Who have you played?

After the silence that was finals week, and Butler’s dramatic upset of Indiana (where Butler transfer Rotnei Clarke finally lived up to the preseason hype), Saturday night featured a nice little matchup between Top 10 teams Arizona and Florida. I’ve seen enough of Florida this season to believe the Gators are elite.

Watching Florida take on Georgetown on an aircraft carrier, I was impressed to see Will Yeguete emerging as Florida’s true physical inside presence.

Watching the Gators torch Wisconsin, I was impressed with Erik Murphy’s now diverse scoring game.

And watching the Gators absolutely shut-down Marquette and Florida St. defensively, I started to believe this might be a complete team this season. But for Arizona, Saturday night’s game was a real litmus test.

With six minutes to go in the first half, Arizona’s Mark Lyons crossed mid-court near the sideline and fell into a Florida trap. Stuck in the corner, Lyons was forced to make a desperation pass and his cross-court lob led to a turnover. Analyst Miles Simon pointed out that this is the kind of mistake an experienced point guard never makes. An experienced point guard knows to take the ball over mid-court near the center of the court to prevent the sideline from becoming an extra defender. But this is Lyons first season playing the pointg uard position, and a lack of awareness of some of these basic ball-control principles is one of the reason Lyons has a more turnovers than assists this season.

Flash forward to the end of the game. Lyons had the ball in his hands with the clock running down and his team down one. Lyons was aggressive with the basketball, penetrated the lane, and banked home the game-winning lay-up. Even though Lyons may not have experience at the point-guard position, in his time at Xavier he had plenty of experience making huge baskets at the end of the game. Teams would often force the ball out of Tu Holloway’s hands, and Lyons had plenty of experience attacking the basket in these situations. Lyons had been there before, and his shot gave Arizona a come from behind victory.

I haven’t quite made up my mind about Lyons this season. On the one hand, basketball is a game where positions are overrated. I don’t really care if he isn’t a true point guard. If he can make enough good plays, that can overcome some mistakes. Joe Jackson of Memphis showed that in spades with his stat-line on Saturday. Jackson had eight turnovers in his team’s loss. But because of his eight assists and excellent shooting (4-for-5 on twos, 3-for-4 on threes, 6-for-8 free throws) Jackson’s single game ORtg was still a respectable 113. You can be a valuable player and still turn the ball over.

And while Lyons turnovers are a concern for the Wildcats, that might not stop Arizona from winning the Pac-12. A good comparison might be Duke’s defensive rebounding. It is clearly a weakness, but if Ryan Kelly can continue to do other things well, his deficiency in that area might not be the end of the world for the Blue Devils.

And on Saturday, we saw that Arizona can do quite a few things well. They showed that even when their freshmen have a deer in the headlights look, (Kaleb Tarczewski fouled out and none of the other new players played particularly great), they still have two veterans who know quite a bit about winning. Solomon Hill carried the team early with some great slashing moves to the basket. And Nick Johnson knocked down some huge jump shots to lead the comeback. And in the end Arizona’s defense held Florida scoreless the last seven times they possessed the basketball. I don’t believe Arizona is better than Florida, and I condemn any poll voter that drops the Gators after that effort, but I finally had reason to endorse the Wildcats as a legitimate team.

Of course I want to see more before I anoint Arizona as the undisputed Pac-12 favorite. Oregon, with an eligible Arsalan Kazemi integrating into the starting lineup looks intriguing. You can never count out Mike Montgomery at California, even if the early returns aren’t good this season. And I’m not quite ready to count UCLA down-and-out permanently. UCLA super-frosh Shabazz Muhammad had another great stat-line this weekend. But I was glad to finally have a real game with which to judge the Wildcats.

The problem at this point in the season is that even though many teams are building gaudy looking records, that doesn’t always mean anything. Kansas St. was 7-1, and everyone was praising the job Bruce Weber had done in Manhattan, Kansas. But Kansas St.’s hadn’t beat a team in the Top 100 of Ken Pomeroy’s rankings. And after Saturday’s lackluster performance against Gonzaga, I’m left to ask what Kansas St. has really accomplished so far this season. In fact, the question is pretty simple:

Who has quality wins at this point?

Having developed a preseason ranking system, people often ask me why I don’t have regular season rankings. The answer is that margin-of-victory is clearly the most important predictor of in-season success, and the existing ranking systems do a fabulous job measuring this. Both Jeff Sagarin’s Predictor and Ken Pomeroy’s Rankings do a fantastic job of using margin-of-victory to rank teams.

But if I were to generate my own ranking system, I would choose to do one thing differently. I would discount games against low-level opponents.  Right now I hate the fact that Wisconsin’s elite ranking is generated because they crushed Southeast Louisiana, Cornell, and Presbyterian. All “cupcake” games seem to do is introduce bias into the ranking systems because coaches treat them so differently. Some coaches experiment with lineups, while others try to build chemistry with their starters.

Fair or not, when I evaluate teams, I really focus on games against elite competition.  And that is what today’s table is meant to show. In the next table, I took the top teams in Ken Pomeroy’s rankings, and re-evaluate them, only counting games against Top 100 competition. And when you only count games against quality competition, the rankings look significantly different.

The biggest punch-line in table is that a number of the elite teams haven’t really played anyone yet. What do some of those gaudy win-loss records really mean? Miami (FL) has played two games against the Top 100. Santa Clara has played one Top 100 team. And after Sunday night, Providence and Seton Hall had played zero teams in Ken Pomeroy’s Top 100. (LSU and Washington might sneak up into the Top 100 by the end of the year for Seton Hall, but they aren’t there now.) Sure the win-loss totals for these teams are decent. But do we have any sense whether these teams are any good?

On the other hand, some teams have truly established themselves as elite by playing great basketball while playing quality teams. Florida, Kansas, Duke, and Gonzaga, not only have strong performances against the Top 100, they’ve played a ton of quality games already this season. These are the type of teams that I am willing to endorse as elite teams at the early point of the season.

Meanwhile, a team like Wisconsin, which has mostly earned its high power rankings by crushing small conference teams has looked more like the 47th best team in the country in its 6 games against quality competition. Ken Pomeroy may have them 14th in the nation, but I’m not buying it.

Louisville and Minnesota are also each a little bit of a mystery. Both have picked up quality wins, but both teams have been much more impressive against small schools than against the Top 100 this season. Louisville is third in the Pomeroy rankings and Minnesota is 10th. But against the Top 100 these schools have looked more like the 16th and 25th best teams, respectively.

I don’t mean to say that games against teams ranked outside the Pomeroy Top 100 aren’t important.  We should be concerned that Miami (FL) lost to Florida Gulf Coast. We should be concerned that Illinois could only squeak by Gardner Webb and Hawaii. But in the end teams are judged by how they perform in big games. And the teams that have performed well in that environment may be different from what you expect.

(One final note, I was shocked that Butler wasn’t higher in these rankings. I thought the game against Indiana would weight more heavily in these rankings, but blowout losses to Top 100 foes Illinois and Xavier really hurt the Bulldogs.)

Performance By the Top 100 Against the Top 100

(Through Sunday’s Games using Pomeroy Top 100)

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The game of the weekend featured Baylor ending Kentucky’s 55-game home winning streak. I’ve often described Scott Drew as an excellent recruiter, but without the in-season coaching ability of John Calipari. But for at least one afternoon, Scott Drew’s club ended up on top.

A couple of things fascinated me about the game.

First, John Calipari had Kyle Wiltjer on the bench for a long stretch in the second half. And he really had no choice. Wiltjer finished the day 1-for-11 from the floor, and he doesn’t have the defensive ability to stay in the game if his shot isn’t falling. Wiltjer has to find ways to provide value to his team other than just knocking down threes if he is going to be a true leader this season.

Second, I continued to be impressed with the all-around game of Baylor’s Isaiah Austin. I wish he would settle for a few less outside shots, but what I love about Austin is how he always looks extremely focused when on the floor. Even if he commits a turnover or takes a dumb shot, Austin doesn’t ever appear to get rattled.

Of course it is easy to describe an intangible like “quiet confidence” when a player is winning. And with Kentucky losing, it is easy to attack Nerlens Noel’s complete lack of an offensive game. But had Kentucky rallied to win, we’d instead be talking about all the little things Noel did to help his team win on Saturday. Noel had 16 rebounds and 6 steals in Kentucky’s loss, and Kentucky needed those defensive stops in a game where they shot so poorly. Watching so many freshmen play prominent roles made me want to do a quick update of how all the top recruits have fared this season. Here is a summary of the RSCI Top 80.  * = injured or ineligible for part of the season

Kentucky has had a problem with rebounding this year, but don’t blame Nerlens Noel. He needs some help from Willie-Cauley Stein and Kyle Wiltjer who are very poor defensive rebounders for their size.

If Kaleb Tarczewski and Steven Adams aren’t earning major minutes at this point in the season, it is hard to envisioning them becoming full scale stars later. When conference play rolls around, coaches tend to be less patient with their freshmen. Thus in many ways, percentage of minutes can be the most important stat this time of year.

Efficiency is also important, and Kyle Anderson’s 87.9 ORtg is terrible for an elite recruit. Point guards can struggle more than other players to adapt to the college game and Anderson was considered to have point guard skills out of high school. So perhaps Anderson’s struggles aren’t a complete surprise. On the other hand, Archie Goodwin and Marcus Smart weren’t really point guards in high school and they have adapted to the position. Goodwin’s turnover numbers are far too high, but he’s set up his teammates passably while setting up his own shot a lot. And Marcus Smart has made a tremendous transition to playing the point-guard position at the college level. Smart’s assist rate is much better than many players regarded as better passers out of high school.

I really think the problem with Anderson is that Ben Howland hasn’t figured out how to use him. Lots of coaches from Rick Pitino to John Thompson III have been able to feature great lanky passers, by positioning them at the high post and letting them see the whole floor. Anderson still has the potential to be that type of player, even if he has struggled early.

Grant Jerrett and Sam Dekker are the only players in the Top 20 who are not starting. Ricardo Ledo is ineligible. And Kris Dunn and Gary Harris are injured.

We start to see the typical drop-off when we get to recruits in the 11-20 range. DaJuan Coleman still has the profile of a player who will be a star in a future season, but right now he is having trouble earning playing time behind other quality big men on Syracuse’s roster. Meanwhile Cameron Ridley has been extremely disappointing for Texas. Certainly it hurts not to have Myck Kabongo eligible, but Kabongo’s absence doesn’t explain why a player like Ridley can be so passive against a team like Chaminade as he was in the Maui Invitational loss. The only good thing I can say about Ridley is that he has 19 blocks already, which is more than any other player in the Top 50 except Nerlens Noel.

Only Rasheed Sulaimon has become an undisputed crunch time star for his team. And Sulaimon’s efficiency is even more impressive when you look at Duke’s strength of schedule so far. Rodney Purvis has also played major minutes, but he is deferring a lot to his teammates at this point.

Glenn Robinson has been shockingly efficient at this point in the season, well above many of his peers on this list. But none of the players listed here are going to quite be in the national player of the year discussion because they are starting to become more passive offensive players. (I.e. the percentage of possessions used is now often below 20%) Only Danuel House is using a large number of possessions at this point in the rankings, and House plays for a Houston team that is in the process of upgrading its talent level in anticipation of joining the Big East.

This preseason I wrote how Marcus Paige would have some growing pains and be inconsistent this year, and the response I got was that Roy Williams had a ton of confidence in Paige and that I was being un-necessarily pessimistic. So far, with an 87.7 ORtg, neither Paige nor the Tar Heels are off to a great start. Paige has better days ahead, but North Carolina is also going to have a few more baffling losses before the season is over.

I was worried that Yogi Ferrell could have a similar negative impact on the Hoosiers because freshmen are often inconsistent. But Ferrell has thrived because he has worked within the offense. Instead of hogging the ball and needing to create shots, Ferrell has let his teammates work their isolation stuff, and provided key drives and dishes when needed. Ferrell has been happy to fill a role on the Hoosiers, and he has been everything Indiana needed.

Finally, Tony Parker’s minutes this year have been a joke, but with Josh Smith transferring, Parker at least has a chance of cracking the UCLA rotation now.

Notice how often a lack of playing time plagues players at this point in the rankings. I expected and still expect big things out of Kansas’ Perry Ellis and Iowa’s Adam Woodbury, but their coaches have only given them a taste of playing time at this point. The result is that some guys at this point in the rankings become unmitigated gunners. Hey Indiana’s Jeremy Hollowell, no matter how good you think you are, when the game with North Carolina was close late in the first half, Indiana didn’t want you bombing threes. They wanted Jordan Hulls bombing threes.

Xavier has played much better than many of us anticipated this season, and freshman Semaj Christon deserves a lot of that credit. Christon has out-played point-guards like Marcus Paige and realistically he’s been much more important than even Yogi Ferrell given his role in the offense. Christon is using nearly 30% of his team’s possessions, scoring at a prolific clip, and setting up his teammates without a rash of turnovers.

Most of Christopher Opekpa’s stats are pretty pedestrian, but not his block rate. Opekpa has 35 blocks at this point in the season, easily out-distancing any of the other freshmen in today’s column.

Nik Stauskas has been unbelievably efficient at this point and he is playing major minutes to boot. Some people expected Michigan to be a Top 10 team, but did they really expect Stauskas to outperform his peer level players by this much? His efficiency is due in large part to his teammates, and his shot-selection. But his performance is still notable. Stauskas has the most threes of anyone mentioned in this column (18 made) beating even UCLA’s super-aggressive shooter Jordan Adams.

Also give Adams credit. He’s shooting 26% of the time while maintaining a solid ORtg. Kyle Anderson may have been the third rated recruit for UCLA, but Adams has actually played like one.

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Earlier this spring I presented my “way-too-early” projections for seven major conferences. Due to time and space constraints, I never published my projections for the A10 and CUSA. But with the announcement that VCU will be joining the A10 for the 2012-13 season, I thought it would be a good time to share my projections for that league.

These projections remove all graduating seniors, announced transfers, and early entrants from rosters. My transfer information comes from Jeff Goodman’s list as of May 14th. In these projections, I use the tempo free player statistics to predict how the margin-of-victory numbers will change between seasons. Then I use that information to predict the 2013 conference standings. For now I assume the A10 sticks with a 16-game schedule next season.

PW = Predicted Conference Wins

PL = Predicted Conference Losses

P% = Percentage of Possessions Returning – (Possessions are a more powerful predictor of future offense than minutes, although the model includes returning minutes as well.)

The remaining column headings were described in a previous post, but for a refresher, scroll to the bottom of this page.

VCU brings every key player back except Bradford Burgess. I don’t want to understate how important Burgess was to the Rams. He led the team in minutes, shots when on the floor, and he was one of the two most efficient players on the team. He will clearly be missed. But the four A10 teams that made the NCAA tournament also lost key players. Xavier lost Kenny Frease and Tu Holloway to graduation and Mark Lyons to transfer; St. Bonaventure lost Andrew Nicholson; Temple lost Ramon Moore, Michael Eric, and Juan Fernandez; and St. Louis lost Brian Conklin. None of those players will be easy to replace. I’d feel much more confident if VCU was bringing in a strong recruiting class, but Jordan Burgess was not a consensus Top 100 recruit.

Quite frankly this projection isn’t as much about elite talent as it is about Shaka Smart’s ability to bring his players together the last few years. His team had the top steal rate in the nation last season and as long as he is teaching a unique brand of full court basketball, he can win in the A10. His margin of victory numbers would have been second in the A10 last season, and his team returns 82% of its possessions. That’s a recipe for success. The model likes VCU to finish 3^rd in the A10 next year.

I’m not making a projection for Butler here, because they won’t be in the league until 2013-14, but if they were in the A10 next season, my model would have them at 10-6, right in the middle of the pack. Butler had a disappointing year by their new lofty standards because they simply couldn’t score. But the addition of one of the best three point shooters in the country (transfer Rotnei Clarke) as well as Kellen Dunham, a consensus Top 100 recruit, should help turn the offense around.

I’m looking forward to an annual battle between VCU and Butler where they re-air the highlights of the 2011 NCAA tournament, but the A10 absolutely must improve its television deal. The last few years this league has had a ton of great players who simply haven’t gotten the publicity they deserve nationally because they haven’t been on TV. St. Joseph’s Carl Jones and Massachusetts Chaz Williams are incredibly exciting players to watch, but I rarely saw their highlights on ESPN last year. The good news for those two players is that both St. Joseph’s and Massachusetts bring back their primary rotation and both teams should be in the hunt for the NCAA tournament next season.

I’m a little surprised Richmond isn’t picked higher by the model. Last year’s seniors all had very inefficient seasons and the 1.039 mark in the relative value column says Richmond is bringing back the exact right offensive players. But the Spiders had serious problems on defense last year and it is hard to predict a big turnaround. It isn’t that Chris Mooney doesn’t know what he is doing, but this really appears to be a “size” issue more than an effort issue. Most people remember the guard play during Richmond’s stellar Sweet Sixteen run from a few years ago, including Kevin Anderson’s amazing clutch shot against Vanderbilt. But that team was anchored in the middle by 6’10” Justin Harper, and so far Mooney hasn’t quite been able to find the right replacement in the middle.

Here is why my model likes St. Louis to win the league. Despite finishing second in the standings, St. Louis had far and away the best margin-of-victory numbers in the conference last year. Their defense was Top 10 caliber, and while Conklin will be missed, the biggest factor was having Rick Majerus on the sideline. Majerus reportedly spoke to SMU about their coaching vacancy this spring, but the fact that he stayed at St. Louis should mean the Billikens will have an elite defense once again. And in an A10 without any dominant teams, that should be the difference.

The model currently projects Xavier to go 10-6 in the A10 next season which would be the same conference record as this year. The model isn’t saying that this year’s team is as good as last year’s team on paper. What I am saying is that the Musketeers significantly under-achieved in 2012 and still have a lot of talent. Dezmine Wells should be back, and at times he looked like Xavier’s best player last year. Transfer Isaiah Philmore is a fabulous scorer. And elite PG recruit Semaj Christon should help lessen the blow of losing Tu Holloway.

Of course Memphis is the league favorite because they have the most talent. As I noted last fall, no non-BCS team recruits like Memphis and they will finally be playing in a BCS league in 2013-14. Until then, anything short of another league title will be a disappointment.

Point guard AJ Rompza graduates, but Central Florida hopes that one of two transfers will fill the void. The team adds Calvin Newell from Oklahoma and CJ Reed from Bethune Cookman. Newell might be the more familiar name, but Reed’s statistics at Bethune Cookman were fantastic and he might be the better player. Regardless of who wins the job, they will have three prolific scorers to feed as Isaiah Sykes, Keith Clanton, and Marcus Jordan all return.

If you are looking for a sleeper pick, consider UTEP. The Miners lose two starters but the team gave a lot of minutes to freshmen last year (particularly Cedrick Lang and Julian Washburn) and if those young players make a big “sophomore leap” in production, UTEP could be a surprise.

SMU is tough to project. The problem is that I don’t have any college data for Larry Brown and so it is hard to give him credit for what he can do on the sidelines. Normally when a veteran coach takes over a bad team, he will focus on improving the defense first. But SMU was actually a defensive-minded team last year; it was that the offense that was dreadful. And the offense isn’t going to get substantially better until the talent level of the team is upgraded. Larry Brown’s staff has been hard at work adding transfers to fill that gap, but the goal seems to be to build towards the first year in the Big East, not this season. Sure Illinois transfer Crandall Head might be eligible mid-semester, but will Larry Brown even waste a year of eligibility by playing him in the spring? I won’t be surprised if SMU does a little better than 4-12, but on paper this looks like an offensively challenged team.

Having said all that, a large reason SMU’s offense was dreadful was because SMU’s offensive rebounding was off-the-charts terrible. Perhaps by focusing on those types of skills, Larry Brown can improve SMU’s offense. London Giles was a pretty solid shooter and Jalen Jones has some skills, so the team isn’t completely devoid of hope. But if they do manage to get to .500 in CUSA, Larry Brown deserves credit. It shouldn’t be the expectation with this team.

Overall, Houston and SMU should be thankful they won’t play their first Big East game for 19 months, because neither team is ready. On the other hand, Memphis, Temple, and UCF would be competitive in the Big East this season. UCF might not have a winning record in the Big East, but they wouldn’t be a laughingstock with this year’s lineup.

Column Headings:

PW = Predicted Conference Wins

PL = Predicted Conference Losses

FrP% = Percentage of Freshmen Possessions

T10Fr = Consensus Top 10 Freshmen Recruits

N100 = New Recruits Ranked 11-100 on the Roster – (This includes transfers and redshirt freshmen.)

Total = Total RSCI Top 100 high school recruits on the roster

NC = New Coach

RV = Relative Value = Offensive Rating of Returning Players, Incoming Transfers, and Players Returning from Injury (like UNC’s Leslie McDonald) divided by the Offensive Rating of Last Year’s Roster

MOV12 = Opponent Adjusted Margin-of-Victory in 2012 (see Pythag. rating on Kenpom.com)