3/24 Games

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#153      

MDchicago

MDchicago
Lake Norman NC
MDchicago
bootsy1974 said:
You guys and your defense of Gonzaga is getting old man. I don't care how many wins they have in the tournament. They don't hang banners and give out trophies for that. WIN A TITLE!! Do something besides having everyone pick you to do something every tournament and flame out. Sick of hearing how great of a program you have and you have nothing to show for besides collecting a bunch of wins a weak conference, get a high seed in the tournament and come up small.
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I think you're both right. Gonzaga has had a tremendous run and generated some historically high KenPom ratings while going deep into the tournament, but have underperformed their KenPom and high one seed ratings.

This is the 6th straight year that they have lost to a Power 5 Conference team (Arkansas, Baylor, Texas Tech, Florida St., UNC and Syracuse) that had a meaningfully lower pre-tournament KenPom rating (7.47 KenPom rating points advantage on average over their last 6 tournament losses, 9.09 rating point advantage on average over the last 4 tournament losses). For a frame of reference, Illinois had a 6.86 rating point advantage over Loyola last season.

Gonzaga has been the overall #1 on Ken Pom's pre-tournament ratings 3x in the last six years, and in the top 5 five other times during the KenPom era (since 2002). Since 2002, every other team (Duke, Kentucky, Virginia and Kansas) that has been the pre-tournament KenPom #1 twice or more has won at least one title, and some of the others with multiple top 5 appearances (e.g., UNC, Villanova) also have multiple titles in this period.

Perhaps it is just bad luck, but if I’m Gonzaga AD I would be wondering whether playing a schedule that enables them to avoid playing a single game after mid December in either of the past two seasons where the final outcome was decided by less than four possessions is helpful to the team's tournament readiness. The talent disparity relative to other teams in their conference is large (e.g., 10 of the 11 RSCI top 100 players on rosters in their league this season play for Gonzaga (average rank of 29), with the one other being a senior at BYU who was ranked #89). They have routinely dominated their conference (regular season champions 20 of the last 21 seasons), and truly competitive games over the last two months before the NCAA tournament are relatively rare relative to the schedules faced by other teams in the KenPom top 20.

Great problem to have (I would love for Illini to have Gonzaga's tournament record), but if the end being pursued is winning the most NCAA championships over time (personal preference; others may value the conference titles, AP ratings and near undefeated W-L records more), I think they likely could benefit from a more rigorous schedule designed to build toughness and experience playing in and closing out tight games against top rated teams, including in the final months before the tournament so they are accustomed to playing close games against highly athletic teams (and hopefully avoid situations like the Baylor game last year when they appeared shellshocked despite their undefeated record and overall #1 seed and KenPom rating).
 
#158      

DeonThomas

DeonThomas
South Carolina
DeonThomas
How about a full-court one-handed 3-point swish at the buzzer to beat coach k by 1.............

a fitting way to end it all.
 
#161      

danielb927

danielb927
Orange Krush Class of 2013
Rochester, MN
danielb927
jumpingjack said:
Well, #1 in KenPom just lost to #17. And only 2 of the top 4 are still in. So while it says something, not something enough to be predictive. I'll definitely be paying way more attention next year just looking for teams that fit the same profile for bracket and gambling purposes.
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It's plenty predictive, as long as one accepts that "prediction" can still include uncertainty. Systems like KenPom can reliably predict the final margin within around 8 points on average, which is really pretty useful. It also means plenty of games won't match the predicted winner, but that's only a "fault"
if you're looking for something that's 100% correct on every winner...
 
#162      

jumpingjack

J
jumpingjack
gross james van der beek GIF
 
#164      

jumpingjack

J
jumpingjack
Glad the official had a chat with Lloyd there because this game is getting real real chippy
 
#165      

plooger

P
plooger
Sliding into “Houston, we have a problem.” territory. Yeesh.
 
#173      

Emerson Bigguns

Emerson Bigguns
Emerson Bigguns
Houston seems to embody their coach. Hustle & dirty work. Seems like they shouldn’t still be around, but here they are…
 
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