Tuesday, August 30, 2005

New Digs

Welcome to kenpom.com v2.0! I’ve given this place a little bit of a makeover, including the following:

- Additional sortable stats for each team, and 2004 stats have been added as well.

- I hired a highly-respected marketing firm to come up with a new name for the blog, and it paid off big-time.

- RPI data has been added for 1999. Relive the spectacle that was New Mexico getting an at-large bid while ranked 74th in the RPI.

- Pomeroy Ratings pages have been standardized back to 1999.

- More background on what the various tempo-free stats mean, and how they can make your life better. Also, I’m introducing a new free throw multiplier of .475! If you don’t know what that means, don’t worry.

- The blog is a little “cleaner” and it should be more readable, especially with respect to tables and lists.

Regular posting will commence shortly. Thanks for stopping by.

Wednesday, August 17, 2005

Powe-Wow

For those who missed it, the preseason top 50 for the Wooden Award was announced last week. The list isn't binding in any way - someone not on the list can ultimately win the award in March as the nation's best player. It's strictly a publicity stunt, but it's one I welcome at this time of year. It's a great way to get reacquainted with the top talent in the game. Click here for the complete list.

The preseason list doesn't contain any freshmen and according to a press release, is based on the following criteria...

The list is composed of 50 student athletes who, based on last year's individual performance and team records, are the early frontrunners for college basketball's most coveted trophy.

But that statement isn't true for two of the players that made the list.

One of those is Leon Powe of Cal, who missed all of last season while recovering from reconstructive knee surgery. He may not have much of a chance to win the Wooden, but he has a great chance to fill the shoes of Ike Diogu as that obscure west coast star that plays with little supporting cast but manages to salvage a respectable season for his team almost single-handedly.

Listed at 6-8, 245, Powe's dimensions are similar to Diogu's, and so is his game in some respects. Let's compare Powe's freshman season of '04 to Diogu's of '03, starting with the boring stuff.

             PPG  RPG  BPG  APG
Diogu '03...19.0  7.8  1.0  0.8
Powe '04....15.1  9.5  0.6  0.7

That doesn't tell me enough, so digging in a little deeper...

                  Player
        Team OE   Off Rtg   %Poss   %Min
Diogu.... 112       121      25.4   79.8
Powe..... 100       107      27.1   71.5

Both players used much more than their fair share of possessions, and both were more efficient relative to their teammates in doing so. Powe played fewer minutes, likely due to the problems with his knee, which started with a torn ACL in the summer before he arrived at Cal.

The biggest statistical similarity between the two is the ability to get to the line in large quantities.

       FTA/FGA
Diogu...0.712
Powe....0.704

This is about as good as it gets for guys who carry as much of the offensive load as these two did. Diogu even pushed his FT rate closer to 0.8 over the next two seasons.

As shown above, Diogu was significantly more efficient than Powe on the offensive end and that boils down to how well each shot the ball.

         FG%   FT%
Diogu...60.8  73.5
Powe....48.8  60.1

Powe's shooting percentage looks more pedestrian next to Diogu's unearthly total. Not only did Diogu shoot well, but he shot a lot (344 FGAs). For reference, last season only three players had at least 300 FGAs and shot better than 60%. Throw in the fact that Powe only took one three-pointer in '04 compared to Diogu's 24 attempts in '03, and the chasm between the two is that much greater.

Powe figures to get both FGAs and FTAs by the bucketful again this season. If his shooting percentage gets into the low 50s, then he can vault into the superstar category. Adding 10 points to the free-throw shooting would also help. Powe's not so bad that it pays to foul him, but for a guy that will get to the line 7-8 times a game, a competent FT% could contribute to an extra win or two.

There were some things that Powe did better than Diogu.

         TO%    OR%    DR%
Diogu...20.4   11.2   17.1
Powe....14.7   12.9   25.2

Powe's ability to take care of the ball while being the focus of the defense was impressive, especially for a freshman. In addition, Powe's aptitude for getting to the glass was outstanding. This was the sore spot in Diogu's game, especially defensively. Ike's defensive rebounding percentage hardly improved over his three seasons at ASU. Look at it this way - the average team gets 68% of the possible defensive rebounds. That means the average player on the floor gets about 13%. But each player isn't expected to carry an equal part of the load. For a power forward with Ike's skills, 17% is disapointing unless teammates are picking up the slack. (Which to some extent they did. ASU was good defensive rebounding team.) At the extreme, Andrew Bogut posted a 16.1/31.0 OR%/DR% split in 2005, helping Utah to finish 12th nationally in OR% and 1st in DR%.

Some uncertainty surrounds Powe's game regarding his ability to recover from the knee surgery. News on that front is encouraging, with Powe having been named MVP of the San Francisco ProCity pro-am summer league. Granted, the "Pro" portion of the league consisted of guys like Luke Whitehead, so there wasn't really NBA talent here. In addition, Powe's shooting numbers were still below 50%. But this was totally outside of Ben Braun's offensive framework, so there's not much to read into it. We'll learn a little bit more from how Powe plays on Cal's tour of Italy over the next two weeks. But we won't know about him for sure until the real games begin in November.

There wouldn't have been much reason to stay up for an Arizona State/Cal game last season were it not for Diogu. This season, that matchup would be similarly unwatchable - except for the presence of Powe.

Monday, August 08, 2005

Feeling Lucky?

I did this last year, and looking back on it, it was revealing. You can read last year's editions of the luckiest and unluckiest teams from 2004 and judge for yourself. Just ignore my comments about Florida State.

If you don't know what the Pythagorean method is, then you'll have to read the 2004 write-ups. All I am doing is subtracting a team's expected winning percentage from its actual conference winning percentage based on its points scored and allowed during conference play. I have decided to rank the teams by winning percentage difference, instead of by win difference. This is so the system is not biased towards conferences that play a lot of conference games.

These are the teams whose actual conference regular-season record was exceeded by their expected record the most. You could say luck went against these teams the most. The numbers are winning percentage difference followed by actual conference record.

 1 Utah St.            -0.185 (13- 5)
 2 Northern Arizona    -0.171 ( 4-10)
 3 Campbell            -0.167 ( 0-20)
 4 Middle Tennessee    -0.158 ( 7- 7)
 5 Providence          -0.156 ( 4-12)
 6 Nicholls St.        -0.155 ( 1-15)
 7 High Point          -0.155 ( 7- 9)
 8 Princeton           -0.152 ( 6- 8)
 9 Hawaii              -0.150 ( 7-11)
10 East Tennessee St.  -0.138 ( 4-12)
11 South Carolina St.  -0.132 (11- 7)
12 New Mexico St.      -0.131 ( 1-14)
13 Jacksonville St.    -0.130 ( 2-14)
14 Louisiana Monroe    -0.130 ( 2-14)
15 Purdue              -0.127 ( 3-13)
16 Vanderbilt          -0.125 ( 8- 8)
17 Tulsa               -0.122 ( 5-13)
18 Loyola Marymount    -0.118 ( 3-11)
19 Memphis             -0.116 ( 9- 7)
20 Arkansas Pine Bluff -0.116 ( 5-13)

For predictive purposes, one needs to take the data in context. If a team is decimated by graduation and other defections, then the fact they were unlucky last season is not useful when looking ahead. But teams with some continuity heading into next season can generally be expected to improve a little more than expected. Two teams I'd like to discuss from this list are Purdue and Utah State.

Matt Painter has a lot to thank Gene Keady for. Mainly for setting the bar real low with talent that didn't match the dismal season of year ago. Painter is a guy that guided a mid-major with few expectations to the top 15 during his only season as a head coach, so it's not like he goes to bed at night wondering if he's good enough for this job. But nonetheless, he has a nice situation in which to get his feet wet in the Big Ten, which hasn't exactly treated young coaches well in recent years.

Purdue's record last season was 7-21, and it was ugly at times. But the non-conference schedule featured Cincinnati, NC State, Memphis, and Oklahoma. Then there was brilliant idea of scheduling eventual sweet sixteen participant Wisconsin-Milwaukee smack dab in the middle of the conference season. The Big Ten office gave Keady one hell of going away gift, also. In the Big Ten, you face six conference foes twice, and the other four once. The six teams Purdue played twice? First place Illinois, second place Michigan State, third place Wisconsin, co-fourths Indiana and Minnesota, and seventh place Iowa. It was just about as tough of a conference schedule as could be devised. Despite this, the Boilermakers played like a 5-11 team, better than Michigan and Northwestern which finished ahead of them.

But wait, there's more.

Superstar Carl Landry missed the last two and a half regular season games due to injury. During that time, Purdue was outscored 189-128. Granted, most of that involved games at Illinois and at Wisconsin that would have been unwinnable anyway, but considering Landry missed 15% of the conference season, Purdue's expected winning percentage looks that much better.

Painter wisely scheduled a few more non-conference wins this season. The Big Ten schedule has to get easier. Painter has a solid group of new players coming in. If Landry's knee recovers fully (not a trivial matter) and Purdue avoids other forms of bad luck, a .500 conference record and an NIT bid is a realistic goal.

Utah State is a team I wrote volumes about on the eve of the NCAA Tournament. The Aggies are to me what the Oakland A's are to the baseball sabermetric community. Just like a segment of the baseball statheads hopes the A's succeed to justify their own theories, so will I be pulling for Utah State to support their gaudy efficiency numbers from last season. As you can see from the list, it's rare for teams that win as much as USU to get where they are despite bad luck. The Aggies had far and away the best record among the unlucky teams - and they were the unluckiest of them all.

It's easy to explain their perch among the unluckiest teams in conference, each of their wins was dominant, and the losses were close. In fact, this extends to the rest of their schedule. They won 24 games, and save for two games that they won by seven points each, all of their wins were by double digits. Of their seven losses, only the season-ender to Arizona was by more than seven points. Basically every game that was decided in the final minute went against Utah State, including the memorable February 12th collapse against Pacific.

Taking USU's adjusted offensive and defensive efficiencies from 2005, their expected winning percentage places them 24th among all division 1 teams. No, I don't think they were that good. This is a team that lost to IPFW and Idaho, after all. The Aggies numbers were inflated by playing especially well in garbage time. However, I also don't think they were as bad as the 14th seed that the selection committee gave them. Though this was probably done as a punishment for USU's stubbornness in maintaining a weak non-conference schedule outside of the government-mandated game against Utah.

Perhaps the least competition expected for the top spot in any conference is in the WAC. There's not a soul associated with the conference that will pick against Nevada. The Wolf Pack are the prohibitive favorite, due in equal parts to the return of reigning WAC player of the year Nick Fazekas, and the talent hit the WAC took by losing UTEP, Rice, and SMU to Conference USA. This leaves a free-for-all in the chase for second, with all but newcomers Idaho and New Mexico State feeling capable.

Utah State is also capable, despite losing point-forward Spencer Nelson to the professional ranks. A lot will depend on how scorer Nate Harris and gunner Jaycee Carroll adapt to increased attention from the defense due to Nelson's absence. Both fared well against Arizona, a game where Nelson was ineffective as he struggled with his health.

If Utah State plays 2006 the way their 2005 stats suggest, there won't be any competition for second in the WAC, either. And with a little luck, there will be some competition for first.