Wake Forest meets New Mexico on December 22nd. This game won’t make any of the pre-season must-see lists but it should. For one thing, most of the marquee games end up on neutral courts. This game will be at The Pit and almost surely will be a sell-out. Wake will get first place votes in […]

(This post is the continuation of previous posts, here and here.) It’s tough doing statistical analysis of hoops. In baseball, the sum of the parts equals the whole. In football, offense and defense are easily separated. In basketball neither is true, which makes life for a stathead difficult. Especially with respect to my recent rant […]

My recent post about the effect of the proposed experimental rules on college basketball ignored something important. It ignored the context under which these changes are being considered. After all, if the balance between offense and defense is tilting towards the offense, then making a few changes to help the defense might be appropriate. The […]

About a month ago the NCAA announced the experimental rules that are to be used in exempt games this season. For the second consecutive season, the 3 point line will be moved back 9 inches to 20′ 6″ and the lane will be widened. (Although the lane won’t be the international-style trapezoid used last season, […]

Perhaps the most talked about aspect of the 2004 National Chamionship game was Georgia Tech’s insistence on forcing a fast pace. It was widely regarded as a mistake for the Jackets to avoid creating a halfcourt game. I’m not exactly sure why, because the Jackets could match the Huskies in both athleticism and depth. But […]

Check it out, Todd Beck has calculated the effectiveness of various college hoops computer rankings. Actually he did this in real-time during the season. Some observations… Looking at the second half results, most systems fall on the correct side of the spread 50-52% of the time. This isn’t very good in the grand scheme of […]

Frank Haith recently made the jump from associate head coach at Texas to head coach at Miami Florida. However, his chances for success in his first head coaching job are slim. I think it’s safe to say that Miami comes into the ACC at the bottom, having won a combined 25 games over the last […]

During tourney-time, I played with some stats on how efficient teams were on offense and defense. In order to best evaluate this, one should look at how well a team does per possession, as opposed to per game or per minute. For instance Billy Tubbs’ Lamar team averaged 79.1 points per game last season, good […]

Hoops season is over, but there are all sorts of things for one to occupy the offseason with. Right now it’s coaching changes and early entries. Today, I’ll focus on the coaching changes of note, which are less notable than last year. St. John’s (Mike Jarvis out, ??? in) It’s hard to say what the […]

I don’t know exactly how much depth helps a team. But the way things shook out on Semi-final Saturday, having something more than warm bodies on the bench can be the difference between winning and losing. Georgia Tech is headed to the final game after having survived two previous games without any production from its […]