Beachcat97 wrote: ↑Thu Mar 24, 2022 3:29 pm
Make of this what you will, but this time of year, an old bit of conventional wisdom always emerges: the teams with the most future NBA players tend to do well in this tournament. How many future NBA players does Houston have? We have at least three (BM, CK, DT) and may have as many as five (AT, OB).
It's like this. Our best game is better than their best game.
They're also good enough where if they play 80% of their best game and we play 70% of our best game, they'll win.
Beachcat97 wrote: ↑Thu Mar 24, 2022 3:29 pm
Make of this what you will, but this time of year, an old bit of conventional wisdom always emerges: the teams with the most future NBA players tend to do well in this tournament. How many future NBA players does Houston have? We have at least three (BM, CK, DT) and may have as many as five (AT, OB).
It's like this. Our best game is better than their best game.
They're also good enough where if they play 80% of their best game and we play 70% of our best game, they'll win.
Illinois held them to 68pts, Memphis held them to 71, in games that Houston won.
They whipped UAB but whatever.
They will need to score more than that to win tonight unless we fall off the face of the earth.
I like our chances.
Arizona State might have the most surprisingly anemic history in men's basketball of any program that you might think is better than it is.
-Norlander.
You might be surprised to hear this, but I’m a big fan of the pre-season AP poll. There is no doubt poll participants have their biases in the pre-season. They may tend to over-estimate the importance of the previous postseason, especially when a team needed more than its fair share of luck to advance. But otherwise, whatever biases are present are uniquely individual, and in the collection of 70 or so ballots, those biases are cancelled out, leaving a useful signal. The end result is that it provides a better picture of the state of college hoops before the season begins than any single person or algorithm could produce. It’s informed groupthink at its finest.
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Why? The preseason mostly ranks the talent and potential overall of the team whereas the regular season poll is just performance week to week.
Consider this year's teams in the S16 and where they were ranked in the preseason.
Kansas and Houston have been the best both ways. Our kenpom before was #6-8 overall at 88-89 ppp, and is now #19-20 at 92+ PPP also confirms the same thing.
This also from Miyakawa from before the tournament says the same. Looking at Kentucky, no surprise they lost early. Duke and Arizona are also in that similar situation.
If I weren't an Arizona fan, I'd bet against Arizona heavily. I didn't pick Kentucky going past the S16 for this reason alone, alarming defensive tanking.
This should honestly be concerning, but we keep winning for now.
Two huge red flags.
But the biggest and reddest of red flags was that Arizona was actually was playing it's worst basketball since March 1st according to the metrics.
And was playing even worse in it's NCAA tournament games. Houston just too good, I wanted Illinois badly.
You might be surprised to hear this, but I’m a big fan of the pre-season AP poll. There is no doubt poll participants have their biases in the pre-season. They may tend to over-estimate the importance of the previous postseason, especially when a team needed more than its fair share of luck to advance. But otherwise, whatever biases are present are uniquely individual, and in the collection of 70 or so ballots, those biases are cancelled out, leaving a useful signal. The end result is that it provides a better picture of the state of college hoops before the season begins than any single person or algorithm could produce. It’s informed groupthink at its finest.
.......
.......
Why? The preseason mostly ranks the talent and potential overall of the team whereas the regular season poll is just performance week to week.
Consider this year's teams in the S16 and where they were ranked in the preseason.
Kansas and Houston have been the best both ways. Our kenpom before was #6-8 overall at 88-89 ppp, and is now #19-20 at 92+ PPP also confirms the same thing.
This also from Miyakawa from before the tournament says the same. Looking at Kentucky, no surprise they lost early. Duke and Arizona are also in that similar situation.
If I weren't an Arizona fan, I'd bet against Arizona heavily. I didn't pick Kentucky going past the S16 for this reason alone, alarming defensive tanking.
This should honestly be concerning, but we keep winning for now.
Two huge red flags.
But the biggest and reddest of red flags was that Arizona was actually was playing it's worst basketball since March 1st according to the metrics.
And was playing even worse in it's NCAA tournament games. Houston just too good, I wanted Illinois badly.
We played with an edge early that was lacking late. That, and I think teams reacted to having tape on Lloyd's system and figured out where the cracks were.
Of course, Kerr's injury disrupted things at the wrong time too.
