teams are in poorer shape than their lower elevation counterparts, an effect that is overwhelmed when the lower elevation team is suddenly deprived of its usual oxygen, but appears at sea-level when both teams are on equal footing air-wise.
Whatever the reason, there almost surely is an altitude effect that low-elevation teams have to suffer through when playing in thin air. If San Diego State wins tonight, I expect they won’t get as much credit as they deserve. Wyoming is a better team than RPI believers, or those that rate teams solely based on quality wins, would think. But also, there’s the altitude issue. Throw in the travel problems as well and it’s not unreasonable to think that the Aztecs are dealing with something approaching a double home-court advantage tonight. Keep that in mind if they pull out an ugly victory.