The day has come!

My random-bracket generator is complete!

Five bucks!


Ok, now here's the picture you need to see:

Oh my goodness....

Joe Lunardi is picking the FIFTH-best conference to get the most NCAA tourney bids.

• Big Ten (7): Michigan State, Illinois, Purdue, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, Ohio State
• Big East (6): Pittsburgh, Connecticut, Villanova, Syracuse, Marquette, West Virginia
• ACC (6): North Carolina, Duke, Wake Forest, Clemson, Florida State, Boston College

And Penn State is only four teams off the bubble.


The Big Ten qualifiers just have a ton of losses and some random wins against BETTER teams (UCLA, Duke, Louisville).

NCAA Basketball Stats

Overrated/Underrated, continued.

I've been reading up on ESPN's "Giant Killer" stuff (I am using my 30-day trial for INsider) and they make some pretty good points. So I'll just auction off this information:

According to ESPN:

Florida State, Butler, and Xavier all have great potential to fall far.

and my, my, look who's predicted to knock off some giants:

San Diego St., VCU, Cleveland State

VCU, as we all know, owned Duke a couple years Back. And Cleveland State shocked the world (barely) this week as they clinched an automatic NCAA tournament bid by winning the Horizon League tournament, over highly-touted Butler.

While this is all well and good, none of these 3 giant killers are above the 50% stat that they often require to kill giants. So I'm just gonna delve into some more over and underrated territory.

I know I should be patient and wait for the brackets, but some important things are here:

Overrated:

Florida State:

Likely Seed: 5

Likely Opponents' Seeds: 12, 4

Kenpom Rating (Seed): #37 (10)

LSU:

Likely Seed: 6

Likely Opponents' Seeds: 11, 3

Kenpom Rating (Seed): #40 (10)

Utah St:

Likely Seed: 10

Likely Opponents' Seeds: 7

Kenpom Rating (Seed): #59 (15)

Dayton:

Likely Seed: 9

Likely Opponents' Seeds: 8

Kenpom Rating (Seed): #83 (21 aka 16)

Siena:

Likely Seed: 9

Likely Opponents' Seeds: 8

Kenpom Rating (Seed): #63 (16)

Underrated:

West Virginia (still):

Likely Seed: 6

Likely Opponents' Seeds: 6,3,2

Kenpom Rating (Seed): #8 (2)

Gonzaga:

Likely Seed: 4

Likely Opponents' Seeds: 5, 1, 2

Kenpom Rating (Seed): #4 (1)

Purdue:

Likely Seed: 5

Likely Opponents' Seeds: 12, 4, 1

Kenpom Rating (Seed): #16 (4)

San Diego St.:

Likely Seed: 11

Likely Opponents' Seeds: 6, 3

Kenpom Rating (Seed): #32 (8)

wahoo!

my bracket-maker is pretty much ready!

once selection sunday is over, I can put in the data and have it spit out random brackets!

Cool features:

1) I don't strictly use Kenpom's data. The data automatically adjusts here for teams I think he overrates or underrates, according to the regression line of their over/underperformance.

2) You can tell my program how random you want it to be. At 100% randomness, a team's chance of moving on is exactly equal to my predicted chance of them winning. For example, if Providence were playing Louisville, my program gives Providence a 28% chance of moving on. If Providence gets 'lucky,' they move on in the bracket.

But at 0% randomness, the better team always wins. Or, the team my system predicts to win, always moves on to the next round.

I'll be selling this thing for $5 via Paypal, and for free if you help me collect the data! :)

Weighted Goodness

Here's a pretty rough ranking of mine for the top teams in the country, based on the best 3 predictors of NCAA tournament performance: Adjusted Scoring Margin, the LRMC, and Kenpom.com

I can actually use Kenpom stats to generate a much more accurate Adjusted Scoring Margin but I decided to use ESPN insiders'

Anyways, here's Nathan's top 25 teams.

http://lazydrumhead.googlepages.com/weightedranking.html

LAZY

Here are the top 10 teams from Kenpom.com, sorted by Provable Laziness

The definition of lazy here is:

"A lazy team stops playing defense when their offense is doing well, and vice versa."

	Top 10 Kenpom Teams, Sorted by Laziness
	(Correlation and slope of Actual-Expected Defensive efficiency and Actual-Expected Offensive efficiency)
	(higher is lazier)
		Provable Laziness Factor (slope x R value)
1	Pittsburgh	0.39
2	Connecticut	0.17
3	Memphis	0.12
4	Duke	0.11
5	UCLA	0.1
6	Kansas	0.02
7	West Virginia	0.02
8	North Carolina	0.01
9	Gonzaga	0
10	Louisville	0

Ups and Downs...

The under and overseeded.

Here's how I figger:

Seeding prediction: http://insider.espn.go.com/ncb/bracketology

How good they really are: http://kenpom.com

I just subtract their 'kenpom seeding' from their actual predicted seeding.

Underseeded:

West Virginia:

Kenpom 'seed': 2

Predicted seed: 7

Seed difference: -5

Gonzaga:

Kenpom 'seed': 2

Predicted seed: 6

Seed difference: -4

Michigan:

Kenpom 'seed': 15

Predicted seed: 12

Seed difference: -5

Brigham Young:

Kenpom 'seed': 3

Predicted seed: 8

Seed difference: -5

Overseeded:

Oklahoma:

Kenpom 'seed': 4

Predicted seed: 1

Seed difference: 3

LSU:

Kenpom 'seed': 10

Predicted seed: 6

Seed difference: 4

Dayton:

Kenpom 'seed': 21 (!)

Predicted seed: 9

Fifteen.

Fifteen = The number of teams predicted to finish within 6 points of Memphis (the #1 Kenpom team).

Fourteen = The number of teams predicted to finish within 6 points or better than North Carolina (the #2 Kenpom team).

Carolina is my favorite to win it all.

how often does a team do better after doing worse, and vice versa

yes, I have made a stat for this (% of sinusoidality)

for the top 5 teams

Memphis - 76%

North Carolina - 79%

Pittsburgh - 63%

Connecticut - 64%

Duke - 67%

Carolina is the most apt to perform worse after performing well. Etc.

Upset Watch!

"Upset" watch for today.

(Games that Kenpom predicts to be the opposite of what the polls say---just click any team to see the predicted score of their future games).

-Unranked Davidson over #22 Butler, 68-66

-Unranked Georgetown over #11, 73-68

-Unranked USC over #19 Washington, 72-71

-Unranked Texas over #2 Oklahoma, 73-72 (hehe!!)

-Unranked St. Marys over #23 Utah St, 67-65

Let's go Texas!

Memphis, #1?

I have an immense amount of trust in kenpom.com and the LRMC's ranking systems. In head-to-head, I will almost always choose what kenpom.com says.

But is Memphis better than North Carolina? Kenpom.com would like you to believe so. Personally, I'm pretty sure their stats are this way because they've done better than predicted four games in a row (they've won by an average of 12 points/100 possessions better than predicted in these last four games). Unfortunately, I'm afraid Kenpom.com adjusts too much for recency.

But on Scout.com, there is talk of them being ranked higher because of their exceedingly good performance against cupcakes, and "beating no real competition so far." This sounds like what many people felt about Kansas and Davidson about this time last year.....hm......

Anyways, I made a graph showing HOW cupcake-eatey Memphis is. This predicts how well they will do against specific competition (for reference, ~.85 and up is NCAA-atlarge tourney level competition, and .95 and up is top 10 teams).

(clik to enlarge)

I have added their predicted performance againinst Louisville and North Carolina for reference. According to their performances in the past, Kenpom only overpredicts Memphis by about 3.6  points per 100 possessions (which in a game against North Carolina, would translate to about 2.75 points).

And since Memphis is predicted to beat North Carolina by less than 1 point on a Neutral Court(in Kenpom's prediction formula), yes, Memphis is overrated.

But BARELY.

Predicted NCAA performance

Here are the top 10 kenpom.com teams, ranked by my predicted bad day, average day, and good day performance (in predicted point margin against an average team)

click the underlined headers to sort: http://lazydrumhead.googlepages.com/days.html

The REAL Winehouse Factor

Kenpom.com and basketball prospectus have a statistic called the "winehouse factor." Unfortunately, it is based on statistics that do not have all that much to do with actual consistency.

It simply measures a teams' inconsistency in scoring throughout their schedule. However, if a team plays a BAD team, they should expect to do very well, and vice versa. In order to account for this, the better measure is the standard deviation in Actual-Expected efficiencies. And using only conference play is stupid--it gives us a sample size that is very small.

There are actually two more factors we must consider to get an accurate number of a teams' consistency, and only one that I can factor in (at the moment). The first is that offense and defense BY THEMSELVES are relatively unimportant. Examples being: Wright State has the 10th best adjusted Defense, but is 83rd overall in kenpom.....also: Notre Dame has the 6th best adjusted Offense and is 36th overall in kenpom. As we all know, it is the COMBINATION of these two that makes a team good. (You can have a 'bad' defensive day and win by 30). So instead of using offensive and defensive efficiencies, we should just use Efficiency Margins. (That is, one team's points per possession minus their opponents').

The second is this: if one team has a high standard deviation, but plays teams with high standard deviation, then their actual consisency is better than the numbers suggest. Unfortunately at this time I don't have the time to calculate this adjustment.

So let's look at consistency:

I call it the Rice-Factor. Tyrese Rice (and Boston College) is the reason for some of the most inconsistent team play in recent college basketball history (Beating Duke and Carolina, losing to St. Louis and Harvard).

Rice Factor: Standard Deviation of Actual Minus Expected Offense or Defense

Here's a random list of teams I think are inconsistent, and ones that John Gasaway calculated to be inconsistent.

Georgetown: .203 PPP

West Virginia: .201 PPP

Notre Dame: .174 PPP

Kentucky: .171 PPP*

Boston College: .171 PPP

Duke: .167 PPP

Tennessee: .140 PPP*

Arizona: .127 PPP*

Arizona is inSANELY consistent. John Gasaway getting mad at their offensive consistency is silly.

And poor Georgetown.

Cool Ranking System:

Effective Points Per Possession (or, Kenpom'd RPI)

http://lazydrumhead.googlepages.com/kenpomRPI.html

Well

Good job Heels.....you knocked Duke off their #1 spot on kenpom.com and took it for yourself.

Now for a fun look at player efficiency vs. point margin with Carolina's starters.

You will see two trends:

as the 2-point men are more efficient, the scoring margin goes up (makes sense).

as the 3-point men are more efficient, the scoring margin goes down. This is pretty easily solved, as we all know that 3-point shots are used most often in comebacks. 

One thing is pretty clear:  the heels need the Hansbrough (R^2=.39 !!!!!)

I finalized a prediction method today, using Kenpom's stats and how teams perform under those given stats. Maybe tomorrow I'll get the Carolina-Duke prediction finalized.

For now, here are my 3 favorite game-predictors, ranked by how accurate I feel the scores are in general.

1. Kenpom.com: Duke-81, Carolina-76 (69%-31%)

2. LRMC: Carolina wins.

3. Accuscore.com: Carolina-82, Duke-78 (66%-34%)

My normal distribution formula gives:

Duke-59%, Carolina-41%

Sad teams

Just some guessin:

Here is a list of top 64 teams (from kenpom.com) that probably aren't going to get an at-large NCAA tourney bid.

#23-Georgetown - (and, against #1, #2, #4,#5, and #7 they have been outscored by an average of only 4.4 points)

#33-UAB

#32-Southern Cal

#37-New Mexico

#38-Wisconsin

#41-Tennessee

#44-Temple

#46-Oklahoma St.

#49-Houston

#52-Tulsa

#54-Washington St.

#55-Stanford

#56-Notre Dame

#59-Nebraska

#60-Rhode Island

#61-Cleveland St.

#62-Virginia Tech

#64-Northwestern

Now, for the top bubblers:

#7-West Virginia

#12-Purdue

#19-Washington

Now, for some overratedness:

	RPI rk	Kenpom rk	Overratedness	Overratedness %
Dayton	21	75	54	15.70%
Florida St.	18	51	33	9.59%
Minnesota	25	48	23	6.69%
Ohio St.	19	40	21	6.10%
Tennessee	20	41	21	6.10%
Butler	10	28	18	5.23%
Utah St.	33	50	17	4.94%
Xavier	6	20	14	4.07%

UNC vs. Duke: game plan

Duke is predicted to win by five on Wednesday. I hope not. But it sure is looking that way.

But lets look at the game-makers.

For UNC:

#1: Floor defense- This is Carolina's biggest factor that makes them better or worse than expected. In order to make up for those five points, Carolina would need to hold Duke to around 41.5 eFG% (Field Goal percentage with an extra 50% weight for 3-pointers). Unfortunately, I predict Duke to shoot ~50% eFG (which, I would predict on its own to Duke an extra six points).

#2: Turning the ball over- This is UNC's 2nd biggest x-factor. In order to make up for the five points they are predicted to lose by, they would need to turn the ball over on only 14.5% of the time. Unfortunately again, they are predicted to turn the ball over on ~22.5% of their possessions. This alone would give Duke an extra nine points.

For Duke:

#1: Floor defense: - Duke's defense correlates to changing the score almost as much as Carolina's. With the predicted 48% eFG that Carolina will likely shoot, Duke would be predicted to lose 3 points of their predicted 5 point margin.

#2: Offensive rebounds: - This is their 2nd- highest x-factor. By this alone, they are predicted to lose 2.3 points of their predicted 5 point margin.

Honestly, unless Roy makes some defense and ball-handling changes for Carolina, this game looks favored in Duke's direction. But as we all know, rivalries change the way things work.

Really? I mean, really?

1) Wake Forest....really? 27 points? To Miami??? Really?

2) Duke.......really? 27 points? To Clemson??? Really?

3) Marquette....really? South Florida?