Louisville / Kentucky

I’ve never had a problem with John Calipari’s decision to build his program with one-and-done players. If anything, I think it makes for a more amusing narrative nationally to have so many elite recruits on the same team. Kentucky is a team that fans will love or hate, but it is impossible not to care.

But I also understand why some segment of Kentucky’s own fans are not totally in love with the one-and-done system, and don’t flock out in droves for the non-conference games. While Kentucky fans will bleed blue until the end, I can understand the segment of folks that prefer to have a championship team built with a blend of talent and experience, not just one-and-done talent.

Heading into Saturday’s Kentucky/Louisville tilt, Louisville was the team where you got to see a 5^th year senior center like Stephen Van Treese finally earning key minutes, after assuming he might have to transfer or simply end his basketball career. You got to cheer for a freshman center like Mangok Mathiang, knowing that he isn’t going to be gone in June. Mathiang’s first steps to developing into a post anchor, including 4 blocks, are only the beginning of his journey.

And when a player like Russ Smith, the criticized, the loved, the suddenly efficient, and the player who passed on his slim-NBA draft hopes to try to repeat as champion comes back, you cannot help but fall in love. And that is why, Smith’s driving dunk with Julius Randle narrowly contesting off to the side means that much more to Louisville fans. They may have lost the game, but they will always have that play. And in 10 years, current students will be heading to Louisville basketball games and raving to their kids about what it was like to see Smith play.

Will Kentucky fans feel the same way about Julius Randle in 10 years? For 20 minutes in the first half of the win over Louisville, before cramping reduced Randle to a shell of himself, Randle was by far the best player on the floor. Mathiang couldn’t get in the way of his strong finishes around the basket. The strong 5^th year senior Van Treese tried unsuccessfully to front him, only to be tossed aside like a 160-lb freshman. Quite simply, when Randle’s game is on, there is no one in college basketball that can stop him.

But what fun is the journey, when the first step is the final result? Sure Kentucky fans want to win, and love beating their hated rival. But Kentucky fans are still a long way from falling in love with this year’s team. I’ve heard that criticism, and I get it.

But before Kentucky fans curse too much, they will find that these things tend to work out in the end. As hot as Calipari has been at developing one-and-done players, Kentucky may very well find they get two or three years out of someone in this year’s rotation. If Kentucky doesn’t win a national title, a player like James Young may be criminally under-rated in a loaded draft class this season, and might decide to come back and be “the man” like Marcus Smart.

Or perhaps Kentucky fans will just end up falling in love with someone like Dominique Hawkins. The Mr. Basketball in Kentucky plays sparingly as a guard reserve this year, but is there any doubt that he is going to have a huge game against Florida or in the NCAA tournament before his career is over? That’s just the way these things work out.

It is hard to fall in love with a team in two months, but beating your state-rival isn’t a bad start.

Can You Really Blame FTs for all those Losses?

At some point in a recent game, Dick Vitale mentioned that if North Carolina would have made their free throws, the Tar Heels would be undefeated.

(Before I nitpick, let me say that I’m glad Vitale is discussing a stat here, and discussing a completely relevant stat. North Carolina’s free throw shooting this season has been abysmal, ranking 333rd in the nation. This is essentially what happens when a team has had only two scholarship guards on the roster until recently, and when one of those is a freshman without much of a shooting stroke.)

But what I want to write about is this type of statement: “The losing team would have won had they made all their free throws.”

Factually this is not that uncommon. Of the 2036 games played through Dec. 25^th, had the losing team made all its free throws, 504 times the game would have had a different outcome. That’s nearly 25% of the games. Another 95 games (just under 5%) would have gone to OT.

This year the team that has to be kicking itself the most about these types of games is defending CAA champ Northeastern. Despite a nice win against Georgetown in Puerto Rico, Northeastern sits at just 3-9 on the season thanks to 8 losses of this type. Marshall also has 7 losses of this type so far this year.

The most high profile program with a number of these type of losses is Maryland with four. If the Terrapins had simply made all their FTs, they would have won the game against Oregon St., Boston University, Connecticut, and George Washington.

But wait a minute, what does this statement even mean? “The losing team would have won had they made all their free throws.” Why do we assume that the losing team gets closer to perfection, but assume nothing about their opponent? Yes, Maryland was 15 of 26 against Boston University. But Boston was 23 of 36. Maryland only wins if they are somehow perfect, but Boston still is not.

And why do we even assume perfection is possible. Yes, we are talking about an uncontested shot. But teams very rarely make 100% of their free throws. In fact, in 2036 games, a team has only been perfect at the free throw line 21 times so far this year.

The next table tabulates the FT percentages for each team in every D1 game this year. (Thanks to Ken Pomeroy for sending over the game data. Abilene Christian and Bucknell each had a game with zero FT attempts, and that is not included in the table.) The median free throw percentage for a team in a game is 70%, nowhere near 100%.

Suffice-it-to-say, I really don’t like the “If the losing team had made all its FTs, the losing team would have won” narrative. But it turns out that coming up with a better definition for games where FTs cost a team the game is not trivial.

Does the timing of the missed FTs matter to you? If a team misses a clinching FT in the final minute, and then blows the game, that seems like a good time to blame FTs. But if a team was 19 of 19 and then blew the front-end of a one-and-one in the final seconds, would you still say they lost because of FT shooting?

Also, if you say the timing doesn’t matter, you ignore the strategic implications along the way. A team that is down 5 points with 3 minutes to play in the game has a different shot selection than a team that is up 5 points with 3 minutes to play. Clearly missing FTs early in the game can change the whole dynamic of play.

Still, I want to throw timing out of any FT failure definition, because I want something we can easily track with box scores. Consider the following definition for a FT flop game:

1. Team B wins

2. Team A shot a worse percentage on free throws, but if Team A had Team B’s FT percentage on Team A’s FT attempts, Team A would have won.

This seems like a better definition for where FTs changed the outcome of the game. And it has happened in about 90 games or about 4.4% of games this season. And taking Dick Vitale’s example from the opener, all three of the North Carolina losses would still meet this definition.

Of course even this definition is not perfect. Did Team A lose because of their poor free throw shooting, or did they lose because they took (what was for them) a lower percentage shot too often? To put it another way, should we be praising Team B for fouling the right people? Or should we be criticizing Team A for throwing the ball in the post to a guy who got hacked but couldn’t complete the play, when other scoring options were working better?

(And whenever one team gets a ton more FT opportunities, which happens very frequently in college basketball due to the trailing team fouling more, even this definition results in some quirky outcomes.)

Suffice it to say, coaches rarely want to blame just one factor for a loss. And when it comes to FTs, they are probably right. But if you were Mississippi and you were 10 of 21 from the FT line, La Salle was 13 of 18, and you lost last year’s NCAA tournament game by 2 points, go ahead and blame the FTs. Even according to my alternative definition, they did still swing the game.

Bullets

-There weren’t a lot of games this week, but the biggest loser has to be St. Mary’s. To go 0-3 in the Diamond Head Classic may have single-handedly ended St. Mary’s NCAA at large hopes. Head coach Randy Bennett has been an offensive mastermind at the school, but his team’s porous defense in Hawaii was costly.

-It may get old at some point, but Bill Walton’s random commentary continues to make Pac-12 games great. Didn’t we all want to know that Bill drinks a 48-ounce V8 every day?

-The team I most want to see this week is SMU. They’ve been much more dominant against cupcakes than in past seasons, suggesting that Larry Brown’s team has developed. But SMU still doesn’t hold a victory over a team in the Pomeroy Top 100. In the next 14 days, SMU plays Cincinnati, Connecticut, and Louisville. We are about to find out whether SMU’s improvement is real.

-Why does everyone keep apologizing for ranking Wisconsin in the Top 5? “I felt forced to rank them here based on what they have accomplished. I don’t really like this roster. I’m not sure they will be here at the end of the year.” Um, every year there are surprises in college basketball. No one would be shocked if Wisconsin won the Big Ten Title. And no one should doubt Wisconsin could make the Final Four. Sam Dekker looks very much like the kind of athletic forward who could make an NBA roster. So why does everyone feel the need to apologize for ranking the Badgers? The last time I checked, teams don’t have to have multiple NBA lottery picks to have a dominant season in college basketball.

-Syracuse sure seems to get off to a lot of slow starts. (They fell behind Villanova by 15 before going on a 20-0 run.) But a lot of that is the zone defense. Many teams have adrenaline and can knock down jumpers early in games, but few teams can win that way over 40 minutes.

-The loss of North Carolina’s PJ Hairston (not re-instated), Michigan’s Mitch McGary (back surgery), and Notre Dame’s Jerian Grant (ineligible) are all season-altering events. But Notre Dame is in the worst shape. Michigan and North Carolina have at least had a little more time to practice and play games without their star player. But Notre Dame is starting from scratch at a very late date. And Notre Dame needed OT to beat Canisius this weekend. Of course some of that had to do with the Golden Griffin’s 10 of 21 shooting from three point range. And those defensive holes were problematic for Notre Dame even before Grant was kicked off the team.

-On the good news front, Seth Allen made his return for Maryland and had 3 assists in the teams win against Tulsa. I think Maryland’s season still ultimately rests in freshman PG Roddy Peter’s hands, but having another ball-handler should help on nights when Peters is struggling.

-Transfer PG Trae Golden has not quite lived up to his reputation since joining Georgia Tech. His assist numbers are down as he doesn’t seem to have the same chemistry with his new teammates. But he finally had a huge scoring night, posting 24 points in the team’s narrow win against Charlotte.

-Small replacing big: What do you do when a 6’9” 255-lb center, Sam Dower, is out with a back injury for the conference play opener against Santa Clara? If you are Gonzaga, you simply ask the 5’11” David Stockton to more than double his season high with 21 points.

-South Carolina and Akron played an odd back-to-back with games in Hawaii in the Diamond Head Classic and then again in Columbia on Saturday. After losing both games by double-digits, Akron doesn’t want to see South Carolina again anytime soon.

-Washington St. fans have high expectations for Que Johnson, and the freshman has finally started to blossom, averaging over 20 points in his last two games. Johnson has made 9 of 18 from deep in those two games.

-Meanwhile, UCLA’s Tony Parker has back-to-back 15+ point games. The big man was considering transferring before the season, but his emergence also deserves further observation. The Wear twins are posting career lows in rebounding rates, making it all the more important that Parker stay on the floor this season.

Harvard Watch

Sophomore Agunwa Okolie had made just 18 buckets in his whole career, but he was 6 of 7 from the floor in Harvard’s closer than expected win against A10 bottom-feeder Fordham. Harvard’s defense has been extremely porous in the two games since finals. Ironically, they run into an ACC team with season-long problems on defense when they face Boston College on Wednesday.