Wednesday, August 11, 2004
The Lucky Ones
Just like with my post on the unlucky teams, I'm going to start this post on the lucky teams with a look at what happened two years ago. The following are the ten luckiest teams - as measured by wins over expected - from 2003 with their actual 2003 conference record in parenthesis.
1 Niagara +2.5 (12- 6) 2 Mercer +2.5 (14- 2) 3 Prairie View A&M +2.4 (14- 4) 4 Southern Illinois +2.4 (16- 2) 5 Wake Forest +2.3 (13- 3) 6 Wyoming +2.3 ( 8- 6) 7 Weber St. +2.2 (14- 0) 8 Massachusetts +2.1 ( 5-10) 9 William & Mary +2.1 ( 7-11) 10 Wichita St. +2.1 (12- 6)
In 2004 the teams above lost an average of 3.5 more conference games than in 2003. This shows much more of a decline than the unlucky teams showed improvement.
Here's the top 10, plus some other notables from 2004:
1 Toledo +3.2 (12- 6) 2 Stetson +3.1 (10-10) 3 Southern Illinois +3.0 (17- 1) 4 Prairie View A&M +2.8 ( 7-11) 5 Wisconsin Green Bay +2.7 (11- 5) 6 East Tennessee St. +2.7 (16- 1) 7 Virginia Tech +2.5 ( 7- 9) 8 Chicago St. +2.5 ( 9- 7) 9 Austin Peay +2.4 (16- 0) 10 Alcorn St. +2.3 ( 9- 9) 13 Pacific +2.2 (17- 1) 14 Stanford +2.1 (17- 1) 15 Syracuse +2.1 (11- 5) 16 Princeton +2.0 (13- 1) 22 Tennessee +1.9 ( 7- 9) 25 Virginia +1.8 ( 6-10)
Stanford and Virginia were beneficiaries of the most high-profile last-second heroics last year, so it's comforting to see them show up fairly high on the list.
Syracuse is the team I want to focus on. They'll likely be a preseason top 10 team and it's hard not to buy into the hype with Hakim Warrick and Gerry McNamara among the best in the nation at their positions. Then there's the expected return of point guard Billy Edelin who missed a good chunk of last year with personal problems.
So yeah, there's reason for optimism in Orangeland. But there's also reason to believe that the opinions of last year's Syracuse team are inflated. Even their sweet 16 run was built on a couple of games that were decided in the final minute, including a win over an overseeded Maryland in the second round.
Sure, the 'Cuse will be better this year. But if they prove to be a top 5 team, it would be a better coaching job by Jim Boeheim that the national championship run of two years ago.