Before I start looking at the impact of injured or suspended players, I want to talk a little about losing streaks. (This piggy-backs nicely on Ken Pomeroy’s recent writing on the predictive power of wins.) This weekend we heard a lot about Louisville’s three-game losing streak and Minnesota’s four-game losing streak.

The point I want to make is that not all losing streaks are created equally. When Illinois went on a recent losing streak against Minnesota, Wisconsin and Northwestern, John Groce’s team played distressingly poor basketball. They played basketball roughly equivalent to the 229th best team in the nation. That was the type of losing streak that correctly caused people to adjust their expectations. Even if Illinois had a few nice wins early in the year, they were NOT a Top-25 team.

But Minnesota and Louisville’s recent losing streaks have been much less distressing. While losing four in a row, Minnesota has still played roughly equivalent to the 32nd best team in the nation. And while Louisville has lost three in a row, the Cardinals have been roughly equivalent to the 55th best team in the nation. Both losing streaks could have easily been stopped with a few bounces. Had Minnesota’s Rodney Williams made a free throw in a one point loss, or had Georgetown’s seldom used Aaron Bowen not tipped in a circus shot against Louisville, we wouldn’t be talking about long losing streaks at all.

That’s not to say that those two teams are playing well right now. Both team’s offenses and defenses have fallen off in recent games. But neither team’s performance is remarkably distressing. In fact, I’m much more distressed by how Kentucky is playing in the SEC this season. The Wildcats have gone 4-2, but given how poor the SEC is this year, Kentucky has actually been playing worse basketball than Louisville during the losing streak.

*Does not include Sunday’s game.

Splits replicate the Adjusted Offense and Defense calculation on Kenpom.com which controls for opponent quality and venue. These measure how many points the team would score on a neutral floor against an average D1 team based on the team’s performance in the sample of games.

All this suggests that Minnesota and Louisville will be relevant at the end of the year, while I can’t be quite as certain about Kentucky.

For the record, I am a little nervous about Russ Smith’s play the last two games. Louisville’s national-player-of-the-year candidate has posted ORtgs below 100 in back-to-back games. (From the sideline, I can tell you Georgetown freshman D’Vauntes Smith-Rivera was very much bothering Russ Smith on Saturday.) Louisville hasn’t quite played a juggernaut schedule yet, and I’m worried if Smith might revert to his old inconsistency under the grind of Big East play.

Unfortunately, sometimes a breakout performance is just a hot-streak. As an example, look at Florida St.’s Michael Snaer. Snaer posted a career high 110 ORtg last year, and everyone thought he would be an ACC superstar this year. But Snaer has always had turnover problems prior to last season, and after a year of cutting down the turnovers, Snaer’s turnovers are back with a vengeance this season. Snaer’s ORtg has suffered because of it.

Similarly, Wisconsin's Ryan Evans is making last year look like the fluke. Here are Evan’s ORtgs over the last four years:

2009: 92

2010: 82

2011: 102

2012: 92

Sometimes when inefficient players suddenly look efficient, it really is just a temporary fluke. Russ Smith has clearly played brilliantly this season, but until we get to March, I am always going to wonder if the inconsistent Russ Smith, who falls in love with impossible shots, isn’t still around.

Of course, even if I believe in Minnesota and Louisville, these losing streaks will matter to the NCAA selection committee. And personally, I believe they should matter. A lot of people advocate for seeding the NCAA tournament based on team quality (read: Margin of Victory), not based on team accomplishment (read: Quality Wins). And I understand the arguments. Certainly, when you don’t seed by team quality, you run into situations where a 1-seed gets a horrible draw. And the NCAA committee is instructed to pick the BEST teams for the tournament.

But I view it this way. You can either win an NCAA title by over-achieving in the regular season or over-achieving in the post-season.

No one wins the NCAA tournament without performing above expectations. If you look pre-tournament, no team is favored to win more than four games. But every year someone wins 6 games and over-achieves. Similarly, some teams over-achieve in the regular season. They earn surprising wins and earn better seeds, even though they have to squeak by with a series of close wins. But why condemn over-achievement in the regular season when we don’t condemn over-achievement in the tournament?

Louisville and Minnesota are under-achieving. That just means they have a harder road to post-season glory. It doesn’t mean they are bad teams.

Injury Splits, Part 1

Over the next two days, I’m going to talk about where injuries or suspensions may be skewing our evaluation of various teams. I won’t be talking about all of this year’s critical injuries. For example, Wisconsin’s Josh Gasser, Missouri’s Michael Dixon, and Tennessee’s Jeronne Maymon have missed the entire season. While those injuries have clearly hurt their teams, because they didn’t play a minute this year, the Pomeroy and Sagarin ratings for those teams accurately reflect their future expectations.

But when players are out for a period of time (like Duke’s Ryan Kelly), it can take awhile for the rankings to catch up. Duke is now playing worse basketball, and we may want to look at how much worse the Blue Devils are playing without Kelly.

Of course not every player who is injured matters. For that reason I focus on players who play at least half their team’s minutes. And often we are looking at very small samples. Random noise may certainly explain some of the deviations from the norm. But I do think it is informative to look at how teams have performed without their missing stars.

A lot of smart folks have written about how Duke will be a much worse team without Ryan Kelly. I wasn’t quite as convinced because I happen to have high expectations for Duke’s Amile Jefferson. But through four games, the numbers are clearly worse without Kelly in the lineup. Duke’s offense has slid, and their defense has fallen off a cliff.

That’s probably too big a drop off to be permanent, and Duke’s horrific performance at Miami felt like a once-per-season collapse, not a permanent sign of bad things to come. But I think it is informative how Mike Krzyzewski is allocating playing time with Kelly out. While Amile Jefferson has seen his percentage of minutes increase from 21 percent to 58 percent in the four games Kelly has been out, the second biggest beneficiary of playing time is actually Mason Plumlee. And this worries me a little bit if I’m Duke. Plumlee has been playing 96 percent of Duke’s minutes since Ryan Kelly has been out, and Krzyzewski seems hesitant to ever take him out. I worry that all those minutes are having a negative impact on Plumlee’s energy level. Plumlee’s ORtg was 115 prior to Kelly going down, and has been just 95 in the four games since Kelly went down. Some of that is due to the tougher ACC defenses Plumlee has faced, but you have to wonder if the lack of rest time is hurting Plumlee’s overall performance.

However, I honestly think Duke may be better in the long-run if Kelly can come back. That’s because Jefferson has thrived as an offensive player now that he is getting more playing time. Jefferson has seen his ORtg increase from 104 before the Kelly injury to 119 after the injury. Now that he finally has a chance to get a rhythm in games, Jefferson is showing his offensive talents. If Jefferson can eventually improve his defense, his development will only be an asset for Duke come tournament time.

The second most important injury split in this column might be the Wyoming split listed above. Ever since Luke Martinez was suspended for his role in a bar room brawl, Wyoming’s offense has fallen off a cliff. You simply cannot lose such a potent scorer and expect to replace him with other rotation players. Larry Shyatt has done a masterful job keeping Wyoming playing elite defense without Martinez. And that defense will keep Wyoming competitive in the MWC this year. But Wyoming simply lacks offense without Martinez.

Lastly, Marquette’s offense has improved since Todd Mayo joined the team mid-semster. (Mayo was suspended for the first semester.) Mayo’s ORtg hasn’t been fantastic, but he has been aggressive and has attracted some offensive attention. The part I find more interesting is that Marquette’s defense has sagged since Mayo joined the team. In fact, in the last game against Providence, Mayo received an unusual DNP-Coach’s Decision.  Buzz Williams explained his decision not to play Mayo by saying he didn’t have anyone for Mayo to defend. But it certainly seemed puzzling for Mayo to go from over 20 minutes per game to riding the bench for a non-disciplinary reason.

Long Island was the media’s pick for the NEC title this year because they returned almost their entire rotation from last year’s tournament team. But Long Island’s season was off to a disappointing start, and then super-scorer Julian Boyd went down. And while a recent winning streak has improved expectations somewhat, this remains a heart-breaking season for fans of the team.

Former South Florida guard LaVonte Dority joined Valparaiso mid-season, and the aggressive offensive player has helped boost the team’s overall performance. He is attracting a ton of attention and making his teammates better.

Finally, Gregg Marshall has to be a national coach-of-the-year candidate. He lost virtually his entire rotation to graduation, but in November and December his team continued to play at a very high level. Then on Dec. 20th he faced a situation where three of his key rotation players were out. Carl Hall, Ron Baker, and Evan Wessel were all injured and missing in action. And yet since that time, Wichita St. has actually played better basketball. Carl Hall has returned for the last four of those games, but Gregg Marshall’s ability to find new players and stick them in the lineup has been nothing short of amazing.

Arguably, Missouri has never been at full strength (since Michael Dixon left the team), but for two games in December they had everyone else active. They crushed South Carolina St. by 50 and beat an Illinois team that was playing well at that time.

The rest of the season has seen key player’s missing and the team’s performance has suffered because of it. Bowers injury has clearly been the worst, but Missouri wasn’t exactly playing elite basketball before Jabari Brown became eligible either.

I’m not going to show the Kentucky or Louisville splits (since I discussed those teams at length earlier), but surprisingly, their struggles cannot really be tied to Willie Cauley-Stein’s injury, Ryan Harrow’s early absence, or Gorgui Dieng’s absence.

Click here for Part 2: James Southerland, Greg Whittington, Taylor Braun, CJ McCollum, Mike Moser, Kris Dunn and more.

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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.

Let’s invent a new term called “Relative Value.” Relative Value is the possession-weighted ORtg of returning players divided by the possession-weighted ORtg for last year’s entire roster.

As an example of a team with a good Relative Value, we have the Oregon Ducks. Oregon returns only 46% of its possession from last season, but the Ducks just happen to return the exact right players. E.J. Singler and Garrett Sim (a pair of three point gunners) were Oregon’s two most efficient players last year, and both are back. If you were going to pick two starters to return, Singler and Sim would have been great choices. (Joevan Catron would have been the other natural choice, but he has departed.)

Compare that to the USC Trojans. USC loses its three most efficient rotation players in Nikola Vucevic, Alex Stephenson, and Donte Smith. (And they lost their PG, Jio Fontan to injury too.) That is not a recipe for success.

Since Kevin O’Neill has taken over as head coach, USC has been cursed with horrible offensive production. In 2010-11, Vucevic helped salvage the USC offense slightly. But now that Vucevic is gone, expect a return to the land of turnovers and bricks. 

USC is not the only team to return the wrong players in the rotation. Here are some other notable teams that return the wrong players this season. These teams not only lose a lot of talent, they lose the most efficient offensive players from the rotation:

Illinois loses five of its six most efficient scorers from last year. The Illinois seniors may have struggled to earn wins in their career, but their propensity for high shooting percentages and low turnover rates will be hard to replace. Only the fact that Illinois has had multiple great recruiting classes is going to keep the team from collapsing this year. (Well, that and Meyers Leonard’s apparent development over the summer.)

For Tennessee, Tobias Harris and Scotty Hopson took their efficient play to the NBA, while Melvin Goins and Brian Williams graduated. The returning group is led by Cameron Tatum, but as Tatum’s 27% three point percentage on 125 three point attempts last year indicates, the returning group is not nearly as efficient.

For VCU, the Rams lose three of their four most efficient scorers (Jamie Skeen, Joey Rodriguez, and Brandon Rozell), and will have a hard time duplicating last year’s success. Bradford Burgess is going to see a lot more double teams this season.

And for Butler, say goodbye to Matt Howard and his 120.2 ORtg as well as Shelvin Mack and his 106.8 ORtg. And look forward to more Ronald Nored and his 86.3 ORtg. Thank goodness for Butler’s sake that Andrew Smith is back.

Last Year’s Horizon League Standings

- Remember Eli Holman, the power forward who transferred from Indiana, throwing a potted plant in Tom Crean’s office in the process? He transferred to Detroit and has provided a legitimate low-post presence for the Titans. With Detroit’s entire rotation returning this off-season, many are pegging Holman’s team to win the Horizon league title. But Holman is now on an “indefinite leave of absence” and any hope that Detroit has of winning the league is almost certainly contingent on his return.

- Wright St. started to slip last year after Brad Brownell left for Clemson, and now the team loses several extremely valuable seniors this off-season. Head coach Billy Donlon is going to need to start putting his own stamp on the program if it is going to stay competitive.

- Valparaiso could have been a league title contender this year, but the team loses one if its best players, lead guard Brandon Wood, to Michigan St. I have no problem with Michigan St. following the rules and getting a valuable player. But I think we have to acknowledge how bad the graduate school transfer rule is turning out for the mid-majors. Mid-majors have traditionally survived by red-shirting a lot of players and hoping to develop teams filled with fourth and fifth year players. Those mature experienced players are the best way to compete with the superior talent of the major conferences. But with fifth-year seniors now able to transfer and play elsewhere immediately, the mid-majors may be unable to retain the most valuable 5^th year seniors.

Worse yet, if mid-majors fear losing their fifth-year players, they become more reluctant to red-shirt players overall. And the age/experience advantage that mid-majors once held may be partially negated.

Last Year’s Pac-10 Standings

I really like what the Sporting News did with this conference, placing the top four teams (Arizona, UCLA, Washington, and California) right next to each other in the Top 25. All four have a legitimate chance to win the league title, and all four have serious question marks. To call the league title a four-way coin flip makes a lot of sense.

But I also think there is reason to expect another down year for the league. Last year, the league struggled in the non-conference schedule, but despite those struggles the conference still had more early entrants in the NBA draft than any other conference. (The next table includes 2 Colorado players, but even without those two players, the Pac-10 would still be at the top of the list.) That talent drain, combined with another recruiting class that was less than dominant, suggests that Pac-12 may be in for another disappointing year. RealGM recently examined the Pac-12’s potential NBA prospects and there isn’t a guaranteed 2012 lottery pick in the group.

- I do not understand preseason rankings that have Arizona far ahead of the pack. Yes, Arizona beat Duke in the NCAA tournament last year. But they lost all-world player Derrick Williams to the NBA. Plus, the player that accounted for the second most possessions on the team, Momo Jones, has transferred. And the team’s most efficient player, Kevin Parrom, was recently shot and is recovering from that injury. 

- I loved UCLA’s Tyler Honeycutt and Malcolm Lee, but they were not particularly efficient players last season. Tyler Honeycutt missed a lot of two-point baskets, and Malcolm Lee took a lot of questionable three-pointers. Both players had the talent to be superstars, but neither had quite put it all together before declaring for the NBA draft. The real problem for UCLA this season is that they are going to be over-loaded in the frontcourt, and weak in the backcourt. The additions of North Carolina transfers David and Travis Wear should help the team, but it cannot replace Malcolm Lee’s contributions.

- The Pac-12 did not have a lot of players in the high school all-star games last spring, but Washington guard Tony Wroten was impressive, and I look forward to seeing him suit up for the Huskies this season. 

- Jeff Bzdelik installed a culture of defensive indifference at Colorado, and Tad Boyle was not able to change that in his first year. Part of the problem was that Colorado’s best lineup was short and lacked the interior presence to get stops. But building around Andre Roberson and Austin Dufault on the interior, Colorado has to make defensive stops a priority this season. With the Buffaloes’ talent losses, they are not going to be able to outscore people at will, and the defense has to get better if this team is going to stay competitive.

- Stanford had one of the youngest teams in D1 basketball last season, and all those minutes they gave to freshman should pay some dividends. If you do not know who Anthony Brown and Dwight Powell are now, you will be the end of the season.

- Utah has some college basketball tradition based on Rick Majerus’ time with the school. But in the last decade, other than Daniel Deane, Utah has simply not had the Top 100 recruits they need to compete at the highest level. This off-season was no different. Utah has to start bringing in a higher caliber of player if they are going to compete in the new Pac-12. 

- Herb Sendek has tried to step away from his reputation as a “Princeton offense” type of coach. But without a ton of talent on his roster right now, it seems like he would be wise to return to his roots. Northwestern, Georgetown, and Boston College have all shown that less talented recruits can thrive with the right cuts and screens. And yet, I read that Sendek wants to get more transition baskets and run more this season. Why abandon a proven system? Are the Pac-12 defenses simply more disciplined about stopping back-cuts and screens? Oregon St. head coach Craig Robinson, a former Ivy league coach and Bill Carmody assistant, has also struggled to run Ivy league sets in the Pac-12.