Bracket Suggestion #1

Margin-of-victory is critically important when picking a bracket. You can’t pick all the favored teams, but you have to understand the odds when you pick an upset. Sagarin’s Predictor, Team Ratings, BPI and Kenpom.com all offer various versions that are quite good. Today I want to talk about one thing those margin-of-victory systems may still be overlooking.

As Ken Pomeroy has shown, teams have very little control over whether their opponents miss free throws or threes. Teams can control how often they send teams to the free throw line, and how often they allow threes. But if a team’s defense is strong because it is good at forcing free throw misses or three point misses, that is probably mostly luck.

In the analysis below, I show how various teams Pythagorean Winning Percentages change if their opponents had made the NCAA average percentage of free throws and threes. Note that the impact depends on how often these teams allow threes and free throws.

“Ch Def” is the Change in the Adjusted Defensive Rating, “Ch Pyth” is the change in the team’s Pythagorean Winning Percentage, and “Ch Ranking” is the change in where the team would be ranked in the Kenpom.com rankings if the team’s opponents had made the NCAA average percentage of FTs and threes.

Davidson sticks out as a team that the margin-of-victory metrics are overrating. They have horrible two point defense, but their opponents have missed a lot of free throws and threes this year. They can’t count on opponents to miss those shots in the NCAA tournament. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t pick Davidson. They may very well win because of their great three-point shooting. But you should realize the gamble you are making when you choose Davidson to advance.

The next table shows the teams that were the most unlucky during the regular season. North Dakota St.’s opponents made a ridiculous 75% of their free throws on the year. With a little better luck in that category, they would have certainly had better power margin-of-victory numbers than what you see. You’ll notice there are fewer teams in the “unlucky” category as a whole in the NCAA tournament. Many of the teams that were particularly unfortunate in these categories missed the field, such as UC Santa Barbara, Hofstra, Tennessee, Pittsburgh, Florida, Minnesota, Marquette, Creighton and Murray St.

Bracket Suggestion #2

The other big bracket advice is to pay attention to injury/suspension news. A few teams strike me as under-rated and over-rated by the margin-of-victory metrics:

Wyoming: The Cowboys were ranked 87th on Kenpom.com when Larry Nance went out with mono. Then after he returned, they won the MWC tournament. Kenpom.com only gives them a 15% chance to beat Northern Iowa, but the odds of that happening are much higher. This is particularly true given the way this game will be played. Both Northern Iowa and Wyoming are willing to play a slow grind-it-out game, and the first team to 50 points may easily win. In that kind of environment, all Wyoming needs is a few late threes to spring the upset.

UC Irvine: The Anteaters played much of the year without 7’6” center Mamadou Ndiaye. Even when healthy, he hasn’t played that much this year, so it is very hard to know what their upside is with Ndiaye in the lineup. But Kenpom.com only gives them a 21% chance to beat Louisville, and that’s clearly an understatement.

Louisville: On the flip side (as I will show in my next column), Louisville finished the season with a pretty significant slide. They struggled to score after Chris Jones was kicked off the team. A 4-seed was exceedingly generous. That’s not to say Louisville can’t beat UC Irvine, but just realize that this match-up is much closer than it appears on paper.

Virginia: Justin Anderson, Virginia’s best player for much of the season, is still not 100%. If he was, Virginia might be favored against Villanova. But with Anderson playing the way he did in the ACC tournament, I would be shocked if the Vegas line did not favor Villanova in a head-to-head matchup.

St. John’s: The announcement that center Chris Obekpa is out is a serious blow. St. John’s just doesn’t have enough interior defenders without him, and they showed it in giving up 105 in the season finale against Villanova when Obekpa did not play. It is possible the smaller, more perimeter oriented lineup will cause some mismatches for San Diego St. But St. John’s is going to get crushed on the boards. Kenpom.com gives St. John’s a 42% chance to advance. The real odds are closer to 25%.

Bracket Suggestion #3

The teams shuttled out West in those 4/5 pods are always likely upset victims. I’m looking at Georgetown in addition to the above mentioned Louisville. And there will always be some games that shock us.

But I don’t expect this to be an upset filled tournament. There were not a lot of great mid-majors this year (which is why the last at-large bids went to teams seeded 11th). And the best mid-majors often lost in their conference tournaments. Teams like Murray St., Louisiana Tech, Old Dominion, Iona, South Dakota St., and North Carolina Central would have been solid picks for first-round upsets. But none of those teams made the field.

Moreover, while Georgia St. remains an interesting upset pick, the injury to Kentucky transfer Ryan Harrow is a big problem. For Harrow to play just 6 minutes in the Sun Belt tournament, when Georgia St. narrowly won the finale, suggests that he isn’t close to 100%. Georgia St. would have been a great upset pick two weeks ago, but if one of the team’s best players isn’t ready to go, they become more of a long-shot.

Upsets are always possible, but this might be a year to pick more chalk in the early rounds than usual.

Coming early in the week:

(1) My full bracket picks, along with my annual tempo free evaluation of the hottest teams heading into the tournament. UConn has shown that you don’t necessarily have to play well late in the regular season to win the NCAA tournament. And Five-Thirty Eight recently had a column showing that being hot late in the year is not necessarily a better predictor of NCAA tournament success than full-season performance. But the “hot team” numbers are still a little illuminating.

(2) My annual pre-tournament podcast with Daniel Leroux.

In the meantime, I have a few more comments on the Final Day of Championship Week.

Major Conference Tournaments Final Day

For comments on Friday and Saturday’s games, including the Big 12, ACC, Big East, MWC and Pac-12 Title games, click here.

American Conference Tournament Final

The defending National Champion UConn Huskies will not qualify for the NCAA tournament. This is not as rare as you might think. Kentucky suffered the same fate just two years ago. But it still deserves some additional discussion whenever the defending champion’s season ends.

For UConn, there can be no question that the fault lies with the teams guards. Ohio St.’s D’Angelo Russell and UConn’s Daniel Hamilton were ranked just one spot apart in the consensus recruiting rankings. But while Russell became one of the top freshmen in the nation, posting a 115 ORtg and using 30% of his team’s shots, Hamilton posted a 96 ORtg, used 26% of his team’s shots, and had far too many turnovers and misses on the year. Rodney Purvis finally came alive in the American Conference Tournament, but the NC State transfer missed free throws, saw his three point percentage fall, and basically wasn’t ready for a larger role until late in the year. Sam Cassell Jr. was a highly regarded JUCO, but he was extremely inefficient. Terrence Samuel was a surprise spark as a freshman in last year’s NCAA tournament. But Samuel couldn’t make a three all year. Instead of making the sophomore leap, Samuel’s limitations were exposed with a full year of scouting. And Omar Calhoun remained inconstant and undependable and has never regained his freshman year form.

All of those players had high upside and didn’t deliver which put far too much weight on the shoulders of Ryan Boatright. Boatright was brilliant on the season, but everything went wrong in the AAC title game. First Yanick Moreira went up for a rebound, and as he came down, his arm smacked Boatright in the head. This happened just 1:23 into the game, and while the announcers tried to shrug it off, he was clearly not himself. At first he went to the bench. But what convinced me that he wasn’t 100% was that when Boatright went to the scorers’ table to check back in. He quickly sat on the ground and was still holding his head.

And Boatright’s play confirmed he was not 100%. He ended up 1-12 from the floor. For the most part in the first half, he was just a decoy.

And this is where I also have to send some criticism to UConn’s forwards. When Amida Brimah got in foul trouble in the first half of title game, Kevin Ollie gave him a huge stare because he knew how significant Brimah’s absence was. Obviously it hurt that Kentan Facey had a concussion late in the year and had to sit out.

But Phil Nolan’s lack of development really reared its ugly head. First, defensively, Nolan was no match for Marcus Kennedy. In the first half, SMU went on its big run, in large part because Nolan couldn’t keep Kennedy out of the paint. And it also hurt that Nolan never developed any offensive game. Nolan played 16 minutes and scored zero points, which is pretty much right on the trend-line.

A year ago, Nolan looked like he might have a future as a post player. He shot 52% from the field, and made 78% of his free throws. But this year, he stopped making his free throws, became afraid to touch the basketball around the rim, and Nolan actually had the biggest drop in efficiency in the major conferences (after accounting for shot volume and schedule strength.)

Recently I showed the players with the biggest jumps in PPG production. I also looked at the players with the biggest jumps in efficiency. Well here is the list of major conference players that absolutely took a huge step back this season. Note, I am limiting the list to players who played at least 25% of their team’s minutes.

I think the drop-off for Nebraska’s Walter Pitchford was probably the most costly in this table because he still had to play major minutes for Nebraska this season. And Temple just barely missed the NCAA tournament, so they have to be kicking themselves that Daniel Dingle’s efficiency fell off so much.

Jumping back to Connecticut, with no depth at forward, guards that didn’t live up to their recruiting pedigree, they were living on the edge. And when Ryan Boatright got hurt for a second time in the American Conference title game, this time running around a screen in the second half, the verdict was sealed. Even with Purvis making a nice run, it was too little too late. The defending national champions are now a 4-seed in the NIT.

Big Ten Tournament Final

I said to beat Wisconsin, a team needs to play a near-perfect game. And Michigan St. was nearly perfect on Sunday. When the Spartans led by 11 in the second half, they were shooting 60% from the floor, and they were perfect at the free throw line. Later Tum Tum Nairn even nailed a three pointer, only his third of the whole season. This certainly felt like Michigan St.’s day.

I had begun to believe in Frank Kaminsky’s defense after he worked to shut down Purdue’s AJ Hammons in the semifinal. But Michigan St. did not shy away from attacking him. They threw an alley-oop over Kaminsky’s head to Matt Costello. Denzel Valentine, shot a three over Kaminsky’s outstretched arms on the perimeter. And it sure felt like the Badgers were finally going to fall after three close games in three days.

But there was Kaminsky driving and dunking with authority, “and one”. There was Kaminsky nailing a three pointer to give his team a three point lead. College basketball so rarely follows a script. The best players are often shut down by great defense. But Kaminsky refused to be stopped in the tight game.

And Wisconsin continues to be a team that always makes the smarter play. They never foul. They never commit turnovers. And with Michigan St. wanting a shot to win the game in the final seconds, Wisconsin took advantage of the fact that they had fouls to give. Twice Kaminsky hacked the offensive player before he could start his shooting motion. And Michigan St. had to settle for a contested jumper. In OT, Michigan St. ran out of gas.

Wisconsin isn’t perfect. They trailed all three teams they faced in the Big Ten tournament by a significant margin at one point in the game. But watching this team in the NCAA tournament is going to be fascinating. Wisconsin absolutely makes the most of every trip down the floor, and if an opponent does not, no lead is safe.

A10 Tournament Final

On Saturday, CBS Sports Network showed a graphic that said that VCU had one less steal per game without Briante Weber. On Sunday, they showed a graphic that said the team was scoring 6 less points per game, had 4 less assists per game, and had a FG% that was 4% worse since Weber went down for the season.

But schedule-strength also factors in here. I’ll have some injury splits for VCU with and without Weber later this week.

SEC Tournament Final

Dick Vitale did his best to make this game interesting by throwing out trivia. Did you know that Bobby Portis’ AAU coach was Corliss Williamson? But this game wasn’t close again, so let’s talk about Kentucky’s early NCAA draw.

First, Manhattan has to be upset to be playing in Dayton. But the committee likes to make sure the same conferences aren’t playing in that event every year, and thus the MAAC tournament champ had to pay the penalty. But after Steve Masiello’s team nearly beat Louisville in the tournament last year, they might be one of the best 16-seeds ever. They also play at a fast-pace, so watching them face Kentucky in the round of 64 should at least make for a fun game.

In the round of 32, I’m hoping Kentucky faces Purdue, just to see how AJ Hammons and Isaac Haas would play against Kentucky’s front line. Purdue is actually one of the Top 20 tallest teams in the country (based on minutes played). But I’m not at all confident that they will beat Cincinnati and earn that match-up.

In the round of 16, the key question is whether Juwan Staten is healthy for West Virginia. Staten was one of the best players in the Big 12, but he injured his knee late in the year, and they probably won’t even reach the Sweet 16 without him. But if he can play (in front of home fans in Ohio no less), West Virginia’s pressure defense would certainly make for an interesting opponent for Kentucky. Bob Huggins team has taken HAVOC defense to another level this year. Maryland has had a solid season, but their margin-of-victory numbers suggest they wouldn’t give Kentucky much of a game.

Of course the joy of March is the games that surprise us. For all we know it could be Valparaiso that gives Kentucky some heartburn in the Sweet Sixteen. That is why we love March.