The Oklahoma St. and Colorado Litmus Test

Oklahoma St. has emerged as a true national title contender this season. That the defense has always been strong has been no consideration. At one point in the first half against Colorado, Oklahoma St. forced a 10-second violation, and Colorado looked shocked that time had expired. Oklahoma St. has a sneaky way of putting you in bad positions with their lengthy defenders. And everyone knows Marcus Smart is one of the best on-ball defenders in the nation. He had a steal on Spencer Dinwiddie on a fast-break in the first half, and I still have no idea how he escaped with the ball.

But the biggest reason Oklahoma St. has become a national title contender is the team’s offensive improvement. They no longer settle for so many bad three point attempts. LeBryan Nash still causes Cowboy fans to rip their hair out on occasions (his missed dunk in the final minutes led to an outlet for Colorado that almost got the Buffaloes back in the game). But Nash really has stopped taking bad outside shots. A year ago Nash was 12 of 50 from three point range. This year he has attempted just two outside shots.

Sometimes the difference between being an elite team isn’t the shots you take, it is the shots you don’t take. And that is why I was actually most closely glued on Askia Booker in this game. The Colorado junior guard has had an ORtg of 96.5, 92.9, and 96.6 the last three seasons, because he simply takes way too many low percentage shots.

And Fran Fraschilla was on him in this game from the beginning. “Booker keeps both teams in the game.” “He’s like a punt returner that never signals for a fair catch. He’s going to make some big plays but he is also going to fumble inside his 10 on a number of occasions.” “Booker has the green light even for low percentage shots. The coaches have decided to let him play his game.”

Given the emphasis on stats in the modern era, I find this a bit baffling. While Colorado should be doing everything in the team’s power to clear space for Dinwiddie and Josh Scott, for Colorado to truly reach its goals, Booker needs to cut back on his shots. Of course, this was hardly the game for Fraschilla or me to pick on Booker. Other than an early airball, and a couple puzzling turnovers, Booker mostly played within the offense on this night.

But the announcers were also quick to point out a reason for Booker’s wild shot selection. Booker often needs to take bad shots because of Colorado’s lack of depth. Colorado is actually the 15^th youngest team in D1. And while that makes me extremely excited for next season, a key question is whether teams with a lot of freshmen are particularly likely to show improvement during the season.

Do freshmen-filled teams get better in-season?

I’ve written it on countless occasions. Team X is extremely young, so they will be much better later in the season. But do the stats back that up? The next table attempts to answer that question.

The Y-axis lists the change in Pythagorean Winning Percentage between the early season (before January 1^st) and later (after January 1^st). The X-axis lists the percentage of minutes given to freshmen.

I only include major conference teams in the table. For reference, the teams on the far right side include St. John’s in 2012, Indiana in 2009, Boston College in 2012, and Texas in 2007.

As the table shows, teams that give a lot of minutes to freshmen are not more likely to improve in-season. If that was the case, we would see more data points above zero on the right hand side of the picture.

Instead the entire table is very symmetric. Teams that give many or few minutes to freshmen sometimes get worse and sometimes get better.

This may come as a surprise, but I don’t think it should. After all, things are still going to get harder for many freshmen. They are going to play true road games for the first time. If they are lucky, they will face the bright lights of the NCAA tournament, where even super freshmen like Marcus Smart failed last year. And most importantly, the scouting reports are only going to get tougher. All those freshmen that are busting onto the scene right now, are about to find out what life is like when teams take away their favorite move.

Now, before you get too pessimistic based on this table, I think this table also shows quite a bit of reason for optimism. While the far left hand side of the picture is a little tighter (teams with almost no freshmen typically are more predictable), the truth is that virtually any roster can get better.

I always like to emphasize that Kansas forward Cole Aldrich didn’t break out until the NCAA tournament. I like to emphasize that Duke center Brian Zoubek didn’t break out until late in his senior year. The reality is that everyone playing D1 basketball is at a developmental stage of his career. These are not veteran 28-year olds. Whoever your team is, whether they are young or old, the future can still be brighter.

In fact, this is why college basketball is so fun to watch. Whatever we think we know now, given the small sample sizes, and emphasis on home games early in the season, the most important part of the season is just about to begin.

(Finally, before you write off Kansas or Kentucky based on this table, the reality is that both those teams are not terrible right now. Sure, with three losses, neither of these teams qualifies for the best-of-all-time debate. But given the large number of road and neutral games these teams have played against Top 25 teams, none of their losses is truly inexcusable. Whatever faults we attribute to Kansas’ youth, there are plenty of teams that would be jealous of the Jayhawks problems.)

Matchups Matter

We still have no idea how good Ohio St. is this year. They have a few good wins (against Marquette, Maryland, and North Dakota St.), but each of those teams has been weaker than expected. And unlike the other teams in the Top 10, Ohio St. has not scheduled many elite teams.

And after Saturday’s escape against Notre Dame, I’m still not sure we have many answers. Some folks will look at the narrow, come-from-behind victory against Notre Dame as a sign that Ohio St. is over-rated. But I don’t quite buy that. If Marquette was the ideal opponent for Ohio St., Notre Dame might be the worst possible matchup for the Buckeyes. Under Mike Brey, the Fighting Irish have been an unabashed jump-shooting team. Over the last 10 years, no team in the country depends less on dribble penetration and getting the ball in the paint to score. (See the very low turnover and free throw rate numbers annually.) But Ohio St.’s biggest strength is their ability to deny dribble penetration.

Thus if anyone was going to score against Ohio St.’s defense, it was Notre Dame.  And at times in the game, we saw just that. Late in the game, Notre Dame was up five points with 8 seconds on the shot-clock. Rather than force the ball inside, the team found Jerian Grant for a step-back three pointer that gave Notre Dame an 8 point lead. That’s the kind of shot that no defense can stop, even if Ohio St.’s defense has been one of the best in the nation.

But Ohio St. finally realized in the final minute, that if Notre Dame wasn’t going to force the action, Ohio St. needed to. Ohio St. scored and forced two straight turnovers, and within seconds, the 8 point lead was down to two. Ohio St. never let up and finished the comeback.

Even if Ohio St. didn’t prove they were an elite team, when you win the games where the matchup isn’t favorable, that’s a good sign for the long-run.