Friday, November 20, 2009
Interesting Reads
The whole Belichick thing got me to reading football analysis this week. It also got me wondering, what do people do when everyone around the water cooler is taking the side of Wilbon in these situations? My MO is to politely excuse myself from the conversation and then come home at night and blog about it. Kind of passive-aggressive, yes, but is there really any other way?
Anyway, in the process I came across some interesting reads from Brian Burke at advancednflstats.com on two of my favorite topics, home court advantage and luck. As you may know, I tend to be of the opinion that there isn’t much difference between the home court advantage at Cameron Indoor and the Fleisher Center. This piece has a unique (and unorthodox) slant on that issue.
And there’s an interesting series of posts on how to measure luck, which seems like a good way to also measure conference parity in college hoops. I’m guessing the ‘08 Patriot League had a hell of a lot of games decided by luck.
Monday, November 16, 2009
Excerpts from the 1953 Official NCAA Basketball Guide
A while back I picked up a copy of the 1953 Official NCAA Basketball Guide. Within the 269 pages of the Guide, there is almost everything one could want to try to reconstruct the state of the game back then, including previews of the upcoming season, standings for the previous season, and a rule book.
And the game was quite a bit different than the one we know today. Periodically, I’ll share pages from it. To start things off, let’s look at page 1, the “National Preview-Review”, penned by future HOF’er Jim Enright. This is not the most exciting part of the book, but it will give you an idea of the style of writing 57 years ago. Perhaps in 50 years, we’ll look at Simmons’ writing in the way we look at Enright’s now. (Although, I like the idea of calling a team’s leading scorer “Mr. Points”.)
The other thing you’ll notice is that this was a production of the NCAA. Whereas now we can go to Barnes and Noble and pick up any one of a dozen or so independently created preview mags. Back then, I’m assuming this was it. Thus, you have Mr. Enright comparing the cage game’s resurgence from the game-fixing scandal of 1951 to something like winning World War II. You also have only a brief mention in the entire publication that likely preseason number one Kentucky was banned from play for violations related to the ‘51 scandal.
Click on the thumbnail for the full text.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Alabama is going to win it all
Or at least they have a very good chance. That’s all I can conclude from the odds put on them to go all the way. Witness: Up until a couple days ago, Bodog had the Tide at 20-1, with only 11 teams having better odds. They since dropped them to 40-1, but there are only 20 teams better than that. BetUS currently has them at 15-1, where only eight teams are better. In what may be the most ridiculous proposition ever offered on a college hoops team, Bama is a cool 5-to-1 to make the NCAA title game at BetUS.
This pattern is repeated at other semi-reputable and semi-legal on-line establishments such as the World Sports Exchange, VIP, and sportsbetting.com. All this for a team that didn’t receive a single vote in either pre-season poll. Outside of JaMychal Green having a shot at making all-SEC first team, there’s nothing to suggest this squad has much more than a 50/50 chance of even making the tournament.
What could be causing this? At first, I thought that it must be wealthy Alabama alums just throwing away money in the name of school pride, but Alabama alums won’t even be paying attention to hoops until about the second week of January. Perhaps it’s that people think they are betting on football (Florida is rather highly thought of as well). Or maybe Anthony Grant’s coaching skills have a lot more value than I think.
Monday, November 09, 2009
The Book
It’s possible there will be semi-regular posting here at some point, but not just yet. In the meantime, please purchase a copy of College Basketball Prospectus 2009-10: Major-Conference Preview (with some non major-conference content). It’s remarkably cheap, yet just as informative as last season. Throw some money our way so it can happen again next year. John has a more convincing sales pitch here.
Wednesday, November 04, 2009
Wesley Johnson took 39% of his team’s shots
In some future time, that will be the headline from a game like Syracuse’s exhibition loss to Le Moyne on Tuesday. The actual outcome of the contest, while surprising, isn’t terribly significant. Michigan State memorably lost to Grand Valley State in an exhibition two years ago and ended up as a five-seed. Heck, last season Utah lost to Southwest Baptist in a game that counted and also was given a five-seed come March. There’s not much to be learned from early November games against D-II competition.
But it’s worth noting that Johnson’s performance, or more specifically his role in the Orange’s offense, was in every sense of the word, huge. That 39 percent figure doesn’t include four turnovers and seven free throws also credited to him. It’s still early to draw conclusions from this, but it’s conceivable that this season’s battle for highest usage among players on power conference teams will be between Johnson and his former Iowa State teammate Craig Brackins.
Johnson’s reason for leaving ISU was the imminent style change that was expected with the hiring of Greg McDermott after Johnson’s sophomore season. Regardless, it appears that it was a move for the best. Given the incredible appetite for shots that both Johnson and Brackins have demonstrated since their split, it’s difficult to imagine how the two would have continued to happily coexist.
