The six-game tournament?
01.19.12
The Ivy League likes to fancy its regular season as the “14-game tournament” because it doesn’t have an actual tournament and thus its 14-game regular season determines the conference champion. Technically, though, this is a misnomer. The Ivy League regular season is comprised of 56 games. The West Coast Conference has a tournament, but I’ve been wondering if you could call the regular season a six-game tournament in Ivy terms.
The WCC is composed of nine teams, but it spits in the face of the normal distribution by having three teams - Saint Mary’s, Gonzaga, and BYU, which I’ll call the Top 3 - that are much stronger than the other six, a.k.a. The Bottom 6. Thus far the Top 3 have gone 13-0 against the Bottom 6. There are three games tonight and the Top 3 are heavy favorites in each. But will the WCC truly be decided solely by the six contests between the Top 3?
This is a question only the simulator can answer. At least right now. Simulating the remaining conference schedule using Wednesday’s ratings resulted in the following records for the Top 3 in games against the Bottom 6.
Record Occurrences 36-0 1229 35-1 2753 34-2 2919 33-3 1891 32-4 833 31-5 278 30-6 81 29-7 12 28-8 4
Despite the fact that the WCC takes top-heavy (perhaps “bottom-light” is more appropriate) to the extreme, the simulation reveals that there’s an 88% chance that at least one of the Top 3 loses a game they shouldn’t.
St. Mary’s is now the favorite to win the regular season, having won both of the games involving Top 3 teams to this point. The fact that both games were on the Gaels’ home floor devalues those wins somewhat, but not completely. The home team has about a 60-65% chance to win games against an evenly-skilled opponent and the Gaels’ have turned that uncertainty into 100% by virtue of their wins. They need only split road games against BYU and Gonzaga to win the six-game tournament and give them a great shot at the regular season title.
But despite the chasm that exists between the two sets of teams in the conference, the six-game tournament isn’t quite the end of the story. While most games against the Bottom 6 will be lopsided, chances are that at least one of the Top 3 will be the victim of a major upset before the end of the season.
Play-by-Play Theater: consecutive field goals
01.17.12
Welcome back to Play-by-Play Theater, the semi-regular feature where we mine play-by-play data from the past 2+ seasons to discover the wacky things that happen in college hoops. Last week, we beat consecutive fouls to death. Today’s topic was suggested by a reader. Read on…
Mr. Pomeroy,
The host of a local sports call-in show used an example from the Kentucky-Tennessee women’s game last night to exemplify why he “hated” women’s basketball. At one point in the game, these two top-10 teams combined to miss 26 consecutive shots. He proclaimed that would never happen in a men’s game with two top-10 teams. I agree on the surface, but am curious what the data say. Something similar to the foul analysis you did on the previous play-by-play theater may be interesting.
Jeremy
Louisville, KY (UK Wildcats fan)
Kentucky has some weird laws, but my favorite one is that if you reside in Louisville and are a Kentucky fan, you are required to note this in your signature.
Indeed, the UK and Tennessee women put together quite a brick-fest late in the first half the other night. Here’s the play-by-play of that game if you need proof. (Never believe anything a sports talk personality says.) Could this happen in a men’s game?
This is pretty straightforward to tackle. Let’s look at the games since the beginning of the 2009-10 season that featured the most consecutive missed field goal attempts by both teams. Note here that all free throw attempts are ignored for the purpose of determining consecutive misses.
Most consecutive missed field goals since 11/2009
23 Radford at Virginia, 12/7/10 23 Alabama A&M at Ark Pine Bluff, 1/10/11 21 Georgetown at Villanova, 1/17/10 21 Rider at UMass, 11/12/10 20 SE Louisiana at Alabama, 12/15/10 20 Loyola Chicago at Kansas State, 11/13/09
Here’s the PBP from the Radford at Virginia game, with the just the field goal attempts for the streak in question.
GOOD! LAYUP by Harris, Joe [PNT] 19:31 34-19 H 15
18:23 MISSED JUMPER by SONMEZ,Gorkem
MISSED 3 PTR by Harris, Joe 18:08
17:38 MISSED JUMPER by SONMEZ,Gorkem
17:37 MISSED JUMPER by FAULKNER,Evan
17:30 MISSED 3 PTR by SONMEZ,Gorkem
MISSED JUMPER by Farrakhan, Mustapha 17:16
MISSED LAYUP by Sene, Assane 17:05
MISSED 3 PTR by Zeglinski, Sammy 16:17
15:47 MISSED JUMPER by SMITH,Jareal
15:07 MISSED JUMPER by SONMEZ,Gorkem
MISSED JUMPER by Harris, Joe 14:52
MISSED JUMPER by Harrell, KT 14:10
13:36 MISSED 3 PTR by FAULKNER,Evan
MISSED 3 PTR by Farrakhan, Mustapha 13:15
MISSED JUMPER by Scott, Mike 12:56
MISSED 3 PTR by Farrakhan, Mustapha 12:25
12:15 MISSED 3 PTR by SONMEZ,Gorkem
12:08 MISSED JUMPER by ABELE,Martins
MISSED 3 PTR by Zeglinski, Sammy 11:48
MISSED TIP-IN by Mitchell, Akil 11:43
11:37 MISSED JUMPER by SMITH,Jareal
11:02 MISSED JUMPER by ROBINSON,Jeremy
MISSED 3 PTR by Baron, Billy 10:48
10:37 38-23 H 15 GOOD! LAYUP by SMITH,Jareal [FB/PNT]
I’ve never been a supporter of the “GOOD!” descriptor in the play-by-play. This is a cold document representing the events that took place in the game. Not every made shot is a cause for celebration as the exclamation point implies. But when Jareal Smith made a layup to end a field goal drought of 23 attempts and nearly nine minutes, there was cause for real celebration.
Virginia went 4-24 from the field in the second half and still won by 10. So the sports-talk dude referenced above is probably on solid footing – missing 26 consecutive shots hardly ever happens in the men’s game, whether it involves top ten teams or not..
Let’s end on a positive note and look at the flip side of the situation. What’s the record for consecutive made field goal attempts? As you would expect, since field goals are less than a 50/50 proposition in hoops, the values here are somewhat lower than for consecutive misses.
Most consecutive made field goals since 11/2009
16 Kentucky at Louisville, 12/31/10 16 Charlotte at Chattanooga, 1/17/11 15 Cornell at Wofford 12/30/10 14 William & Mary at Longwood, 12/29/10 14 Saint Louis at Xavier, 2/5/11
Coincidentally, given our reader’s location and loyalties, the 2010 Kentucky/Louisville game is at the top of the list. Here’s the relevant portion of the second half where the streak occurred.
MISSED 3 PTR by SIVA, Peyton 16:06
15:56 26-44 V 18 GOOD! 3 PTR by Josh Harrellson
GOOD! LAYUP by JENNINGS, Terrence [PNT] 14:34 28-44 V 16
14:19 28-46 V 18 GOOD! LAYUP by Doron Lamb [PNT]
GOOD! 3 PTR by KNOWLES, Preston 13:52 31-46 V 15
13:19 31-48 V 17 GOOD! DUNK by Josh Harrellson [PNT]
GOOD! 3 PTR by SMITH, Chris 12:48 34-48 V 14
GOOD! LAYUP by KURIC, Kyle [FB/PNT] 12:35 36-48 V 12
12:25 36-50 V 14 GOOD! LAYUP by Josh Harrellson [PNT]
11:48 37-52 V 15 GOOD! JUMPER by Josh Harrellson [PNT]
GOOD! 3 PTR by KNOWLES, Preston 11:17 40-52 V 12
10:48 40-54 V 14 GOOD! JUMPER by Terrence Jones
GOOD! 3 PTR by KNOWLES, Preston 10:31 43-54 V 11
GOOD! JUMPER by KNOWLES, Preston 09:49 45-54 V 9
09:09 45-57 V 12 GOOD! 3 PTR by Brandon Knight
GOOD! JUMPER by KNOWLES, Preston 08:59 47-57 V 10
GOOD! JUMPER by SMITH, Chris 08:02 49-59 V 10
MISSED JUMPER by JENNINGS, Terrence 07:37
So many exclamation points! The sequence gets started by, what else, a Josh Harrellson three-pointer, one of just two he made all season. Using that as inspiration, the participants in this game went for nearly eight consecutive minutes without missing. Five three-pointers and five two-point jumpers were converted here, so it’s not like this was a dunk fest, either.
That wraps up another illuminating edition of Play-by-Play Theater. Thanks for reading and feel free to send along suggestion for future columns.
Best players by state
01.16.12
After anointing Luke Martinez the best D-I player from North Dakota a couple of weeks ago, I thought it would be fun to figure out who had geographical bragging rights in each state and Canadian province on the continent. The table below summarizes that research. I’ve taken the kPOY formula out of the garage for the first time this season and used it to determine “best” in these cases. (We’ll get to the issue of revealing the first kPOY top ten list later in the week.)
In case the trivia of the best player in each state doesn’t excite you, I’ve added more trivia. The number of players from each state that have registered at least 10% of his team’s minutes is listed along with how that translates to a per-capita (one million capitas, technically) figure. The list is sorted in decreasing order by the latter number.
Drew Cannon did the definitive work on the geography of D-I talent in the off-season, so I’m not going to make any groundbreaking claims that add to his exhaustive work. But there are a couple of things I find interesting about the per-capita distribution of players. First, the deep south produces more players than I expected, basically leading the nation in player density as a region. Drew’s work showed that more of these players are at low-major programs than in most states, so it’s not like there’s a gold mine of talent there, but at least there are players.
That’s more than you can say for New England where kids just don’t care as much about hoops relative to the rest of the country. The only player from Maine getting significant minutes is Notre Dame’s Tom Knight, and he might quibble with my use of “significant”. Sure, you can say the lack of urban areas suppresses the count in places like Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine, but that doesn’t explain why the number of players from Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Massachusetts is roughly on par with those from Alaska when scaled for population.
Rk Players Per 1M Best player 1 District of Columbia 22 36.6 Thomas Robinson, Kansas 2 Maryland 108 18.7 Will Barton, Memphis 3 Louisiana 79 17.4 Scott Saunders, Belmont 4 Georgia 167 17.2 Tony Mitchell, Alabama 5 Mississippi 51 17.2 Isaiah Canaan, Murray State 6 Indiana 87 13.4 Cody Zeller, Indiana 7 Virginia 107 13.4 Mike Scott, Virginia 8 Illinois 169 13.2 Anthony Davis, Kentucky 9 Tennessee 80 12.6 Chris Crawford, Memphis 10 North Carolina 118 12.4 Ryan Kelly, Duke 11 Delaware 11 12.3 Jarrett Mann, Stanford 12 Iowa 34 11.2 Doug McDermott, Creighton 13 Arkansas 32 11.0 A.J. Walton, Baylor 14 Alabama 52 10.9 JaMychal Green, Alabama 15 New Jersey 94 10.7 Tyshawn Taylor, Kansas 16 Michigan 94 9.5 Draymond Green, Michigan St. 17 Texas 229 9.1 J'Covan Brown, Texas 18 New York 173 8.9 Kevin Jones, West Virginia 19 South Carolina 41 8.9 LaRon Dendy, Middle Tennessee 20 Minnesota 47 8.9 Jordan Taylor, Wisconsin 21 Florida 166 8.8 John Henson, North Carolina 22 Nebraska 16 8.8 Antoine Young, Creighton 23 Missouri 52 8.7 Marcus Denmon, Missouri 24 South Dakota 7 8.6 Chad White, South Dakota St. 25 Kentucky 37 8.5 Darius Miller, Kentucky 26 Ohio 98 8.5 Jared Sullinger, Ohio State 27 Kansas 24 8.4 Kyle Weems, Missouri State 28 Nevada 22 8.1 Pierre Jackson, Baylor 29 Oregon 30 7.8 Mike Moser, UNLV 30 California 286 7.7 Rob Jones, St. Mary's 31 Pennsylvania 97 7.6 Herb Pope, Seton Hall 32 Wisconsin 43 7.6 Jake Koch, Northern Iowa 33 Utah 20 7.2 Brandon Davies, BYU 34 Wyoming 4 7.1 Adam Waddell, Wyoming 35 Connecticut 25 7.0 T.J. Robinson, Long Beach State 36 Oklahoma 25 6.7 Noah Hartsock, BYU 37 Rhode Island 7 6.7 Erik Murphy, Florida 38 Washington 40 5.9 Joe Harris, Virginia 39 Alaska 4 5.6 Damen Bell-Holter, Oral Roberts 40 Arizona 35 5.5 Ryan Evans, Wisconsin 41 West Virginia 10 5.4 Todd Mayo, Marquette 42 Massachusetts 31 4.7 Evan Smotrycz, Michigan 43 North Dakota 3 4.5 Luke Martinez, Wyoming 44 New Mexico 8 3.9 Chad Adams, New Mexico 45 Idaho 6 3.8 Mitch Bruneel, Utah State 46 Colorado 19 3.8 Dario Hunt, Nevada 47 Vermont 2 3.2 Matt Glass, Vermont 48 New Hampshire 4 3.0 Luke Apfeld, Vermont 49 Ontario 40 3.0 Kevin Pangos, Gonzaga 50 Nova Scotia 2 2.1 Chris Johnson, St. Bonaventure 51 Montana 2 2.0 Josh Huestis, Stanford 52 Quebec 10 1.3 Kris Joseph, Syracuse 53 British Columbia 5 1.1 Robert Sacre, Gonzaga 54 Maine 1 0.8 Tom Knight, Notre Dame 55 Hawaii 1 0.7 Jeremiah Ostrowski, Hawaii