While the NCAA Tournament has cachet all its own, one way of looking at the Tournament is through the lens of the NBA. While the lottery guys get plenty of buzz leading into the Tourney, I like to spend more time on the players on more middling teams for the first few days since it is less likely that their teams survive long enough to evaluate them further.

On that note, here is the day-by-day:

Thursday

Headline games:

Pittsburgh vs. Wichita State (1:40 PM Eastern)- This game makes the list primarily because of Steven Adams. The big man from New Zealand has not produced as much as many of us hoped during the season but has the chance to show his potential this weekend. The Shockers rebound well enough to challenge him and I am intrigued by Carl Hall.

Memphis vs. St. Mary’s (2:45 PM Eastern)- While Memphis has a slew of intriguing athletic question marks (Adonis Thomas, Joe Johnson and DJ Stephens are just three of them), St. Mary’s has Matthew Dellavedova. Matthew stands out as an unusual draft prospect because of his age (22) and subpar athleticism for his position but has the shooting stroke and basketball IQ to stick in the league longer than expected. We will learn a ton about everyone in this game. 

Other games to watch:

Syracuse vs. Montana (9:57 PM Eastern)- Michael Carter-Williams vs. Will Cherry. My bet is that one of them will massively help his draft stock in this game.

Oklahoma State vs. Oregon (4:40 PM Eastern)- Marcus Smart will have his hands full with future prospect Dominic Artis. We’ll see how Le’Bryan Nash handles the spotlight as well.

Michigan vs. South Dakota State (7:15 PM Eastern)- Senior sensation Nate Wolters gets the chance to show his value against a Michigan team full of potential NBA players (Trey Burke, Glenn Robinson III, and Tim Hardaway Jr among them).

UNLV vs. Cal (7:27 PM Eastern)- Anthony Bennett and Allen Crabbe will be the headliners but I am focused on how UNLV matches up on defense.

Friday

Headline game:

UCLA vs. Minnesota (9:57 PM Eastern)- After the injury to Jordan Adams, this could be our only chance to see lottery pick Shabazz Muhammad in the Tourney. Kyle Anderson, Trevor Mbakwe and Rodney Williams are three other likely pros worth keeping an eye on.

Other games to watch:

Wisconsin vs. Ole Miss (12:40 PM Eastern)- Marshall Henderson. That is all.

North Carolina vs. Villanova (7:20 PM Eastern)- Despite deeply disappointing this season, UNC has plenty of NBA talent in the form of James Michael McAdoo, Reggie Bullock and PJ Hariston. Each of those guys needs to make an impression over the next few weeks in order to rehabilitate their stock.

Creighton vs. Cincinnati (2:45 PM Eastern)- One of the best potential tests for Doug McDermott makes this one particularly fascinating.

San Diego State vs. Oklahoma (9:20 PM Eastern)- Jamaal Franklin has been underappreciated by the national college hoops media but has a chance to make his own statement on the opening weekend. If the Aztecs can get past Oklahoma, a potentially star-making meeting with Georgetown looms.

Last season, San Diego St. was 69th in Ken Pomeroy’s rankings, and 71st according to Sagarin’s Predictor. This year my model predicts they will jump up more than 25 spots in the rankings, improving significantly on both offense and defense. But with many people I respect tremendously picking the Aztecs to win the MWC this year, I am left scratching my head. Should my model be even more optimistic?

The next table shows the five luckiest teams in the NCAA tournament last year (excluding teams in the auto-bid range 13-16). I am using Ken Pomeroy’s definition of “luck” which indicates teams that won more games than their per-possession numbers would have predicted.

In the pro sports, lucky teams are the low-hanging fruit of prediction models. Teams with poor point differentials are usually a good bet to fall back the following season. The NFL’s Kansas City Chiefs went 7-9 last year but were outscored by 126 points. Not surprisingly, the Chiefs are off to a 1-5 start this season. The NBA’s Portland Trailblazer’s earned the 6th seed in 2010-11, but the team had the 9th best point differential in their conference that year, and the Trailblazers were forced to throw in the towel mid-season last year.

Lately, a number of results are reminding us that the Pythagorean standings are not everything. First, the New York Giants won the Super Bowl after being outscored in the regular season. Then, the Baltimore Orioles made the MLB playoffs after being outscored for most of the season. But opponent adjusted margin-of-victory is still very powerful. Much like the existence of bad beats in Poker doesn’t obviate the fact that Poker is a game of skill, a few teams bucking the trend shouldn’t convince us to doubt the general wisdom of margin-of-victory.

There is plenty of evidence to support the use of margin-of-victory in college basketball. As just one example, if we take the luckiest at-large level NCAA tournament teams in the last 10 years, the trend is overwhelming. 80% of the lucky teams either missed the NCAA tournament the following season, or had a worse seed. The teams that bucked this trend are listed in the next table:

Many of these teams were still disappointing in a relative sense. Syracuse was 6th nationally in the 2005 preseason poll, but earned only a 4-seed. Memphis was 11th nationally in the 2012 preseason poll, but earned only an eight seed. North Carolina was 1st nationally in the 2012 preseason poll, but never lived up to their preseason billing (even before the injuries hit.)

But one thing that helped these teams at least improve on the previous season was bringing back a lot of talent. In the last decade, the average D1 team returns only 60% of its minutes, and 59% of its possessions. And as the table shows, the teams that improved their NCAA seed a year after a “lucky” season, all had higher than typical returning minutes.

And that is why Creighton, Colorado St., and San Diego St. should still be smiling. With returning superstars like Creighton’s Doug McDermott, Colorado St.’s Pierce Hornung, and San Diego St.’s Chase Tapley, the top three teams in this column not only return major minutes, they return talented minutes. These teams also welcome exciting new players. Colorado St. adds transfers Colton Iverson and Daniel Bejarano from Minnesota and Arizona.  San Diego St. adds transfers James Johnson and Dwayne Polee from Virginia and St. John’s. And thus even if last year was a little bit of smoke and mirrors, this year still brings plenty of substance.

My only suggestion is to be cautious. On paper, San Diego St., Creighton and Colorado St. should all be better than last season. They should be a bigger threat to go deep in March. And yet they could have an equivalent or slightly worse win total than last season. These teams all deserve some hype, but perhaps not quite as much as they are getting.

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Major Conference Tournaments Day 3

Playing their way out:

Northwestern – After Northwestern fell in OT to Minnesota, they paused to show all the sad Northwestern fans in the stands and all the long faces on the NU sideline.  This was supposed to be Northwestern’s year, but once again the journey appears to have come up short. With super-scorer John Shurna graduating, it is fair to ask whether Northwestern will really have a better chance to make the NCAA tournament in future years. While I’m sure Carmody can put together another team that will make some threes and play competitive basketball, I’ve personally seen enough of this story. Dan Dakich actually described it well concerning the Illinois program. When a program loses momentum, you can’t necessarily quantify it, but you can feel it. And this felt like a momentum crushing loss for Northwestern. In the same way Bruce Weber is a good coach, who ultimately isn’t a good fit at Illinois, I feel like Carmody is a good coach, who isn’t really the answer at Northwestern. You can only watch so many times when Jared Sullinger makes a buzzer beater, or Minnesota knocks down wide open threes, before you realize Carmody’s defensive system is never good enough to win in the Big Ten. Northwestern may be a tough place to recruit and win, but a basketball team only has 5 players on the floor at once. It shouldn’t take a miracle runner at the end of regulation for the team to have hope of an NCAA tournament bid. And with Carmody, that seems to be what the team is banking on. As a Big Ten fan, tired of low-scoring games and perimeter-oriented-offenses, I also think a different style of play would serve the conference well. The Northwestern football team doesn’t hope to beat Wisconsin with a power running attack, so why should Northwestern try to beat Wisconsin with a turnover-free three-point-barrage. Bring in a coach with a different system, and see if there are better results.

Trying to play their way out:

Washington - If the Northwestern loss seemed more sentimental, the way the Washington Huskies lost was just brutal. With Washington down one with 18 seconds left, Pac-12 freshmen of the year Tony Wroten went to the line and missed two free throws. But Oregon St.’s Jared Cunningham missed two free throws on the other end so Washington still had a chance. And the Huskies got a gift as Cunningham foolishly reached in and fouled Wroten again. (Certainly fouling when up one with 8 seconds left had to be accidental, right?) But Wroten missed two more free throws, and that essentially sealed the loss. The Huskies ended the season with back-to-back losses to sub-100 RPI teams and with their best win coming against Oregon, there are a lot of people who are going to argue that they do not deserve to be in the NCAA tournament.

South Florida – Leading Notre Dame by three points with 38 seconds left, USF’s Victor Rudd Jr. committed a foolish turnover and compounded it by fouling Jerian Grant. After Grant made two free throws, Notre Dame still needed a foul or a steal. So of course USF’s Jawanza Poland beat the pressure defense, missed a lay-up (instead of running clock), and then missed the front end of the one-and-one. It was a comedy of errors, but it somehow seemed appropriate for USF. Rick Pitino said playing the Bulls is like getting a root canal. And with their terrible offense and incredible defense, sometimes watching their games feels like one too.

Mississippi St. – If it wasn’t clear in my comments on Matt Norlander’s podcast or in my preview of the week, I was not surprised to see Georgia “upset” Mississippi St in the opening round of the SEC tournament. Mississippi St. has lost 6 of their last 8, with 3 of those losses coming to teams with RPI’s over 100. In the old days of Last 10 and a 64 team field, Mississippi St. would not have made the cut. But under the new standard that evaluates the whole season equally, they may still make it.

Oregon – A lot of people felt Oregon could make the tournament with a run to the Pac-12 final. But an opening game loss to Colorado may end that possibility. Oregon trailed by 8 points with 7 minutes to go and went on a 10-0 run that seemed to give the Ducks the game, but a late put-back by Colorado’s Andre Roberson won the game for the Buffaloes.

Playing their way in:

Texas – In a tie game in the final minute, J’Covan Brown drove into the lane, made a basket, and drew the foul. Then Texas forced two Iowa St. turnovers, and the Longhorns picked up a much-needed win. The announcers said, “Texas is in the NCAA tournament now.” I wouldn’t quite go that far, because upsets can still happen that can shrink the bubble. But on a day when most teams were playing their way out, Texas picked up a very important quality win.

Games of the Day

1. Cincinnati over Georgetown in Double OT – Cincinnati came back from 11 down to take the lead late in regulation. Then Georgetown’s Otto Porter hit a jumper to send the game into OT. Then Georgetown’s Henry Sims made a lay-up just before the buzzer to send the game to a second OT. Then Cashmere Wright made a driving bank shot to win the game in the second OT. Now that’s a basketball game.

2. Marshall over Tulsa in Triple OT – Five Marshall players fouled out, but it didn’t matter. DeAndre Kane put Marshall on his back and would not be denied. Kane had 40 points in the game, and if this had been the NCAA tournament instead of the CUSA tournament, his heart and grit in OT would have been the stuff of legend. Kane looked thoroughly exhausted at the end of the second OT, but finally the team got some contributions from other players. Jamir Hanner (no relation) came off the bench and made an incredibly put-back dunk after a missed FT, Chris Martin came off the bench and hit a three, and despite those five players fouling out, Marshall won as a team on Thursday.

3. Southern Miss over East Carolina – East Carolina trailed by three with 30 seconds left. They missed a three and a put-back, but finally found an open Robert Sampson who buried a three pointer to send the game into OT. East Carolina made 15 threes in the game, but in the end Southern Miss had too much firepower. Southern Miss player (and Kentucky transfer) Darnell Dodson nailed a three in the extra session that gave USM the lead, and they rolled from there.

4. San Diego St. over Boise St. – Boise St.’s Thomas Bropleh made a lay-up with 27 seconds left to tie the game, but San Diego St.’s Jamaal Franklin hit a three pointer on the other end as time expired to give SDSU the victory.

5. Syracuse over Connecticut – There was a big game feel in the Garden for Syracuse vs UConn, and James Southerland bailed the Orange out with three huge jumpers late in the game. Sometimes you wonder whether depth is over-rated, but when a player like Southerland can step up in a close game like that, you realize having more scoring options is always valuable. After praising UConn’s Shabazz Napier yesterday, I once again found his shot-selection puzzling in this game.

Other Notes on Thursday

-Indiana senior Verdell Jones injured his leg and appears to be out for the season. For Tom Crean it was an emotional moment, not because of what Jones contributes on the court, but because Jones has been around for all the tough years at Indiana and deserved the chance to play in the NCAA tournament.

-Baylor debuted its Neon Yellow uniforms (which looked much better than Louisville’s Neon Red uniforms.) Brent Musburger described them as “electric”. Bob Knight called them “blinding”. The banter was more humorous than I can do justice.

-Louisville had 50 points at halftime against Marquette, but started the second half 2 of 19 from the field. Eventually another run of points gave them the victory.

-Illinois shot zero free throws in losing to Iowa in the first round of the Big Ten tournament. Bruce Weber’s teams have struggled at getting to the line over his tenure, so that somehow seemed fitting. This may very well be Illinois’ final game of the year. Given the NIT’s more narrow admittance standards in recent years, and the likelihood Iowa and Northwestern will go to the NIT, this may have been Bruce Weber’s final game.