The Lost Episode
02.14.05
On Saturday, there were two comebacks that will forever be remembered by fans of the teams involved in the games. UNLV's was the most impressive - an 11-1 run over the last 22 seconds against San Diego State to force overtime. But the most significant was Pacific's 11-2 run in the final 27 ticks to win at Utah State. It was only UoP's second win in 32 tries in Logan, and would seem to give them control of their own destiny in the at-large race.
Pat Forde has a nice (and free!) edition of Forde Minutes on espn.com, giving additional details on both games (example: Steve Fisher's teams are 1-11 in overtime). There are also some other nuggets using the AP poll to show that Cinderella is dead when it comes to Final Four access. Parity, schmarity.
[Update: Reader Jeff reveals another amazing - but more drawn out - comeback on Saturday. Western Kentucky overcame a 30-5 deficit to beat North Texas on a last second heave, 93-92. He provides video from his WKU fan page]
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I don't know who the worst free throw shooter in America is, but among major college teams, Pitt's Mark McCarroll has a good case. He's made 19% of his attempts this season on 4 of 21 shooting. The bizarre thing about McCarroll, a senior, is that he was 55 of 95 (57.9%) in his first three seasons. That's not exactly someone you would want at the line in crunch time, but also not someone you're tempted to send to the locker room in the final minutes of a tight game, either.
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Over the weekend, I discovered a half-started post from last April that I never published:
Air Force head coach Joe Scott has taken the head coaching job at Princeton. And so ends Air Force's day in the college basketball sun. The '04 campaign will be that fluky blip on the radar of AFA basketball history, kind of like the David Robinson years at Navy.
The move surprises me because there is no chance of getting an at-large bid at Princeton, while Scott just did that with Air Force. Scott essentially has decided that he will be a lifer at Princeton. He could succeed Bill Carmody at Northwestern, assuming they become successful enough where they want to continue with the Princeton scheme. But that transition won't take place for another 10 years.
For those who don't keep tabs on the 14-game tournament that is the Ivy League regular season, Princeton is in dead last in the Ivy at the midway point, with a 2-5 record.
In 49 seasons of the Ivy League's existence, the Tigers have never finished worse than .500 in conference play. It's a stunning turnaround for Scott, who last season led Air Force to their first winning conference record in it's 24 seasons of participation in the WAC/MWC.
This was not supposed to be a rebuilding job for Scott. There were high pre-season expectations for Princeton, who won the Ivy last year and lost only one player off that team. While Joe Scott intends to be a lifer at Princeton, it will only take a couple more seasons like this to take that decision out of his hands.
Defensive Assist Percentage
02.11.05
This blog has been one-dimensional this season: it can shoot the three, it can dish the rock, but it plays no defense. Today, I look at a defensive statistic that gets little press - the ability to prevent assists. See the stats page for the defensive assist percentage of all 330 teams.
Defensive assist percentage = assists allowed/total possessions
On Wednesday, the North Carolina Tar Heels were bottled up for 40 minutes like no other time this ACC season. They didn't get many points on the fast break, and they didn't get easy points out of the half-court set. UNC, a team that averages two assists on every three field goals made, had only ten assists in 25 made buckets. Shocking.
Or was it? In fact, there must be some skill at preventing fast breaks, preventing the smooth flow of the offense in the half-court, and thus preventing assists. It just so happens that the Duke Blue Devils are the best team in the nation at preventing assists. We can't rule out that the Cameron scorer's table is unusually stingy in awarding assists, given that Duke's own assist total is exceptionally low. But since Duke doesn't play all its games at home, the data has to be in the neighborhood of reality.
As a footnote, defensive assist percentage correlates less to an efficient defense than offensive assist percentage does to an efficient offense. You can look for yourself - while Duke and Kansas have great defenses and prevent assists well, there are some really bad defenses in the top 20 of defensive assist percentage.
More on Assistststss
02.10.05
What you may have missed last night:
1) Miami Ohio and Kent State both won tight MAC road games, staying on a collision course for a March 2 showdown between the conference's two most deserving at-large teams. Miami's win was tainted by buzzer-beating controversy.
The headline on the above Miami link at the time of this posting:
RedHawks Pull Out Close 54-54 Win at Ball State
This article explains why the game should have gone to overtime.
[Update: the Muncie Star Press has produced a brief documentary video of the final moments.]
2) There was a rare late-season showdown to settle the debate between the nation's biggest underachievers. Missouri won, er...lost, 74-71 to UNLV.
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I got a few thoughtful responses on a contradiction posed last Friday regarding teams with efficient offenses that don't get many assists. Dear reader Matt broke out some numbers...
Ken,
Your post about assist percentage and its correlation to efficient offense was interesting. A possible explanation for the fact that Duke and Villanova have efficient offenses but low assist percentage could be that they have 3 players that score an overwhelming proportion of their offense. Consider:
Duke
Reddick, Williams and Ewing account for 66.2% of their scoring.
Villanova
Ray, Sumpter and Foye account for a very similar 66% of their scoring.
By contrast very efficient offenses like Wake Forest and Illinois have much lower proportions for their top 3 scorers.
Wake Forest 56.2%
Illinois 52.4%
UNC which has been repeatedly lauded for their unselfish, share-the-ball attitude has a very low 50.5%.
It would seem reasonable that if a smaller number of players were responsible for a team's scoring there would be fewer opportunities for assists during the normal course of a game.
Great website!
Matt
It can't be disputed that an efficient offense without a lot of assists means that the team has players that are able to score on their own. I think this tidbit that Matt uncovered is a function of that. 'Nova is the poster child for this kind of team, with three players that can regularly create their own shot.
The third team that fell into the high efficiency/low assists bin was Texas. They never had the dominating trio to which Matt refers. But it's not a coincidence that the Longhorns offense has been noticeably weaker after losing one of their scorers, PJ Tucker. By contrast, both Villanova and Duke have withstood prolonged absences from starters without any impact. This is probably because their trio of scorers has remained healthy and their scoring ability isn't as dependent on getting help from teammates.
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