2012 conference previews, part 3
12.28.11
This is the third installment of the monte-carlo style conference previews where I simulate each conference’s schedule 10,000 times. If you’re unclear as to what’s happening, check out Monday’s post, then look back with fondness on yesterday’s effort. Today, we get into the territory where this analysis predicts that the favorite in each conference is barely better than a coin flip to win.
20. ACC (Predicted champ: North Carolina, 59%)
It’s no surprise that the Tar Heels are the favorite to win the ACC, but it’s a bit surprising that they are just the 13th-strongest favorite in the land. And there’s a 15% chance that the champ is not UNC or Duke. I guess that’s a lot.
North Carolina 5941 Duke 2691 Virginia 682 Florida St. 258 Virginia Tech 248 N.C. State 72 Georgia Tech 51 Miami FL 50 Clemson 7
19. CAA (VCU, 58%)
After struggling through the first two weeks of the season, the Rams are backing up their Final Four appearance quite well. The story of this list though is Georgia State, picked to finish next-to-last by the CAA media. (I, however, had them as only the fourth-worst team in the conference, thank you very much.) Take a bow, Ron Hunter. (And me!)
VCU 5812 Georgia St. 1656 George Mason 1005 Drexel 751 Old Dominion 435 James Madison 265 Delaware 66 Hofstra 4 NC Wilmington 3 Northeastern 3
18. Sun Belt (Middle Tennessee, 55%)
The Blue Radiers have away-from-home wins against UCLA and Ole Miss, and while neither win is terribly impressive in itself, both were by fairly convincing margins. Middle Tennessee is legit, but Joe Scott, whose teams have finished last or second-to-last in adjusted tempo every season since 2003, has resurrected his career in the land of Tebow. The Pioneers are a legit threat to win the Sun Belt this season.
Middle Tennessee 5545 Denver 3879 Florida Atlantic 422 La. Lafayette 67 Arkansas St. 38 South Alabama 37 North Texas 7 Troy 4 Western Kentucky 2 Ark. Little Rock 1
17. Mountain West (UNLV, 55%)
UNLV has gotten the bulk of the MW publicity, and rightfully so, but New Mexico has been quietly lurking, completely unknown on the national scene for some reason. One of the more unusual statistical flukes in the tempo-free era was Steve Alford leading Iowa to the adjusted defensive efficiency title in 2006. His teams haven’t finished better than 25th in any other season since 2003. But this year the Lobos are currently 10th.
UNLV 5529 New Mexico 3208 San Diego St. 990 Wyoming 173 Colorado St. 50 Boise St. 48 Air Force 2
16. Great West (Utah Valley, 55%)
The Great West is down to six teams, and when there are only ten games on the conference schedule, just about anything can happen. Unless you’re Chicago State. Fun fact: Utah Valley is the only program in the nation that doggedly refuses to reveal its players’ weights. What are you scared of, Wolverines?
Utah Valley 5488 North Dakota 2781 Texas Pan American 765 Houston Baptist 697 NJIT 265 Chicago St. 4
15. MAC (Ohio, 54%)
Move over Javon McCrea and Zeke Marshall, Ohio is good. However, there’s a strong enough mid-section to the MAC that the Bobcats are going to have to work to finish with the best conference record in the league.
Ohio 5361 Kent St. 1348 Buffalo 1296 Ball St. 795 Akron 653 Western Michigan 487 Bowling Green 28 Central Michigan 25 Miami OH 6 Toledo 0
14. Pac-12 (Cal, 53%)
Yes, the Pac-12 stinks by power conference standards, but don’t hold that against Cal or Stanford who are good enough to be at-large selections and have met or exceeded pre-season expectations.
California 5293 Stanford 2371 Arizona 1329 Oregon St. 372 Washington 368 Washington St. 195 UCLA 56 Oregon 12 USC 3 Arizona St. 1
2012 conference previews, part 2
12.27.11
Welcome to the second of five installments where I run 10,000 simulations of each conference’s schedule to get a sense for which teams have a viable shot at winning their conference’s regular-season title. For those late to the party, see yesterday’s post, where we learned not to hand over the Big West’s NIT auto-bid to Long Beach State just yet. In today’s edition, we see that the AP’s #4 team is also the fourth choice to win its conference’s title and that a team that won at Cincinnati has the fifth-best chance of winning the Big South.
26. Big Ten (Predicted champ: Wisconsin, 66%)
We shall never speak of this again.
Wisconsin 6628 Ohio St. 2651 Indiana 549 Michigan St. 93 Purdue 73 Michigan 3 Minnesota 2 Illinois 0 Nebraska 0
25. Patriot (Lehigh, 63%)
Lehigh hasn’t lost by double digits all season despite a schedule that has included road games against Michigan State, Wagner, and Iowa State and a style that packs over 70 possessions into the average game.
Lehigh 6308 Bucknell 3343 Holy Cross 193 American 99 Lafayette 51 Army 5 Colgate 0
24. Atlantic-10 (Saint Louis, 62%)
Xavier’s recent collapse has made a mess of predicting the A-10, but for the purposes of this analysis it has boosted Saint Louis’s chances significantly. Each of the Billikens’ 11 wins has been by double-digits. After an eight-year hiatus, Rick Majerus makes a return to the Pit in Albuquerque on New Year’s Eve in what should be a tight, low-scoring game that will be worth watching before you head out to the evening’s festivities.
St. Louis 6238 Temple 1825 Xavier 754 Saint Joseph's 344 La Salle 332 St. Bonaventure 248 Dayton 106 Richmond 88 Duquesne 29 UMass 17 Charlotte 16 G. Washington 2
23. Big South (UNC Asheville, 62%)
UNC Asheville has but three wins against D-I competition, but they’ve been competitive against difficult opposition in their losses. This is all the more impressive considering they have one of the shortest teams in the nation, regularly putting a unit on the floor with nobody taller than 6-5.
NC Asheville 6181 Ch. Southern 1349 Coastal Carolina 1253 Campbell 767 Presbyterian 223 Winthrop 135 High Point 50 Gardner Webb 31 Liberty 7 VMI 5
22. SoCon (Davidson, 61%)
Nearly 97% of the SoCon simulations ended with a league title for either Davidson or College of Charleston, and while I’m wary of ultra-high percentages the deal with events involving multiple teams over multiple games, this doesn’t seem like an exaggeration. In the past eight days, the Wildcats have a semi-road win against Kansas, and the Cougars were winning at Louisville heading into the final media timeout. These two teams are a little different than the rest of the SoCon.
Davidson 6116 C. of Charleston 3556 Elon 132 Western Carolina 107 Wofford 41 Appalachian St. 24 Furman 15 Georgia Southern 7 Chattanooga 2 Samford 0
21. Big East (Syracuse, 61%)
Somehow, the Orange lead the nation in steal percentage and are second in block percentage and yet their defense isn’t dominant. (Partial explanation: anemic defensive rebounding.) The Orange have been consistently fantastic on offense, though, scoring at least a point per possession in all but one game. They get one additional game against the five Big East bottom dwellers compared to Marquette giving them a little more room for error in this analysis.
Syracuse 6077 Marquette 1209 Georgetown 984 Louisville 805 Connecticut 544 West Virginia 231 Pittsburgh 57 Cincinnati 43 Seton Hall 34 Villanova 13 Notre Dame 4
Conference previews, Monte Carlo style
12.26.11
As done in this space last season, it’s time to look at how conference races might shake out based on what my ratings say to this point. The ground rules are similar to last year: I’ll use the current ratings for each team, simulate the conference season 10,000 times and record which team gets the one-seed for its conference tournament in each case.
Many conferences have already played a few games and those games are included in the simulations. Since conference tie-breaking logic is largely random, I don’t make any effort to break ties in the simulations. If there’s a tie in a single simulation, the tied teams are each given a fraction of the conference title. The results of all of the simulations are listed for each conference and if a team is listed having won zero simulations, that means it was involved in a single case of a multi-team tie for first. Teams that did not win or tie in a simulation are not listed.
Note that there is no provision for the ratings being inaccurate. Thus, the chances of the stronger favorites are overstated somewhat. I think there are two major reasons for this. First, a team that has played very well to this point will tend to be playing over its head more often than it’s not. Second, it’s possible that one or two teams from its seemingly distant competition is being underrated based on its play so far.
This week we’ll count down the conferences, Casey Kasem style, in reverse order based on the chances of the favorite to win the conference. Without further ado, let’s look at the six least-competitive conferences today. Keep in mind that even based on the overly-optimistic odds for these potential champs, you’d expect one of these to miss out on its league title at the end of the season.
32. OVC (Predicted champ: Murray State, 93%)
The travails of the Racers have been documented here and many other places. It’s not so much that Murray State is a Final Four contender as it is they are a very good OVC team in a year when their conference is down.
Murray St. 9315 Austin Peay 240 Morehead St. 149 Tennessee Tech 126 Tennessee St. 77 Eastern Kentucky 53 Eastern Illinois 37 Jacksonville St. 2 Southeast Missouri St. 0
31. Atlantic Sun (Belmont, 93%)
The Bruins’ bandwagon has lost some fans because they have lost five games already. But all five losses were true road games and four of them were by a combined ten points. They have had the misfortune of playing three games total against sneaky good Middle Tennessee and Marshall who are underrated nationally. Despite the L’s, Belmont appears to be every bit as good as last season and has a 1-in-9 chance of going 18-0 in conference.
Belmont 9261 Mercer 635 USC Upstate 48 North Florida 33 East Tennessee St. 15 Lipscomb 5 Florida Gulf Coast 1 Jacksonville 0
30. Ivy (Harvard, 89%)
Tommy Amaker’s team has been as good, if not better than, the preseason hype associated with the Crimson. They’re as dominant relative to the rest of their league as Belmont and Murray State, but the shorter 14-game conference slate adds a bit more uncertainty to the proceedings. There’s about a 9% chance of a season-ending tie and thus invoking the Ivy League tournament.
Harvard 8911 Princeton 356 Yale 292 Columbia 182 Penn 146 Cornell 112
29. MAAC (Iona, 75%)
There’s a large drop from the three least-competitive conferences to the MAAC. Iona has put some distance between itself and preseason co-favorite Fairfield. Both have won two road games against bottom-dwellers to start MAAC play and Iona made 74% of their twos in those games. It’s pretty amazing that Siena somehow tied in one of the simulations. They are ranked 241st (Iona is 44th) and are already two games behind the Gaels and Stags in the conference race.
Iona 7516 Fairfield 1639 Loyola MD 534 Manhattan 311 Siena 0
28. SEC (Kentucky, 73%)
The Wildcats haven’t disappointed at all to start the season, but the impressive play from Florida early on this season has eaten into Kentucky’s chances a bit. The ratings say Mississippi State is the most overrated team in the land. They’ll have a chance to correct that in Wednesday’s showdown with Baylor.
Kentucky 7269 Florida 1799 Alabama 834 Mississippi St. 54 Vanderbilt 33 Louisiana St. 4 Mississippi 3 Arkansas 2 Tennessee 1 Georgia 0
27. Big West (Long Beach State, 69%)
Almost all of the national press the Big West has received has gone to the Beach this season, but their stature took a hit with a loss to Kansas State yesterday that was more lopsided than expected. UCSB gets a modicum of publicity, mostly because of the play of Orlando Johnson, but Cal Poly is one of the better sleeper picks in the country for a conference title. (Coincidentally, their style of play will actually put you to sleep what with the second-slowest pace and the 47th-ranked defense in the nation.) Regardless, the point is that due to having two other strong teams in its conference, LBSU’s chances of winning the regular-season title (let alone the conference tourney) are quite a bit less than the casual fan might think.
Long Beach St. 6928 UC Santa Barbara 1500 Cal Poly 1437 Cal St. Fullerton 132 UC Irvine 2