Friday, January 29, 2010
Excerpts from 1953: New rules
There are nothing like rules changes to cause a little controversy. As the ‘53 season approached, two issues were burning in fans’ minds. The first was a change in free throw rules. No longer was a team allowed to turn down the opportunity to take a free throw after a foul. (Yes, free throw is singular on purpose. The penalty for a foul was one shot.) In ‘53, teams were now required to shoot. As a compromise, the reverse bonus rule was instituted - if you missed the free throw, you’d get a second chance. Apparently, scoring just one point on a possession was a big deal then. Fouls in the last three minutes of the game were worth a two shot guarantee.
The more interesting section is the one on coaching behavior. Of course, this is a topic that is still discussed today. In ‘53, the game was still adjusting to less stringent restrictions on coaching behavior. Gone were the days when a coach could only communicate to his players during a timeout. “Coaching from the bench” was born. It’s almost like the author pines for the days before substitutions and time outs were allowed. (I’m with him on timeouts.) Oswald Tower (born in 1883, eight years before the sport was invented) is pretty much the 1953 version of the guy that laments shorts extending below the knees today.
Click the thumbnail for the full text.
Monday, January 18, 2010
Conference projections
At long last, I’ve added projected conference records to the conference pages. So now, you don’t have to be left in wonderment by statements like this:
After beating Miami handily, could Virginia could be 9-7 in the ACC and make the NCAA tournament?
You can just click on the conference page and get an idea of what’s expected in the ACC. It turns out the Cavaliers could be could in a contentious battle for at-large bids among the seven indistinguishable teams forecast to finish within a game of .500. Get out of the way for a conference title race between Duke and…nobody.
Though for total conference dominance, check out Morgan State in the MEAC. For some reason, the Bears’ first five conference games are roadies. With a win tonight they will end that stretch unbeaten and will have pretty much clinched a top seed in the conference tourney.
Also, you can use this feature like a time machine and anticipate the stories of the future! Marquette and Arizona State aren’t going to appear in the respected opinion polls any time soon, but on their current trajectory we could expect them to do some noteworthy things in the weeks to come.
This is still a beta technology and it’s possible the records don’t sum to .500 in a rogue case here and there. If you see something like that, let me know.
Friday, January 15, 2010
OMG Marqus Blakely
Every once in a while, I’ll see a feature where the writers try to construct the perfect player in a sport based on the qualities of existing players. In college hoops this season, it would be something like a combination of the vision of John Wall, the rebounding of Brian Zoubek, the quick hands of Al Nolen, and the gritty determination of that guy that puts up horrible stats but everybody knows he’s awesome because of his gritty determination. (Actually, I’ve never seen such a feature, but it provides the only premise I could think of here.) There’s no need to write that story this season, because that player exists - he is Vermont’s Marqus Blakely, a rare 10/20/30 guy. (Hat tip to my pal Lou from Burlington for bringing this to my attention.)
Currently he sports offensive and defensive rebounding rates north of 10% and 20%, respectively, along with an assist rate better than 30%. When he’s not rebounding or setting up teammates, you can find him at the free throw line where he leads his conference in free throw rate (and converts at 71%). And you know what else? Balkman defensive stats!! He leads America East in both block and steal rates as well. He’s mastered every skill in the sport except three-point shooting.
Amazingly, he’s only 6-5. If he could change that 5 to a 7, he might be on a draft board somewhere. As it is, he’s probably headed the way of Kyle Hines after this season. Nonetheless, admire the versatility of Mr. Blakely while it lasts. He is a unique individual.
Friday, January 08, 2010
Exclusively 2’s: A bad idea
Watching the Michigan/Penn State game last night, I was riveted. The Wolverines spent a large part of the game playing horrible basketball, but more importantly, they were scoring exclusively with the two-point shot. I wondered if we were about to witness a feat more rare than a 6 OT game, an accomplishment that would never be duplicated for the rest of humanity - could a team go the distance scoring two at a time?
When Zack Novak hit a three with 11:59 left, all of my speculation was pointless, but it did force me to do some research. I now have over 9000 play-by-plays in my database dating back to the 2005 season. Michigan’s two-fer was the second longest on record.
Date Team Opp 1st non-2 Score before shot 3/01/08 Texas A&M Oklahoma 11:39 18-44 1/07/10 Michigan Penn St. 11:59 26-42 12/05/07 San Jose St. San Diego 12:17 20-37 12/17/05 Arizona St. Iowa 14:07 18-38 11/27/05 S.C. St. UAB 15:48 24-44
Going back to the ‘04 season, there have been 34,592 games involving a D-I team. In 71 of those, a team didn’t make a free throw. In 333, a team didn’t make a three. Assuming those are independent events, both things happening to the same team would occur once in about 50,000 games or every 9-10 seasons.
But those aren’t independent events. First, a team that doesn’t make threes probably isn’t taking many threes and thus would tend to get more free throw attempts than the typical team. But more importantly, as the chart above shows, scoring two at a time is not for winners. It leads to horrific offense which in turns leads to a large deficit and that leads to an increase in three-point attempts.
Thus, I conclude it’s physically impossible for a team to go the distance making only twos, but Michigan gave it a good run on a night of otherwise uninspiring college hoops.
Wednesday, January 06, 2010
Most likely to go winless
This ...
I’d say there’s a 50-50 chance the Hawkeyes will not win a game in the Big Ten this season.
got me to thinking about which teams really could go winless in conference play. The thing that Seth Davis doesn’t appreciate is that even if a team is worse than any other team in its conference, it’s really difficult to navigate through your conference schedule with nary a win. Only six teams have done it over the past five seasons, and while Iowa could join that list this season, their chances would appear to be far less than 50 percent. One reason is that their conference schedule is extremely favorable for picking up a win somewhere.
For starters, they get two games against Indiana. When the Hoosiers go to Iowa City, it would seem that based on what we know now, the Hawkeyes should have at least a 50 percent chance to win that game alone. In addition, home games against Penn State, Michigan, and Northwestern also provide reasonable chances at victory. Heading into last night’s game at Illinois, the winless prognosticator said Iowa’s chances for 0-18 were only about 3 percent.
I was curious how this stacked up to the rest of the country. Heading into Tuesday’s play there were 43 teams that had at least a 1-in-1000 chance of going winless in conference play. Here are the top ten.
Fordham 49.8% Drake 10.8 Toledo 6.1 Dartmouth 5.8 DePaul 4.1 Bryant 3.9 Penn 3.5 Iowa 3.2 UMBC 3.1 Arkansas 2.1
I wouldn’t recommend buying the percentages to the precision past the decimal point, but I do think we have enough info to take the numbers seriously. (Obviously, Courtney Fortson’s return renders the Hogs’ listed chances meaningless.) And for one team, there truly is a 50-50 chance of securing a donut by season’s end. For everybody else, it’s still a long shot. Add up those figures for all of college hoops (many of which are zero since a lot of teams have already secured a conference victory) and you get an expectation that somewhere around 1.2 teams will go winless this season, which is right on the five-year average. If you were smart you would peg Fordham as that team right now, although even with the Rams, the odds are technically against them.