Best Coach Never to Reach the Final Four?

For Pittsburgh coach Jamie Dixon, despite another dominant regular season, there will be no Final Four trip. Since Dixon started at Pittsburgh eight years ago, here are the top-10 coaches with the highest average efficiency margins. These coaches have accounted for every national title over this period, and numerous Final Four appearances. Despite Jamie Dixon appearing on this list, his team did not advance deep in the tournament once again.

(Of the other coaches with zeros listed here, Bo Ryan is still alive in this year’s tournament and still has a chance to take Wisconsin to the Final Four. And Rick Barnes went to the Final Four prior to Dixon taking over at Pittsburgh.)

Kyrie Irving Watch

Once again, I present to you my personal “Irving-cam”, capturing every offensive move he made on the court.

In the first half of the Michigan game, Irving caught a curl cut in the post, and drew a foul. Then Nolan Smith penetrated and kicked to Irving. But Irving was not confident or ready to take the three, so he drove the lane behind Smith and drew a second foul. Then a few minutes later, Irving took a guarded, non-rhythm three pointer that missed. Then he ended the half drawing two bizarre fouls, far away from the basket, when he was in no position to score.

In the second half, Irving received another kickout from Nolan Smith and missed a three. He also drew another foul 20 feet from the basket. But then Mike Krzyzewski surprised me by playing Irving in the critical sequences in the game. And so we saw a little bit of good Irving, bad Irving:

Good Irving: After Michigan had gone on a run to narrow the lead, Irving made a fantastic diagonal pass against the 1-3-1 defense that resulted in a lay-up.

Bad Irving: But a possession later, Irving was called for a charge when he drove into three Michigan defenders and did not pass the ball back out.

Bad Irving: Then in the final two minutes, with Michigan still playing a 1-3-1 zone, Irving dribbled the ball for a long time, made a bad pass in the corner, and was basically responsible for Duke being called for a shot-clock violation.

Good Irving:  But in the final minute, Nolan Smith collapsed the defense, and found Irving cutting to the basket, and Irving hit the banked shot that would prove to be the game winner.

Overall, if I was a Duke fan I would feel a lot more comfortable with Nolan Smith running the show. Smith seems to have a much better sense of the spacing on the court, when to drive to the basket, and where to find his teammates. Most of Irving’s drives resulted in him being triple-teamed and not finding an open player. But Irving was solid defensively, and his ability to get to the free throw line was huge in Duke’s narrow two point win.

Bullets

- Could Texas guard J’Covan Brown have dribbled the ball up the court any slower with his team trailing Arizona by one on Sunday? Despite having nine seconds for Texas to run their offense, Brown was so patient moving up the court that he did not give the Longhorns a chance at an offensive put-back.

- What happens when a top five offense (Notre Dame) meets the top defense in the country (Florida St.)? Apparently the defense wins. 

- Despite everything we think we know, I love that some NCAA tournament games are completely unpredictable. According to Pomeroy and Sagarin, the biggest mismatch in the entire weekend slate of games was Purdue vs VCU. VCU was given just a 10-15% chance of winning that game. And yet VCU won easily.

- I do not believe that Brad Stevens has some magic formula to win NCAA tournament games at Butler. Emerging with a two-point win and one-point win on the opening weekend takes a little bit of good fortune. But I do believe that Stevens is one of the NCAA’s best at drawing up plays out of timeouts. On numerous occasions after timeouts, Butler ran plays that resulted in wide-open shots against Pittsburgh. And despite Jamie Dixon calling a second timeout (after seeing Butler’s alignment) to try to set up his defense in the final seconds, Stevens was still able to call a play that resulted in a lay-up.

- After scoring in double figures in exactly two SEC regular season games, what has gotten into Kentucky’s Josh Harrelson? The Kentucky senior has scored in double figures in four of his last five games, and he continues to find ways to get timely offensive rebounds. I think this says something about not believing in hype. While West Virginia forward Deniz Kilicli received a lot of hype, he posted a sub-95 ORtg this season and was not an impact player again on Saturday. On the other hand, the unpublicized Harrelson continues to succeed by making the right hustle plays in the paint.

- How many people were tuning in on Saturday and saw Wisconsin Badger Mike Bruesewitz’s floppy red hair for the first time? The Wisconsin sophomore hit one of the biggest three pointers of the game in his teams win over Kansas St. I still cannot believe that Jacob Pullen set a career high with 38 points, but ended the game with three bad possessions. Pullen turned the ball over in the lane, missed a free throw, and had the game’s final shot blocked. And despite an incredible NCAA run last season, Pullen’s season is over.

- I thought the key to Florida’s win over UCLA was their ability to score inside early in the second half. UCLA’s trio of Reeves Nelson, Tyler Honeycutt, and Joshua Smith had the better scoring day. But in the first 10 minutes after intermission, Alex Tyus, Vernon Macklin, and Patric Young were almost unstoppable in the paint. And that balance gave the Florida guards enough space to win the game late.

- North Carolina trailed Washington in the first half and then ran off three fastbreak baskets in a row to re-take the lead. But in the second half, I thought Washington did a much better job limiting the transition attacks. On one play where North Carolina tried to “cherry-pick”, Isaiah Thomas made a great leaping interception of the ball. But ultimately North Carolina’s size inside (both in terms of blocked shots, and late inside baskets) was the key to the victory.

- By winning on Friday and losing on Sunday, Illinois retains its place as the team with the most wins in NCAA tournament history (39) without a national title.

- Of Jimmer Freddette’s numerous 30-point games, the vast majority have come away from home. In fact, ten have come on neutral floors, and that bodes well as the NCAA tournament continues.

- Wrong way to end your career: Cincinnati senior Anthony McClain stepped on the court for 30 seconds in garbage time, missed an uncontested lay-up, grabbed his own rebound, and then blew the follow-up dunk. There have been a lot of images of disappointed seniors this weekend, but for the once promising big man to go out this way seemed to somehow reach a new painful low.

Bad Strategy

One of my thoughts this season is that not every double OT game is fantastic. And Temple vs San Diego St. was clearly missing some dramatic plays. First, with the game tied at the end of regulation, Temple had fouls to give and denied San Diego St. an easy shot to win. Then in OT, Temple seemed to use a very foolish strategy of running the shot clock down and taking bad shots. With one minute left in the first OT, Temple could have taken a shot, and left themselves time for a second opportunity. But Temple ran the clock down to 30 seconds, took a forced shot, and ensured that San Diego St. would get the last chance to win.

But then San Diego St.’s execution was equally miserable. DJ Gay gave the ball to Malcolm Thomas with 10 seconds left, but instead of passing the ball back out to Gay for a rhythm jumper, Thomas took a forced turnaround shot. When you consider that Gay had made multiple game winners for San Diego St. this year, Thomas’ refusal to give the ball back was particularly frustrating. Ultimately in the second OT, when nursing a three-point lead, Thomas made a block that helped seal the victory. But he might have sealed it earlier with some more unselfish play.

Down Year for the ACC?

This was supposedly a “down” year for the ACC. And certainly, the middle and bottom of the league did relatively poorly in the non-conference schedule. But Duke, North Carolina, and Florida St. are three very good teams. And as Duke has seen Kyrie Irving return, Florida St. has seen Chris Singleton return, and North Carolina’s young players have matured, the ACC is the only conference to put three teams in the Sweet Sixteen.

But the proper way to judge a conference in the tournament is not purely win-loss record. The top seeds are supposed to win on the opening weekend. The fact that Duke and North Carolina are here should not necessarily be praised.

The better metric to evaluate conferences is Performance Against Seed Expectations (PASE). No. 1 seeds have historically won 3.4 games on average, two seeds have won 2.4 games on average, and so on. Thus prior to the tournament, I calculated the expected number of wins for each conference based on seeding. Let’s see which conferences still have a chance to meet their expectations:

Expected Wins after First Four

The Pac-10, A-10, and CAA have already exceeded their expected number of wins based on seeding, and several other leagues are close to exceeding expectations.

The Big 12 did not perform nearly as well. At this point Kansas will have to win the National Championship for this to count as a good tournament by the Big 12. Texas and Kansas St. lost heartbreaking games, but neither was able to advance to the Sweet Sixteen.

But the biggest disappointment is clearly the Big East. Not only did the conference champ Pittsburgh go down in the opening weekend, so did conference runner-up Notre Dame, and conference leaders Syracuse and Louisville. Even if Marquette and Connecticut win every possible game, the Big East will have had a disappointing tournament.

Updated Team Expectations

Thanks to the Southwest bracket completely falling apart, Kansas is now the tournament favorite, but just barely. Let’s look at the expected number of wins for all the tournament teams.  (If you are wondering what the various columns mean click here.)

Expected Wins in Field of 64

Kansas improved their odds substantially by beating an Illinois team that has been inconsistent, but occasionally quite dominant (see own game). And the rest of the Southwest bracket fell apart which also improved expectations for Kansas (see other games). But Kansas had a relatively non-dominant performance, struggling to put away Illinois (see performance). On the whole, the Jayhawks are now expected to win 4.1 games in the tournament.

Conversely, Ohio St. was expected to beat George Mason pretty easily, so their “own game” had little impact on expectations. And the fact that Kentucky and North Carolina advanced was not good for Ohio St.’s long-term odds (see other games). But Ohio St. was so dominant, winning by such a large margin (see performance), that Ohio St. is also now expected to win 4.1 games in the tournament.

Duke’s win was also expected but still helpful (see own game). And not having to face a very tough Texas team was a nice little bonus (see other games). But the fact that Duke won by such a small margin substantially downgraded their expectations (see performance). In fact, Duke’s performance was so surprising that it also impacted other ACC team’s ratings. (For example Florida St.’s best win was Duke, and that looks a little less impressive when Michigan can stay within two points of Duke. So Florida St.’s performance rating also fell.)

Finally, by beating a very dangerous Pittsburgh team, Butler did a ton to increase their expectations (see own game.) The expectations increased by more than one game because the odds compound in future rounds. But the favored seeds won the rest of the games in the Southeast, so that caused Butler’s odds to fall (see other games.)