Is tonight a must-win for UNC?
02.08.12
I tweeted it on Sunday but it’s worth repeating this morning: There’s a strong case that the suddenly offensive-minded Florida State Seminoles are the favorite to get the one-seed for the ACC tournament. FSU is tied with North Carolina at 7-1 in conference play and Duke is a game behind at 6-2 in what is basically a three-team race for regular season honors.
Nobody is going to make the case that Florida State is better than UNC. Well, hold on, I am sure a few people might. FSU did beat the Tar Heels by 33 in their only meeting, after all. But a home win in isolation provides surprisingly little information on the relative strength of the two combatants. And considering the other 20 or so games played by both teams, I’m comfortable stating the UNC is better than Florida State purely based on each team’s entire body of work.
However, the best team doesn’t always win its conference and at this point it’s reasonable to suggest that Florida State is the favorite – or at worst co-favorites with UNC - to win the ACC regular-season. That’s pretty amazing considering if, before the season, someone broached the idea that UNC wasn’t the best team in the nation, they were asked to re-take College Hoops Analysis 101.
The reasons the ‘Noles are the favorite are that (a) their remaining schedule is easier and (b) they own the tiebreaker over UNC. The Tar Heels play the first of two games against Duke tonight and have two more games against Virginia while the Seminoles have but one game against each.
I ran the Simulator after Duke’s loss on Sunday and it indicated that Florida State and UNC had roughly equal chances of winning the top seed. However, that didn’t consider that FSU owns the tiebreaker in a two-way dead-heat with UNC, which occurs in about 7% of the simulations. Thus, accounting for these cases, the simulator spits out the following chances for a regular-season title in advance of tonight’s Duke/UNC and Florida State/Boston College match-ups…
FSU 45% UNC 34% Duke 18% UVa 2% Miami + NC State 1%
Note: Simulator assumed that all other tie circumstances besides UNC/FSU were broken by coin flips.
The Seminoles actually have a 28% chance of owning sole possession of first place after tonight if you buy the percentages listed on my site. Sure, Carolina will probably beat Duke, but a Blue Devil win wouldn’t be anything close to the upset of the year. And it would be a nightmare scenario for the Tar Heels’ chances of winning the ACC, since like Florida State, Duke has an easier conference schedule than Carolina remaining.
I don’t like throwing around the term “must-win” because if UNC lost tonight and won their remaining conference games, I expect they would still be ACC regular-season champs. But having to rely on winning at Duke and at UVa to do that isn’t a good position to be in. So yeah, it’s pretty close to a must-win for the Tar Heels.
Play-by-Play Theater: Earliest disqualification
02.06.12
Today’s episode of PBPT comes via a suggestion from John Ezekowitz, one of the brains behind the Harvard Sports Analysis Collective. Ezekowitz was at a game in which Brown’s Tyler Ponticelli, fouled out with 13:34 left in the game, which appears to be remarkably early for a DQ. Usually a player in foul trouble, even a reserve, is protected from action with this much time left in the game.
The NCAA keeps tabs on the quickest disqualification, a record I’ve reported on in this space before. The current record holder in that category is San Diego State’s Ben Wardrop who played just 71 seconds before fouling out in a 2004 game against Colorado State. That record isn’t all that special because the aspirants for such a feat are in the game specifically to foul. They’re just doing their job really well. The record Mr. Ezekowitz requests involves players who are trying to stay in the game but unable to do so.
As usual on PBPT, we can’t know the true record since we don’t have the play-by-play for every game in college basketball history. But since we have PBP from 99.9% of the nearly 15000 games played over the past three seasons, we can get a very good handle on what the extreme case looks like. And while the Ponticelli situation was somewhat extreme, there are a handful of cases where a player fouled out earlier in the second half. However, youngsters, if you want this record, you will have to get your work done before halftime.
In 14,648 games, there has been one case of a player fouling out in the first half. It occurred just a couple of weeks ago. The date was January 21, 2012. The site was the Stan Sheriff Center in Honolulu, where New Mexico State visited the University of Hawaii. And it was a match made in early-disqualification heaven.
New Mexico State is the nation’s runaway leader in free throw rate. Their center combo of Hamidu Rahman and Tshilidzi Nephawe are free throw ATM’s, drawing 8.2 and 5.5 fouls per 40 minutes, respectively. You might have expected that Hawaii’s front line would get in foul trouble and get in trouble they did.
Vander Joaquim, Hawaii’s stud center (better Vander: Joaquim or Blue?) isn’t terribly foul prone, but he drew calls at 18:09 and 17:02 of the first half. Joaquim though merely plays a supporting role in this edition of PBPT. Hawaii head coach Gib Arnold is one of our stars and he really values Joaquim. So other than a 75-second cameo later in the half, Arnold would keep his starting big man on the bench for the remainder of the half. This isn’t an unusual tactic, especially since the Warriors led for the entire half. It might be reasonable to save your best player for the second half in that case.
This is where things get interesting. Enter Joaquim’s replacement, Davis Rozitis. If there’s one thing the USC transfer loves, it’s the sweet, sweet sound of the Fox 40 whistle, so much so that he’s personally forced an official to make that sound 8.5 times per 40 minutes he’s been on the court this season. Rozitis versus the New Mexico State front line is all you need for another crazy edition of PBPT.
It all started innocently enough for the seven-footer. Shortly after replacing Joaquim at the 16:45 mark, Rozitis would contribute a blocked shot and a couple of offensive boards including a putback. But then things quickly went downhill as the play-by-play attests.
14:02 UH FOUL by ROZITIS,DAVIS 13:03 UH FOUL by ROZITIS,DAVIS 12:06 UH FOUL by ROZITIS,DAVIS 11:34 UH FOUL by ROZITIS,DAVIS
Rozitis picked up his fourth foul less than nine minutes into the game. At this point, Coach Arnold had choices. He could go small and play 6-7 Hauns Brereton at center, he could put Joaquim back into the game for a few minutes, or he could allow Rozitis to go for the kind of record-breaking glory that would impress everyone this side of Nykesha Sales. Rozitis didn’t just have a chance to set a record, he had a chance to put it out of reach for all future college basketball players, and thus, Coach Arnold really had only one option.
Rozitis remained in the game and would contain himself for five straight minutes until he was subbed out for the brief re-appearance by Joaquim. But the big man returned at the 5:08 mark and with 1:55 left in the first half he committed his fifth foul. His night was done, having made the kind of history that may never be witnessed again.
A few footnotes to this occasion:
- Rozitis’s line was very solid. In 14 minutes, he scored nine points, grabbed five offensive rebounds and had three blocked shots. In 24 minutes, Joaquim went for 11 and 10 with four blocks. That qualifies as amazing production from the center position, even if the duo racked up nine fouls.
- The game summaries scarcely mention the achievement. In fact, the version posted on the Hawaii web page doesn’t mention it directly.
Sophomore post Davis Rozitis ably filled in for Joaquim, logging nine points, five rebounds and three blocks in just 14 first-half minutes.
The dispatch from Las Cruces waits until the final sentence to note the unusual accomplishment:
Not only did NMSU get Joaquim into early foul trouble, but backup center Davis Rozitis fouled out in the first half with nine points, five rebounds and three blocks.
- Since we’re looking at individual foul data, it’s worth noting that Rozitis set the record for quickest fourth foul, as well. The quickest to three fouls in the database was Middle Tennessee’s Shawn Jones, who picked up his third at the 18:48 mark of the first half against Vanderbilt on 12/21/10.
- Determining the quickest to two fouls is probably stretching the accuracy of PBP data, but it goes to Southern Illinois’ Mykel Cleveland, who picked up his second foul just 20 seconds into a game against New Mexico on 12/1/10. Cleveland had a special game there: Starting both halves, he got credit for one minute played, one (charge-induced) turnover, and four fouls.
- Finally, I was impressed that all five of Rozitis’s fouls were of the contact variety. I fully expected the record holder to have picked up a fourth foul and then been T’d up in order to receive his fifth. But no, Rozitis earned his way into history. Props to Rozitis, Arnold, and New Mexico State’s foul-inducing offense for putting together a show for the ages.
The untrained eye: Gonzaga vs. BYU
02.02.12
BYU beat Gonzaga 83-73 in an 82-possession game Thursday night. I was there. This is what I saw.
Saint Mary’s thanks you, Noah Hartsock
BYU forward Noah Hartsock’s 24 and 14 effort helped pin a second loss to Gonzaga’s conference record, and that combined with the Gaels’ surprisingly narrow home win over San Diego Thursday night puts SMC two games clear of Gonzaga for the WCC regular season title. Gonzaga still has a chance to win a share of its 12th consecutive WCC title by beating Saint Mary’s, but they need the Gaels to lose another game somewhere. That’s not impossible, though. (Remember last season?) The chance of getting the top seed is nearly out of the question, though, because Saint Mary’s will hold the tiebreaker by virtue of its sweep of the team that should be the conference’s third-place finisher, BYU. Nonetheless, let’s see how the Simulator sees things shaping up. Here are the chances it gives for getting the top-seed in the WCC tournament…
Saint Mary’s 95.5% Gonzaga 4.2% BYU 0.3%
And keep in mind the Simulator is pretty dumb since it assumes there’s an equal chance the tiebreaker will fall to Gonzaga or Saint Mary’s.
The Zags defensive supremacy will take an unfair hit
Coming into the game, Gonzaga not only led the WCC in defensive efficiency during conference play, they led the league in three of the four factors while ranking second in turnover percentage. Part of this is explained by having only played one game against Saint Mary’s or BYU, but the larger part of the explanation is that their defense is pretty solid. This game really didn’t change my mind about that, either.
Sure, Gonzaga gave up 83 points, but BYU had 82 offensive possessions. The half-court defense was still impressive considering the opponent had a decent offense and the game was on the road. The problem was on the other end, where 12 first-half steals by BYU led to 17 points, often of the fast-break variety. Those points should be blamed on the faults of the offense, and if you take those out of the equation, the Gonzaga defense did very well.
(By the way, kudos to the folks behind StatBroadcast, who have added possession count and four factors information to their in-game application. See the right side of the Home Stats view.)
You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take
And if you are Gonzaga shooting specialist Mathis Monninghoff, sometimes you take 100% of your team’s shots and miss them all. Monninghoff checked in with 11:33 to go in the first half and returned to the bench permanently with 9:53 left. In between he missed three three-pointers, representing all of his team’s attempts during that time. Oddly, in 1:40 of action, Monninghoff took the same number of shots as the Zags most-frequent per-minute shooter this season, Elias Harris, did in 21 minutes on the floor.