Mountain West tourney summary: session 1
03.08.12
San Diego State 65, Boise State 62 [62 possessions]
In the first meeting between these teams, the Broncos actually had the ball with a chance to win on the final possession, and nearly did. Thomas Bropleh missed an open look from three and it didn’t miss by much. This time around, the Aztecs had the ball on the final possession of a tie game and Jamaal Franklin’s decidedly less open look went down.
Franklin was the obvious hero, but Chase Tapley hitting all three of his open shots from long range in the second half is what allowed the Aztecs to open up enough of a cushion that they could withstand a 10-2 Bronco run late and still win. By the way, Boise State is in the discussion for best last-place team in the country. Mind you, that’s a more attainable goal in an eight-team league than bigger conferences, but still, it speaks to the relative parity that exists in the Mountain West this season.
Colorado State 81, TCU 60 [68]
The Rams are short (#339 in effective height) when healthy, but they got shorter when 6-6 Greg Smith tweaked an ankle in practice yesterday. A thin Rams rotation got thinner, but the seven-man rotation than Tim Miles put on the floor turned in CSU’s best effort away from Moby Arena this season.
It helped that TCU would miss 18 of their 20 three-point attempts, giving the defensively-challenged Rams some help on that end of the floor. It also helped that 6-5 Pierce Hornung is an offensive-rebounding machine. The dimunitive Rams had 11 offensive boards as a team, and Hornung had nine of them. The other two were team rebounds for which Hornung’s activity was directly responsible. When Hornung was on the floor, CSU rebounded 54% of its own misses. During the ten minutes he was on the bench, CSU rebounded zero of its misses.
The Mountain West Subscribers-Only Challenge
03.07.12
I’m pleased to announce the first-ever contest on the site. This is the chance for an existing subscriber to win a lifetime subscription to the kenpom.com. If I live 50 more years and continue to run the site, and you also live 50 years, this will have a value of at least $1,000.
We are deep into March and I never did get the Power to the People feature off the ground. The people never had the power and I deeply regret that. But I shall resurrect this concept for the MW tournament since I’ll be in Vegas covering all seven games of the event and I figure I need a gimmick. So we’ll use Power to the People to mine a prediction of something interesting for each game and also give someone a chance to win something and be famous.
Here are the rules:
- The contest is open only to existing subscribers.
- There will be one question associated with each of the seven games. The questions will be posted on the main ratings page (kenpom.com). These will only be visible to subscribers that are logged in. You can also see questions on your very own Power to the People page
- Subscribers will have until approximately five minutes before the originally scheduled tip-time of each game to provide a response to the question for that game. Subscribers can continue to provide a guess until the question closes, however only the latest response will be accepted.
- Subscribers must respond to all seven questions to be eligible for the prize.
- The winner will be determined by summing the absolute value of the differences between the observed value and the subscriber’s response for each of the seven questions.
- In the case of a tie, the absolute error in the question regarding the title game will be used as a tie-breaker. If subscribers are still tied, the tie-break will be applied to the question regarding the next most-recent game until the tie is broken.
- The winner will receive an extension on their current subscription until December 31, 2099. This prize is not transferrable.
- Understand? Good. Don’t sue me or try any shenanigans.
I’ll post the batch of questions for Thursday’s games before daybreak tomorrow. The first game, San Diego State vs. Boise State tips off at 3 PM EST. The remaining schedule of games is here.
Log5 Part 5: Woulda, coulda, shoulda
03.06.12
The news from Monday night was that the Sun Belt title game on Tuesday will be between fifth-seeded North Texas and seventh-seeded Western Kentucky, a game that had a 1-in-159 chance of occurring before the tourney started. The winner will have had no better than a 4.1% chance of winning the automatic bid, thus setting a new standard for improbability this week.
Western Carolina becomes a championship week footnote after coming painstakingly close to knocking off Davidson in the SoCon final. The Catamounts had but a 1.1% chance of winning the title. Alas, they fell in double OT.
These are the last four conferences that need analysis.
Pac-12 Conference
“UCLA: The Cinderella Story”
March 7-10
All games at Los Angeles, CA (UCLA/USC get half home court advantage)
Qtrs Semis Final Champ 2 California 100 69.3 48.6 32.3 5 UCLA 90.1 48.3 30.2 14.9 4 Arizona 100 50.6 28.8 12.7 1 Washington 100 63.0 29.2 12.2 3 Oregon 100 63.3 24.3 12.2 7 Stanford 87.8 29.9 16.4 8.0 6 Colorado 92.8 36.3 10.5 3.9 9 Oregon St. 59.7 24.2 8.3 2.8 8 Wash. St. 40.3 12.7 3.3 0.9 12 USC 9.9 1.1 0.2 0.02 10 Arizona St. 12.2 0.8 0.1 0.01 11 Utah 7.2 0.3 0.01 0.0006
Atlantic Coast Conference
“Boston College demands to host it next season”
March 8-11
All games at Atlanta, GA (Georgia Tech gets home court advantage, not that it matters)
Qtrs Semis Final Champ 1 North Carolina 100 94.2 71.8 52.2 2 Duke 100 77.0 48.2 19.8 4 Virginia 100 67.3 20.6 10.4 3 Florida State 100 63.0 29.9 9.9 6 Miami FL 82.9 34.8 13.9 3.7 5 N.C. State 90.6 32.2 6.6 2.4 7 Clemson 56.5 14.1 5.1 1.0 10 Virginia Tech 43.5 8.9 2.7 0.4 8 Maryland 64.6 4.4 0.9 0.2 11 Georgia Tech 17.1 2.2 0.3 0.02 9 Wake Forest 35.4 1.4 0.2 0.02 12 Boston Coll. 9.4 0.5 0.02 0.0009
Southeastern Conference
“Tennessee, how’d you get that two-seed?”
March 8-11
All games at New Orleans, LA
Qtrs Semis Final Champ 1 Kentucky 100 95.0 79.1 68.7 3 Vanderbilt 100 76.1 54.1 13.3 4 Florida 100 60.1 12.8 7.8 5 Alabama 85.7 38.2 7.0 3.9 2 Tennessee 100 65.0 25.5 3.7 7 Ole Miss 66.7 26.7 8.2 0.9 6 Miss. St. 61.1 16.5 7.9 0.9 11 Georgia 38.9 7.4 2.8 0.2 8 LSU 54.9 2.9 0.7 0.2 9 Arkansas 45.1 2.0 0.4 0.1 10 Auburn 33.3 8.3 1.5 0.09 12 S. Carolina 14.3 1.7 0.08 0.01
Big Ten Conference
“Where the title game has no impact on seeding”
March 8-11
All games at Indianapolis, IN (Indiana gets half home-court advantage)
Qtrs Semis Final Champ 3 Ohio St. 100 81.5 66.1 37.2 1 Michigan St. 100 89.0 48.0 27.2 5 Indiana 93.5 54.1 29.3 16.5 4 Wisconsin 100 45.3 21.2 10.4 2 Michigan 100 67.7 18.9 5.1 6 Purdue 86.0 17.9 9.7 2.5 7 Northwestern 52.1 17.3 2.9 0.5 10 Minnesota 47.9 15.0 2.4 0.4 9 Illinois 56.4 6.8 1.0 0.2 8 Iowa 43.6 4.2 0.5 0.07 12 Penn St. 6.5 0.6 0.1 0.01 11 Nebraska 14.0 0.6 0.1 0.005