Not Fast Enough
by Ken Pomeroy on Monday, May 10, 2004
Perhaps the most talked about aspect of the 2004 National Chamionship game was Georgia Tech's insistence on forcing a fast pace. It was widely regarded as a mistake for the Jackets to avoid creating a halfcourt game. I'm not exactly sure why, because the Jackets could match the Huskies in both athleticism and depth. But did the Jackets play too fast - and if so, was this a mistake?
Here are the pre-tourney Georgia Tech games that involved the fastest pace, based on calculated possessions, and how the Jackets fared:
@ North Carolina (91 possessions) L 103-88 vs. Connecticut @ MSG (84) W 77-61 vs. Duke (81) L 82-74 @ Cornell (81) W 90-69 vs. Maryland (80) W 81-71 vs. UNC (77) W 88-77
Now the slowest paced games...
vs. Duke @ Greensboro (64) L 85-71 @ Clemson (66) W 79-60 vs. NC St. (67) L 79-69 @ NC…
Accountability
by Ken Pomeroy on Monday, May 3, 2004
Check it out, Todd Beck has calculated the effectiveness of various college hoops computer rankings. Actually he did this in real-time during the season. Some observations...
Looking at the second half results, most systems fall on the correct side of the spread 50-52% of the time. This isn't very good in the grand scheme of things, but most systems were not designed with beating the spread in mind. Still, any system advertising itself as predictive might aspire to do a little better (myself included).
Jeff Sagarin's predictive ratings was the worst of his three systems at predicting. I think his intent was that it would be his best system at predicting, hence the name "Sagarin predictive." Actually though, the system was the worst of any system against the betting public, and darn near last in predicting actual winners. So while my system has produced pretty lame results, I don't…