Random Junk
02.01.05
Back from a weekend of getting out of the house and watching some hoops in-person, I return with the following tidbits...
ESPN announced the February 19th Bracket Buster schedule on Monday. Surely one of the cadre of personalities at The Mid-Majority will have an in-depth breakdown of the key matchups with the proper aplomb that can't be provided here. The headline game is Vermont/Nevada in a rematch of a first round preseason NIT game last season which the Wolf Pack won convincingly, 69-49.
Once again, the ESPN matchmakers ignored geography. It's one thing to send Vermont to Reno or the U. of Buffalo to Fresno in the name of good TV, but another to send 10-9 Cal State Northridge to Bridgeport, Connecticut to play 10-9 Fairfield.
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Florida International and Arkansas Little Rock participated in a Sun Belt classic for the ages on Sunday in Pharmed Arena in Miami. FIU prevailed 118-114 in quintuple overtime. UALR guard Zach Graber played all 65 minutes.
Unfortunately, it appears that no one knows when the last five overtime game was played, with all accounts of the game referencing the D1-record seven overtime affair between Bradley and Cincinnati in pre-shot clock 1981. But using some info on overtime games over the past two and a half seasons, one can make an educated guess on how rare five overtimes are.
In 2003 and 2004, 4.32% of all games required bonus basketball. Once in overtime, a game has about an 18% chance of being extended another period. So the chance of any game going 5 OTs is .0432 x .18 x .18 x .18 x .18. Which is 0.0453% or about once in every 22,000 games. With about 5,000 games played each season, this works out to once in every four to five seasons.
(As a footnote, in looking for the last five overtime game I found that there was a high school game in 1996 in Michigan that went five OTs with the final score of 7-6. That's 52 minutes of action and 13 points. Talk about taking the fun out of the game. At least the 5-2 game from Vermont in early January ended in regulation.)
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ESPN has rolled out wall to wall coverage of the miserable 0-24 season Savannah State is having. Over the last 50 years, winless seasons (one) are much rarer than undefeated seasons (eight). Shannon Sharpe's alma mater appears to have a great (maybe the wrong choice of words) chance of losing their last four games and finishing 0-28. But it was only two years ago that North Carolina A&T was expected to take on the same fate before pulling off a March shocker at Norfolk State. There won't be any March Madness for SSU - their season ends on Valentine's Day, before any other D1 team.
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The upset of the weekend was Washington State winning 70-63 at Arizona, ending a 38 game span where Arizona won every game between the two teams. Four players on the Wazzu roster weren't born the last time the Cougars beat the Wildcats on January 30, 1986. The longest in-conference winning streak now belongs to Kansas over Kansas State. The Jayhawks have won 28 in a row since falling to K State in a January 17, 1994 loss.
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Speaking of one team's domination over another, Princeton won every home game against Brown between 1929 and 2002 - a total of 52 games, the longest streak of its kind in NCAA history. With Brown's 57-52 win at Princeton on Friday, the Bears have taken two of the last three at Princeton.
Shot Attempt Difference
01.27.05
The stats page has been updated through Wednesday's action. The bonus stat is Shot Attempt Difference. It represents the number of additional shots a team gets per 100 possessions as compared to its opponent. It's essentially a measure of how much of an advantage a team has in the turnover and rebounding departments.
A shot is defined by FGA + .42 x FTA, so possessions spent at the free throw line are also included.
I haven't had the time to scrutinize the numbers, but the top of the SAD list has a diverse group of teams. Houston's big advantage in shot attempts comes entirely from the three point line, where they make less than a third of their shots. Hence, their offensive efficiency is very low. Arizona has fewer turnovers than the opposition and has a rebounding advantage, but not as much in either category as Kentucky. Air Force and Virginia Tech are poor rebounding teams, but benefit from the turnover difference. We saw last week that Temple and Illinois were the best in the nation at taking care of the basketball, and not surprisingly, they fare well in this metric also.
Notable teams that shoot fewer shots than their opponents: Kansas, Georgia Tech and Utah.
I'm taking a long weekend, so see you Tuesday.
Possession Stats 101
01.26.05
If you ever hear the level of success of a team's offense or defense described in terms of points scored or allowed per game, you should ignore it. Among stats published by the NCAA, field goal percentage is much more valuable. But among stats not endorsed by the NCAA, points per possession is better still. A couple of things I saw yesterday used points per game in a misleading way to make a point.
Example 1) Tuesday night at halftime of the Illinois/Wisconsin game, a stat was posted in defense of Doug Gottlieb's claim that Wisconsin was the most overrated team in the Big Ten. It compared the points per game they have given up this season (60.5) to last season (57.2). (If memory serves, the numbers used were during Big Ten play only, where the gap was larger than the overall numbers I am using.)
To which the viewer was to draw the conclusion that the Badgers' D is much worse than last season. But a little research indicates that Badger games are averaging five more possessions than last season. The pace of the games allows the opponent five more opportunities to score, through no fault of Bo Ryan's defense. In raw terms, the Badgers were giving up 90.7 points per 100 possessions before last weekend's action. Last season, they gave up 92.3 points per 100 possessions. The 90.7 will increase during Big Ten play, but overall there isn't much difference between their defensive play in 2004 and 2005.
Example 2) On Monday night, Utah came within one made field goal of tying the NCAA single-game record for field goal percentage. They made 24 of 30 shots (80%) against Air Force in a 63-51 win. The wire story in your morning paper on Tuesday stated this:
The Utes shot a school-record 80 percent from the field (24-of-30) against the nation's No. 1 scoring defense.
To which the reader was to conclude that not only was Utah red hot, but amazingly they accomplished this against the best defense in the nation. If you see an Air Force game on TV, this is the "go-to" stat. One of the announcers will inevitably boast about how it's very difficult to score against the Falcons. And make no mistake, they are good, but not great. The pace of Air Force games is so slow that opposing offenses don't get as many opportunities to score as they do against conventional teams.
The very short Air Force team ranked 87th nationally in defensive efficiency before the weekend, allowing 95.8 points per 100 possessions. Given their lack of size, that's still an impressive ranking. I am a little surprised that they are ranked that high this season, because they have given up some huge FG% numbers to the high profile teams they have played - Georgia Tech (60%), Iowa (68%), and Utah (80%).
So folks, next time you see someone back up an opinion using a team's points per game, keep in mind that it's not very useful in assessing a team's effectiveness.
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