Saturday, March 27, 2010

Similarity Preview: Duke Vs. Baylor

[NOTE: Cross posted over at UFR.]

Well, the St. Mary’s game didn’t go at all as expected, with the Gaels not really putting up much of a fight. There’s no way the same thing happens with Duke. Let’s take a look at what the game will be like when the Blue Devils have the ball:

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One of the knocks against Duke the last few years has been that they lack toughness and size, but this year’s team is better in most of the toughness/size categories. They’re 7th nationally in effective height, and 8th in OReb%, both of which are the highest they’ve ranked since Pomeroy started keeping track. The one area where they still seem to suffer is 2P shooting percentage, where they’re ranked 198th This is partly due to getting their shots blocked at a high rate – 209th nationally – which means Udoh may be in for a big defensive game.

Duke has subpar shooting for a supposedly elite offense, but they make up for it with all those offensive rebounds, and by rarely committing turnovers. Those happen to be Baylor’s defensive weaknesses, so the Blue Devils will be able to play exactly the kind of game they want. I expect them to do well offensively. Baylor will need to solve Duke’s defense in order to win:

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In keeping with the theme, this year’s Duke defense is tougher as well – this is their lowest 2P% allowed since 2005, and their best defensive rebounding in the Pomeroy Era (2004-present). They’ve paired this with their usual excellent perimeter defense (ranked 1st in 3P% against, and 8th in 3PA/FGA), and the result is the 3rd-best adjusted defensive efficiency in the country. However, despite being improved on the defensive boards, they’re still only 120th nationally – and offensive rebounding is one of Baylor’s biggest strengths on offense (they rank 15th). They’ll probably need a very big game on the offensive boards if they want to win.

To Baylor’s advantage is the fact that they’re not over-reliant on three pointers. Duke can shut teams down from outside, so it’s good that Baylor has a balanced inside/outside attack, ranking in the top 25 in both 3P% and 2P%, and right at average in 3PA/FGA. Duke will try to shut them down on the perimeter, but Baylor’s guards should be able to drive or get it to Udoh or Acy in the post. If the Baylor bigs can get the job done against Brian Zoubek, the Bears have a chance.

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Vegas has Duke as a 4 point favorite, and my system basically agrees. The straight efficiency stats show Duke as 5.5 point favorites, but the similar opponents analysis shows that Baylor has done better than expected offensively against teams whose defenses are similar to Duke’s. I see no reason to disagree, so I’ll go with the similarity prediction here, and say that Baylor should be able to hang close, but Duke is still the clear favorite.

Similarity Predictions: Elite 8

Figured I should get these up before the games start this afternoon.

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As I mentioned in the KSU-Butler preview, I think the prediction for that game is skewed by the early season numbers.  Butler’s playing better than they were then.  If I look at only games from this calendar year, then the Similarity prediction pretty much agrees with Pomeroy and Vegas.

I should get a Duke-Baylor preview done this afternoon, and get it posted here and at UFR.

Friday, March 26, 2010

Similarity Preview: Kansas State vs. Butler

[NOTE: Cross posted at Upon Further Review.]

If Kansas State wins on Saturday to reach the Final Four, basketball historians will look back and think they had a relatively easy path to Indianapolis, playing no team seeded better than #5. That’s misleading, though, as BYU, Xavier, and Butler are all much better than their seeds indicate. Take a look at the RPI, Pomeroy, and Sagarin ratings for each team, along with the average of those, what seed that would entail, and what seed they actually received (I included Pitt to show that Xavier is actually better than Pitt):

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They will have basically played three Sweet 16 games in a row, which is no tough task. Though all three teams are rated roughly equal, the game against Butler will have a very different feel. Butler is a slow-paced defensive-oriented team, while BYU and Xavier were more than happy to turn their games into offensive shootouts. If Butler can avoid turnovers – and Butler usually can, but it’s a big if when facing a KSU team whose main defensive strength is creating them – then they should be able to impose their tempo on the game. Butler’s fastest-paced game so far in the tourney was 67 possessions, in the opening round against UTEP. The Wildcats have only played 6 games all year that were that slow, going only 3-3 (compared to 26-4 in faster games). All three of those losses were to Kansas, while the wins were over Colorado, Oklahoma, and North Texas – so they haven’t beaten a good team in a slow game once this year.

On the other hand, the tempo argument can be used against Butler as well. KSU has reached at least a 70-possession pace in 2 of 3 tourney games. Butler has only played 5 games that fast all year, going 3-2 (compared to 28-2 in slower games). Their losses were to Minnesota and Georgetown, and their wins were against Youngstown St., Illinois-Chicago, and Valparaiso. So they’ve also not beaten a good team and Kansas State’s preferred tempo. My guess is that neither Butler’s nor KSU’s trend will change – whichever team gets to play their style of game will win. As you’ll see below, my system picks K-State as a large favorite, but I think it may have a blind spot here in regards to the tempo issue.

Let’s go over what the game will look like when Butler has the ball:

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I think the most important category in the above two tables is TO%; you can see this is a strength vs. strength match up, with Butler being as good at avoiding them as K-State is at causing them. As I mention before, if Kansas State can win this battle, and force Butler to commit more turnovers than usual, I think they can force the pace and win this game. Another area that could be key is offensive rebounds – Butler doesn’t get many, but Kansas State doesn’t prevent them very well, either. If the Bulldogs get more second chance points than they’re accustomed to, it could be a bonus for them.

One facet of the game where it seems clear what will happen is free throws. Butler gets to the line often, and Kansas State puts their opponents there often, so expect a parade of trips to the line for Matt Howard and Ronald Nored (who have the top FTR’s on the team).

Last game, I told you that Curtis Kelly should be salivating, as Xavier was relatively weak inside, and he ended up with a line of 21 points, 8 rebounds, and 5 blocks, near his season highs of 22/11/6. Butler’s not quite as bad inside as Xavier, but they do get blocked quite often, and aren’t very tall (293rd in effective height). Expect another big game from Kelly, though perhaps not quite as good as last night.

Now how about when Kansas State has the ball:

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Kansas State likes to push the ball up the court, but Butler will get everybody back to make this more difficult. That’s part of the reason Butler has such a low offensive rebounding percentage – they choose transition D over crashing the boards. If you watched the Kentucky-Cornell game, you saw one of the more dramatic examples of this that I can remember, with at times literally zero Cornell players within the three point circle when their shot hit the rim. Rebounding on Kansas State’s offensive end will be the direct opposite of this – they hit the boards hard (5th nationally in OReb%), but Butler is one of the best in the country at boxing out (13th in OReb% allowed). This is another strength-on-strength battle that will go a long way towards deciding the game.

Though it’s not shown above, Butler has been forcing a high number of turnovers during the NCAA tournament. Being careful with the ball is not a huge strength of KSU, so there’s a chance Butler can keep this new trend going.

We all know by know that free throws are on of Kansas State’s main weapons. Butler has only been middling at avoiding fouls overall this year, but have done much better during the tournament. I’m guessing this trend will end Saturday.

Putting it all together, here’s what the similarity system says:

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Frankly, I don’t agree with this at all. Something I want to address in the offseason is that early games are weighted equally to later games (this was a problem with the Xavier prediction as well). Most of Kansas State’s advantage here is derived from some bad defensive games early in the season against (as that’s when they played the major conference teams that are similar to Kansas State). If I take out games from November and December, the similarity system changes it’s mind, and basically agrees exactly with Pomeroy:

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That’s what my gut says as well – I expect a close, tough game with Kansas State a slight favorite.

Similarity Preview: Baylor vs. St. Mary's

Just a quick post to relay info that I forgot about yesterday: my preview of Baylor vs. St. Mary's is posted over at UFR.  To make a long story short, the system predicts a very close game, with a slight advantage to Baylor.  Head over to UFR if you want more details!

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Similarity Predictions: Championship Odds Table

I realized just now that I shouldn’t have called this a log5 table in last night’s post, as there are no log5 antics involved. I’m not transforming a rating into a probability; I’m pulling the probability directly from the similarity prediction system.  Whatever you want to call it, here are the odds – according to the similarity predictions – on each team advancing to future rounds of the tournament:

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Similarity Predictions: Sweet 16

This post is just a chart of the Pomeroy, Similarity, and Vegas predictions for the Sweet 16 games.  Technically these will change a bit before the Friday games (since predictions will be affected by how past opponents do on Thursday), but it should be a minor difference, so I’m just going to get all eight games out of the way now.

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The yellow lines are there to remind that there are injuries involved, which means you should beware of what any stats say about these games.  I do like that when I subtract Purdue’s Hummel games, the prediction swings wildly over to Duke’s favor.  I can’t say I disagree.  I don’t have time for much commentary since I spent a large part of the evening writing a preview for the Xavier-KSU game, but I will say that there are a surprising number of differences between Pomeroy and my system – though none that outright disagree on which team will win.  I’m hoping the big underdogs do as well as the similarity system predicts.

And here’s a teaser for tomorrow – I’m planning on doing a log5 odds table for the Sweet 16 (like this), only with my similarity predictions.  Check back Wednesday evening for that!

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Similarity Preview: Kansas State vs. Xavier

[NOTE: Cross posted at Upon Further Review.]
[NOTE 2: More problems with tables.  I apologize in advance.]

Today I’ve gone more in-depth than I expected do, as there are so many interesting factors influencing this prediction.  So I’ll spare you the BS intro and get right to the fun part.  As always, since this is a post design for UFR, I’ll assume you’re already intimately familiar with Kansas State, and the first half will focus on Xavier’s style of play.  We’ll start with Xavier’s offense.

XAVIER OFFENSE

Key Traits:

Off Eff

TO%

3P%

2P%

OReb%

 
2010

Xavier

115.8

17.8

37.4

50.4

33.7

Std Dev from Ave

1.6

1.4

1.0

0.7

0.1

SIM

Similar Teams

Off Eff

TO%

3P%

2P%

OReb%

94

2010

Villanova

116.7

18.7

37.3

50.4

37.6

93

2010

Memphis

114.8

17.0

38.8

50.6

32.5

92

2010

Mississippi

113.4

17.1

36.7

50.8

34.7

92

2010

Vanderbilt

113.7

19.2

36.9

51.5

32.2

92

2010

Virginia Commonwealth

112.3

18.2

36.7

50.4

36.3


Xavier can shoot well and doesn’t turn the ball over, but these stats indicate they're not great on the offensive boards.  One game ago I would have warned you to look past the stats, as in their 10 games leading up to round two against Pitt, they averaged an extremely high 39.4% offensive rebounding percentage (which would rank them 12th in the nation if they’d done it all year.  I thought they had put the pads on during practice, and solved their issues.  But then they came out in the last game and went back to their old ways, only grabbing 19% of their offensive misses.  If weak sauce Xavier shows up again in the Sweet 16, they’re likely finished.

One stat not listed above is Block% - Xavier gets blocked on 12% of their shots, which ranks 323rd out of 347 teams.  This plays right into Kansas State’s hands, as they block 12.8% of opponent shots, 25th best nationwide.  Curtis Kelly should be salivating.

Monday, March 22, 2010

Prediction System Bracket Challenge: Rd 2 Update

In case you missed it, here’s the post that sets the scene.  And here (below the chart) are some things you might want to take into account, along with a grain of salt, when viewing these standings.

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Not many surprises here – the same systems that did well in round 1 did well in round 2, and Sagarin- or Pomeroy-based systems occupy 4 of the top 7 spots.  Yet Another Basketball Blog’s champ pick of Duke (which, remember, would have been Pomeroy’s as well if I’d have filled out the bracket literally ANY day other than the day before the tournament) is looking like it may be what ends up setting that bracket apart from the rest, as I believe they’ll do a better job of getting by hobbled Purdue than Texas A&M did.

I’m excited to see my Similarity Scores tied with – and having more future possible points than – Pomeroy, though this obviously means nothing in the grand scheme of things.

I mentioned it in the original post, but I’ll state it again – this scoring system overemphasizes the last couple rounds.  So at the conclusion of the tourney, I’ll look at the standings with few other round weightings, and see who comes out on top in each one.

Hope you enjoyed the crazy opening weekend.  It may never be the same