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.
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
An APB for a memorable season
One team that deserves a little more press than it’s been getting - which is zero - is the University of Arkansas Pine Bluff. Like many HBCU’s, the Golden Lions are wrapping up their annual pre-New Year’s barnstorming tour, having zig-zagged the nation collecting paychecks in exchange for beat-downs.
But a couple of things have been different about their travels. First, UAPB hasn’t mixed a tournament into their schedule, thus they have played an entire slate of true road games. With their first three SWAC contests on the road, the first game they will play outside of a hostile environment will be on January 16, some 16 games into the season.
The other part of the story is that while the team is 0-10, it hasn’t taken any beat-downs in the traditional sense. They’ve been quietly competitive in every single game, not losing a single contest by more than 20. When you’re playing the likes of Kansas State, Georgia Tech, Missouri, Arizona State, Oklahoma State, and UTEP - all in their place - and your conference stinks, that’s a start that your conference foes should be concerned about.
In fact, Pine Bluff is in the unique position of heading into the SWAC schedule winless - pending a game at Oregon next Monday (memo to Ernie Kent: this isn’t a gimme) - while having a legitimate shot of running the table in conference play. Probably not the 18% chance I’m showing right now, but even 5-10% is a staggering figure for a winless team.
I, for one, hope they can do it. Maybe it will provide some evidence that just because you lose doesn’t mean your confidence has to be shot. You can actually make strides in losing to quality opponents and there are such things as moral victories. Expect the Lions to get one more of those in Eugene. (Which would make them morally unbeaten?) After that, only real victories will matter, but there should be plenty of those on the way.
Friday, December 11, 2009
Excerpts from 1953: team stats
This is part of a continuing series examining pages from the 1953 Official NCAA Basketball Guide.
Naturally, the stats section in the book was one of the first things I turned to. If it was possible to get 51 rebounds in a game, then you can probably make the inference that a lot of shots did not go in back then. Indeed, as page 29 of the Guide shows, only three teams in all the land made over 40% of their field goal attempts. The “dunk shot” had not yet been popularized, obviously. In addition, no team could crack the 70% mark in free throw accuracy.
By the way, in today’s NCAA each basketball program is classified into one of three divisions for basketball. In ‘53, it was every school for itself. The intro to the major-college statistics section describes exactly how classification was determined.
Approximately 150 college basketball teams, which play most of their games against each other, are classified as “major-college” teams. They represent the field of so-called “big time” college basketball, as judged by the class of competition rather than seasonal strength. Teams of all other four-year colleges comprise the “small-college” field. An official list is issued annually.
Click on the thumbnail for a life-size image of page 29 and make note of that wacky defense Ole Miss is playing, guarding zones on the floor instead of individual opponents!
