Three unrelated topics to start off the week… Daneluis Part Deux Both Dave and Yoni had some criticisms about my post on the value of Vytas Danelius to Wake Forest, citing a perfectly reasonable position that his 2003-04 numbers themselves were of little value because of his gimpy state. But there is some value in […]

The start of practice is one month away. The exciting thing about the upcoming season is that there’s no obvious choice to be king of the mountain. The top spot in the polls will probably get passed around by a few teams over the course of the year. For evidence, take the fact that the […]

I wasn’t planning on continuing the discussion of college rules experiments this soon, but there’s been some breaking news. Unbeknownst to me, the WNBA altered its three point line this year from 19-9 to 20-6, mimicking the college rules experiment. (Also unbeknownst to me, the WNBA season is actually in progress.) Kevin Pelton, who works […]

Last week I mentioned the fact that preseason polls do a good job at predicting the future, with some notable exceptions. I detailed the few teams that were ranked in the preseason top 10 and missed the NCAA Tourney. In this election year, it’s only fair to give equal time to the other side – […]

Check it out, it’s my 100th post. It only took me 9 months to get here. Pretty impressive if I do say so myself. I have so many memories from the last year. Like remember that time I predicted great things for Portland? Or when I said LSU would get an at-large berth? Good times. […]

Polls don’t mean much in a sport where the champion is decided on the playing field. But in college hoops the preseason poll is a pretty good gauge as to which schools will be the power brokers in March. Since the tournament field expanded to 64 teams in 1985, only seven teams ranked in the […]

Schedules for the ’05 season are coming out at a breakneck pace now. The ACC and SEC recently finalized their respective conference slates, allowing most of its member teams to release their full schedules this week. One of the interesting aspects of these schedules is the participants in the pre-season exhibition games. As you may […]

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 […]

Before I get to the teams that were the most unlucky last year, I should show if this method is effective or not. Below are the top 10 teams from 2003 who ended up with a worse conference record than they deserved as measured by wins below expected, using the Pythagorean formula mentioned in my […]

Andy Katz recently published his preseason top 50 for the upcoming season. He did a very thorough job and I think captured something close to what the preseason polls will have. Although I am a little puzzled as to why Gonzaga is ranked as low as 22. At any rate, it’s time to start speculating […]