Calillini
Now appearing in Tampa
Its March Madness time. if it’s noise, it’s news.
NCAA Tournament
- Status
The idiocy of Dickinson is that they've literally won one more game in a single elimination tournament that they did not belong in. I don't care what anyone says, in D1 ball today, anyone can get hot and beat a 6th seed and 3 seed on a neutral site. I wouldn't be surprised if Penn State accomplished that. They drew just the right bracket to do so. They drew an at-large bid from the Mountain West conference who did win the season or conference as a 6th seed. Then played Tennessee who was long overdue for some miscues and even in that Dickinson and Brooks had to combine for 50 points with 9 of those being Dickinson 3s. Good luck repeating that.
Agreed. I would rather him get drafted though so that we do not have to see him another year. Especially if we don't have Kofi.
How about calling travel again when they take a step before dribbling! Drives me bananas to see someone catch the ball and take a step or 2 without dribbling, pause and analyze the D then make a move. Im with you, the game needs cleaned up. Even if it does take away some "flash"
I think the problem with the approach you have here is that you are looking at individual performances as a “met or failed” approach.
Instead, why not look at the number of WINS each team was expected to reach. Wisconsin, Illinois, osu, msu all fell 1 shy. Michigan is already 2 ahead, Rutgers/Indiana you could really call a toss up since the win vs loss in the play in was between 11s.
UNC and Miami currently have 1 more win each than expected. Duke still needs a win to get to “expected”. ND certainly has 2 wins more, so basically cancels out Michigan at this point.
All this is to say, you get 9 teams in, some will get upset. It’s just the nature of the game of basketball and the tournament in particular
Actually I thought he played better last year but probably was due to a better PG.
he talks a big game but never backs it up against illinois.
I totally get what you're saying. Another point is that even this approach really exaggerates the how likely a favorite is to go deep into a tournament. A team with a 75% chance to win each game will lose in the first round almost as often as they win four in a row. Their expected number of wins is only two. And most tournament games do not have that heavy a favorite.
Not playing as far as your seed is not the same as under-performing. I can't find it now, but a while back someone posted a list of coaches who "choked" in the tournament, and it was basically a list of HOF coaches who built powerhouse programs -- Gene Keady, Lou Henson, Judd Heathcote, and so on.
If we keep playing at a B1G-championship level, we'll get our shots at a national title.
Bigtex
- DFW
I can't disagree with your approach. However I was quoting someone saying so far B1G was about as expected and IMO B1G the last 2 NCAA's has been below expected.
OSU and MSU did not fall 1 shy, they had as many wins as expected.
3 teams lost before expected. 3/9 really isn’t bad….4 losses that were expected wins, Michigan is at 2 wins expected as losses.
I would not say the big ten played below expectations this year, just below what FANS expected maybe. Seeding committee had big ten pretty much where we are - 2 teams in the sweet 16 (they expected 3, but as noted by another posted, the 3rd was us and we were BARELY top 16, so I pretty reasonable upset)
JFGsCoffeeMug
BU:1 Trash cans:0
- Chicago
And if any teams make it to the next round, the B1G will have exceeded expectations.
TheFameProtector
- Champaign
At least even ESPN's writers are acknowledging Houston's underseeding, though of course that is coming when they beat the #1 team and not the #4 team.
illini80
- Forgottonia
Houston plays with the toughness that we do when we are at our best. We just didn’t have it often enough the last 3 games.
Calillini
Now appearing in Tampa
USA Today has a good article about toughness and implies Gonzaga lost because it, like Arizona didn’t play enough physical teams during the season. Also pointed out that AZ is coached by former Zaga assistant and has adopted The Zags style of play.
Toughness is winning in March - and it's why No. 1 seeds Arizona, Gonzaga got sent home | Opinion
No. 1 seeds Gonzaga and Arizona may have been the better team, but they lost the toughness battle in the Sweet 16.
www.usatoday.com
I was merely pointing out that saying “3 teams didn’t go as far as expected, 1 team went farther than expected” ignores how close they got.
It’s also closer to 2.5 wins, if you assume 75% chance every game.
I was arguing in favor of the big ten, not against. The idea that people will say “Illinois and Wisconsin got upset, the big ten sucks” ignores that Michigan pulled off 2 upsets.
Anyway, think we are in agreement for the most part. No true way to get statistical expected without a percentage- I was simply saying assuming they never got upset
Expectations were also based on what the committee thought. The Illini lost to a team that the advanced metrics suggested were a #1 seed, and have played like a #1 seed. (were inexplicably a 5)
The seeding is the only thing that suggests the Illini got upset. I trust Vegas to make that determination much more than I trust the NCAA selection committee.
I don’t necessarily disagree, just was pointing out that even based on the selection committee’s choices, big ten didn’t really underperform
I would expect Brad Underwood to walk in and revoke the scholarship on the spot if one of our players talked like that. On the spot. Especially the dig at Wisconsin after their coach assaulted their Asst coach.
RIP all those posters that said Houston was overrated because they hadn't beaten anybody.
We went down to a legit team. No shame in that. Hopefully the staff/players/program can learn something from the experience and come back stronger for it.
altgeld88
- Arlington, Virginia
We went down to a legit team and we would have beaten them, even with Trent at 30% and with virtually no ability for Jake to contribute given his injury and time off, with half the 17 turnovers we committed. That's what I'm stuck on. Even sputtering along we probably should have gotten to the Sweet 16, which impresses me (if not others.) With a marginal increase in talent and a consistent lineup w/o the Trials-of-Job injuries they had this past season the team's ceiling is high.
Agree. It's certainly a disappointment we missed out on the 2nd weekend again but I'm far less disappointed this year than last, and I think the transition to a post-Ayo team was never going to be as seemless as we wanted to believe. Tack on injuries and it was just an incredibly tough season and I think we were just out of gas as a team. And even so we hung with Houston for the majority of the game, and we get to hang a conference tournament banner.
danielb927
Orange Krush Class of 2013
- Rochester, MN
Lot of discussion about whether the B1G is underperforming, overperforming, or about average this year. Thought I'd contribute a bit more there.
Taking KenPom's tournament probabilities as the underlying data, it's rather easy to compute the probability distribution for total B1G wins in this year's tournament. That plot is below.
In terms of performance:
- The most likely outcome was 9 total wins
- The mean was almost exactly 10 total wins
- The most even "split point" was between 9 and 10 - a 47% chance of 0-9 wins, and a 53% chance of 10+ wins
Currently the conference has 9 wins, so if Purdue wins tonight I think you can say confidently that the B1G "met expectations" this year. If they make the Final Four, you can start to argue we exceeded expectations.
Nerd note - I did not take into account the restriction on outcomes from potential later-round matchups. Since B1G teams are all seeded at least two rounds away, this doesn't have a big impact. For example, just combining the distribution of # of wins for Michigan and OSU (a discrete convolution, if you're interested) isn't exactly correct, because it will include some impossible cases where both teams make the Elite Eight. Here's a plot of the error introduced by just convolving the two teams' pdfs without considering this restriction:
As you can see, the difference is a fraction of a percent. We under-predict the likelihood of 3-5 total wins, since these are scenarios where at least one team makes it to the 2nd weekend. But the net impact on our question (is the B1G underperforming?) is minimal.
Taking KenPom's tournament probabilities as the underlying data, it's rather easy to compute the probability distribution for total B1G wins in this year's tournament. That plot is below.
In terms of performance:
- The most likely outcome was 9 total wins
- The mean was almost exactly 10 total wins
- The most even "split point" was between 9 and 10 - a 47% chance of 0-9 wins, and a 53% chance of 10+ wins
Currently the conference has 9 wins, so if Purdue wins tonight I think you can say confidently that the B1G "met expectations" this year. If they make the Final Four, you can start to argue we exceeded expectations.
Nerd note - I did not take into account the restriction on outcomes from potential later-round matchups. Since B1G teams are all seeded at least two rounds away, this doesn't have a big impact. For example, just combining the distribution of # of wins for Michigan and OSU (a discrete convolution, if you're interested) isn't exactly correct, because it will include some impossible cases where both teams make the Elite Eight. Here's a plot of the error introduced by just convolving the two teams' pdfs without considering this restriction:
As you can see, the difference is a fraction of a percent. We under-predict the likelihood of 3-5 total wins, since these are scenarios where at least one team makes it to the 2nd weekend. But the net impact on our question (is the B1G underperforming?) is minimal.
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- Status