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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Last week VCU joined the A10 which provided the perfect opportunity to present my “way-too-early” projections for the A10 and CUSA. But what should be the lead for a column on the MVC and WCC?

I thought about writing about how the Missouri Valley Conference keeps missing out. VCU stole Wichita St.’s thunder in the NCAA tournament and the A10 added Butler before the MVC even contemplated expansion. I thought about writing about how the West Coast Conference has been strictly boring this off-season. There have been zero coaching changes, and no team shuffling (Pacific won’t join until next year). And as great as he looked in his debut, BYU’s Matt Carlino is no Jimmer Fredette. Still nothing inspired me.

Then I ran into Luke Winn’s Tuesday column on conference realignment. The first thing that struck me is how the WCC is now a Top 10 conference. The eight teams in the WCC in 2010-2011 had a 10-year Pythagorean Winning Percentage (PWP) of 0.5346. The conference added BYU with a 10-year PWP of 0.8266 and Pacific with a 10-year PWP of 0.5704. Combined the new 10 team 10-year PWP will be 0.5674 which would put the league behind the A10 but firmly in the Top 10 of college conferences. And the MVC was already in the top 10. If you care about college basketball, there is no question you should care about these two leagues.

For an explanation of the column headings, click here. Roster information is updated through May 14^th.

BYU returns a respectable 69% of its possessions from last year, but the Relative Value (RV) column shows that BYU’s returning roster is made up of the least efficient offensive players on the team. Goodbye Noah Hartsock. It was a nice run Charles Abouo. Some people will miss the memories from their Sweet Sixteen run in 2011, but what BYU will really miss is their offensive efficiency. So why does the model still pick BYU for 2^nd in the league? First, Dave Rose gets some lingering credit. Rose has now made the NCAA tournament six straight years and my model accounts for coaching ability.  And BYU also gave a lot of possessions to freshmen last year.

San Diego is my ultimate sleeper team. Fully 47% of the Toreros possessions last season went to freshmen and while that led to some growing pains for Bill Grier’s team, Johnny Dee and Christopher Anderson have the potential to be special players. Dee made 79 threes last season and Anderson got to the free throw line at an elite rate. Combine their perimeter play with the efficient play of Dennis Kramer inside and you have the building blocks for a surprise team. San Diego struggled on the full season last year posting a 13-18 record and posting miserable Margin-of-Victory numbers (MOV). But by the time the WCC season rolled around San Diego was already playing better basketball. The Toreros finished 7-9 in league play and the growth potential for this team remains significant.

Rex Walters seemed like he might be building something at San Francisco, but the team has seen a number of players transfer. Perris Blackwell, Avery Johnson, Khalil Murphy, Justin Raffington, Charles Standifer, and Michael Williams all departed putting the Dons squarely in rebuilding mode. Luckily UCLA transfer De’End Parker should be eligible due to a family medical hardship waiver.

How is Gregg Marshall still at Wichita St.? After taking Winthrop to three straight NCAA tournaments and earning the rare NCAA victory at the Big South school, all he did was turn Wichita St. into a top 10 margin-of-victory team. I am more than a little skeptical that Wichita St. can finish 12-6 in a year in which the team loses 5 key seniors. But Carl Hall and Demetric Williams are back, and the model gives Marshall a ton of credit for building teams. The last three years the Shockers have finished 12-6, 14-4, and 16-2 in the MVC, and that is the track record of an elite coach. But 7 footers like Garrett Stutz don’t grow on trees, and I’m nervous that his defensive presence will be impossible to replace.

The model is very pleased to see Barry Hinson check in at Southern Illinois. It might take some time to rebuild the Salukis, but the former Missouri St. coach has won in this league before and he will win again. It is hard to believe a Saluki team that once dominated the league hasn’t won 7 conference games since 2009. By focusing on defense, Hinson will have Southern Illinois more competitive in his first year.

Speaking of elite coaches, Ben Jacobson is only two years away from his Farokhmanesh moment, and he brings back every rotation player except Johnny Moran this off-season. Northern Iowa will clearly be a factor. But Doug McDermott is back and that is pretty much all you need to know to be excited about Creighton. The Blue Jays will be the favorite even if last year’s defense was a little suspect.

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.