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)

The older I get, the more I see that one of the things I love most about sports is the variety of it, the diversity of it and the CHARACTERS. Men’s tennis is at its best in many years because, for the first time in a long time, the top three or four players all have wildly different styles. The Tim Tebow story was fun on so many levels, but one of those levels was that he was just SO DIFFERENT in how he played — I’d say we are entering a great time for quarterbacks, because Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers and Eli Manning and Drew Brees and Michael Vick and Cam Newton and Tebow and others are not really alike at all.

-- Joe Posnanski

As a basketball fan, I’ve never understood the division that exists between fans of the NBA and the NCAA. While the NBA has the best basketball players in the world, March Madness is compelling in its own right and as entertaining as anything that happens on the professional level.

In the NBA, the owners of the 30 franchises consider turning a profit and getting an equal shot at the top players a right, regardless of how well (or how poorly) they run their organization and the respective size of their fan-bases. Since every losing team is a few ping pong balls from the rights to a LeBron James, Kevin Durant or Dwight Howard, personnel determines scheme in the NBA.

In contrast, the vast majority of the 344 Division I programs in college basketball have little chance of ever receiving a commitment from a McDonald’s All-American. But instead of petulantly trying to sabotage the sport in a misguided effort to legislate fairness, schools try many creative ways of leveraging the talents of the players they can recruit. As a result, scheme determines personnel in the NCAA.

At Syracuse, Jim Boeheim has made a Hall of Fame career out of running a contrarian scheme, in his case an aggressive 2-3 zone. The Orange traditionally have rosters full of “1.5’s”, 6’3+ combo guards lacking the quickness to defend elite PG’s and the size to defend SG’s, and “3.5’s”, 6’8+ combo forwards lacking the quickness to defend elite SF’s and the size to defend PF’s. However, because Syracuse never plays man defense, the athletic deficiencies of their players are minimized.

So while nearly every NBA team runs a fairly similar system of isolations, pick-and-rolls and man defense, an incredibly diverse array of styles can be found in the college game. On one end of the spectrum, teams like Missouri play four guards and pressure the ball 94 feet for 48 minutes, on the other, teams like Wisconsin run a deliberate motion offense, trying to minimize the number of possessions and shoot at the very end of the shot-clock.

In the NBA, the players are too good for the “40 Minutes of Hell” system (which Mike Anderson has brought to Missouri and Arkansas in the last few years) to be successful. Like Mike Leach’s bizarre pass-happy offense in college football, Anderson’s system, which he learned as a member of Nolan Richardson’s staff in Arkansas in the 1990’s, has philosophical holes that professional athletes can exploit. Nevertheless, that doesn’t make them any less entertaining on the collegiate level.

And with 68 teams set to compete in the NCAA Tournament, there are a lot more surprises in the college game. Even programs ranked in the top-15 like Murray State have barely been on national TV this season.

We have a pretty good idea of how teams like the Pacers and the 76ers match up with the top of the Eastern Conference but not whether an undersized Murray State squad can handle the size of an elite team from a Power Six conference. It’s an open question how Isaiah Canaan’s speed and athleticism translates outside of the Ohio Valley Conference. Non-conference play in college basketball generally ends in late December, so it’s almost impossible to gauge how younger teams like Texas, Washington and Tennessee who have found their groove in the last two months will fare in March.

In the NBA, it’s hard to envision a scenario where Chicago, Miami and Oklahoma City aren’t three of the final four teams left in the playoffs. In the NCAA, as many as two dozen teams have a legitimate shot at making a run at the Final Four.

Of course, in terms of entertainment, none of this makes the NCAA necessarily better or worse than the NBA, just different. But, as Posnanski writes, there’s something to be said for the concept of “different” in the modern sports world. Basketball fans of all stripes should enjoy March Madness; the NBA will still be here in a few weeks.

You’ve heard this refrain on numerous occasions, so I will try to keep it short and to the point. The biggest jump in efficiency is typically between a player’s freshman year and sophomore year. And teams that give a lot of minutes to freshman usually get substantially better the following season. Of course, that only works if the players return, so I am going to list returning freshman possessions in the following tables:

Returning Freshmen, Percentage of Last Year’s Possessions

Is it any surprise that many of the youngest teams were peaking at the end of last season? Memphis struggled in CUSA play, but won the CUSA tournament. St. Joseph’s was near last place in the A10, but went on a deep run in the A10 tournament. Michigan won only one game in the first half of the Big Ten schedule, and then took Duke down to the wire in the NCAA tournament. The trends are clear. Teams that play a lot of young players get better over time. 

Other Notable Teams, Returning Freshmen, Percentage of Last Year’s Possessions

Last year’s CUSA standings

Is it fair to ask when Mike Davis is going to get another crack at a BCS job? Sure he had his struggles at Indiana, but he also took the Hoosiers to the Final Four. And he has proven to be one of the top coaches in CUSA every year.

My interest in this league has fallen precipitously this off-season. DJ Newbill’s departure makes Southern Miss substantially less interesting. Central Florida had that eight-game losing streak after starting 14-0 last year. And the only thing Tim Floyd has really done at UTEP is get publicity for getting kicked out of a game. Frankly, I’m struggling for positive things to say about this league. 

I should probably write some kind words about Rice forward Arsalan Kazemi, who might be this year’s Kenneth Faried. But Ballin’ is a Habit has already identified him as the potential conference player of the year. So let me focus on a fact you may not be aware of. Marshall head coach Tom Herrion has become the master of the offensive rebound. He ended his tenure at the College of Charleston with Josh Jackson and Jermaine Johnson grabbing a ridiculous number of offensive boards. Then he went to Pittsburgh as an assistant just as DeJuan Blair came to town and helped groom Blair in the post. And last year he turned Marshall from the 104^th best offensive rebounding team in the nation into the 19^th best, as he moved Nigel Spikes, Tirrell Baines, and Johnny Thomas, three players with natural offensive rebounding ability, into the regular rotation. But Baines and Thomas have moved on this off-season. Now it is time to see whether Herrion really has the magic touch at teaching offensive rebounding, or if he has just had a magical run of great players.

Last year’s Big Ten Standings

This offseason was a case of bad news / good news for the Big Ten. The addition of Nebraska, another rugged, defensive minded team means more brutally ugly basketball games. But with Ed DeChellis leaving Penn St., at least one of the brutally slow-paced coaches is now gone. I completely respected DeChellis as a head coach. He consistently got the most production out of his limited talent base. But Penn St. was responsible for some of the ugliest basketball games in the last ten years. I don’t know if I will ever be able to forget what Penn St. did to Illinois in 2009 (38-33) or what Penn St. did to Wisconsin in last year’s Big Ten Tournament (36-33). I seriously wonder whether Gus Johnson gave up college basketball because he called that Penn St. vs Wisconsin game last year. 

Quiz question: Will Northwestern finally make the NCAA tournament for the first time in team history before Tom Crean can get Indiana back into the NCAAs? Or will freshman post player Cody Zeller cause Indiana to leap ahead of the Cats? Tom Crean has been able to groom some talented guards at Indiana, but he desperately needs a star player in the post. Zeller looks like that player, but it might be asking a lot out of a freshman to carry the load. I seriously hope for Zeller’s sake that he adjusts well to the college game, because I don’t think one of college basketball’s best fanbases can take another disappointing season. 

William Buford has constantly been overshadowed at Ohio St. despite putting together an absolutely fabulous career. Just look at his three year “comp’s”, a new feature on kenpom.com. Over his career he’s gone from looking like E’Twaun Moore to Chase Budinger to Nolan Smith. That is ridiculous. This season, as a senior, I hope Buford finally gets the national respect he deserves.

Wisconsin’s defense started to slip last year, and with Jon Leuer and his great defensive rebounding departing, Bo Ryan may have some real questions on that side of the ball. I am not saying Ryan cannot figure those out, but it is a chink in the armor.

Delvon Roe’s decision to give up basketball due to injury is extremely disappointing. I was ready to argue that on paper, Michigan St. had one of the best starting rotations in the country. With three highly efficient players returning (Draymond Green, Delvon Roe, and Keith Appling), highly efficient lead guard Brandon Wood transferring from Valparaiso, and rebounding monster Branden Dawson enrolling in school, there was a lot of reason to be excited about the Spartans. And even with Roe retiring, there is still reason to be excited. But on a team with too many holes last year, every additional question mark makes me nervous. 

Last year, ESPN ran a feature called “worst case scenario/best case scenario” for various teams. I think this is the appropriate way to think about Purdue. How bad could this team become? Matt Painter’s teams play some of the most consistent swarming defense in the nation. Even if Purdue loses two of the most productive offensive players in the country in JaJuan Johnson and E’Twaun Moore, the worst case scenario is that this team looks like Illinois from 2007-2009 where the team competed for NCAA bids on defense alone. And the best-case scenario is that Robbie Hummel comes back and becomes a star again.

Pegging Illinois is even more puzzling. Last year was universally seen as a disappointment, but the Illini’s margin-of-victory numbers were solid. They just lost a number of close games, which has become a disturbing trend under Bruce Weber. But in the end, the team did win an NCAA tournament game for the first time since Bill Self’s players graduated, so the season was not a complete loss. But I really cannot describe last season without one final word on Demetri McCamey. To be an elite point guard, you have to have a good feel for your teammates. You have to figure out which players are in a groove, and feed those players the ball. And when no one is comfortable, you have to be able to take over the game. McCamey had incredible skills, but a terrible feel for the flow of the game. Will Bradley transfer point guard Sam Maniscalco have a better feel for Illinois this year? If he does, Illinois still has a lot of talent. The last three recruiting classes have been great, and even without Jereme Richmond, Illinois still has 8 RSCI top 100 recruits on the roster. Only five other teams in the entire nation have that many ranked players. But with Illinois failing to live up to expectations the last few years, those recruiting stats are somehow less compelling. I think ultimately, if Illinois wants to be dominant, they have to bite the bullet and play the younger Top 100 recruits. They have to hope to have a season like the Michigan Wolverines had last year. The best thing about freshman is they get better with experience.