Wichita State vs. SMU Pregame Discussion 2-14-21

[shocks771]

Just looked at KenPom and we are rated EIGHTY.
In front of us are teams like Kentucky at 5-13!

Drake and Loyloa Chicago are both above us.
Mississippi, who we beat at their house, is ranked 50.

This is ludicrous.

We never got any respect when we were in the Mo Valley.
We were always told we didn't beat anybody.
But once we got to the Big Dance we sure as hell beat people, the best teams in the country.

So, we are rewarded to move up to a bigger conference against better teams.
There is little doubt that playing Tulsa, Memphis, Houston, SMU and others is much more difficult than playing Indiana State, Southern Illinois, etc.

But THE MO VALLEY TEAMS ARE RATED SIGNIFICANTLY ABOVE US.

Explain this to me please.

It appears that a big win over a bad team is worth more than a close win over a good team;
And if you are in a "Power Conference," LOSING to good teams is worth more than WSU beating good teams.

The whole thing is bull^^^^.

It doesn't seem to matter what we do, somehow we get screwed.
We are perenially underrated.

Go figure.

Lol, I get it that you feel we are disrespected, but we are far from getting screwed. I don’t see how you can honestly and objectively watch this team and have an logical argument against where KenPom and the NET has them rated.

They have the potential to be better, but until this team can complete on the boards and beat the lower level teams by double digits instead of by less than five points, we are what we are.

I’m very happy that the guys have been pulling out wins in these close games and they are showing us a lot by doing so. This team has some intangibles and a lot of times we have the best player on the court. The fact that they have been able to compile the record they have under the circumstances they were dealt says a lot about their heart but there are also lots of red flags with the main ones being rebounding and not being able to put away the weaker teams. We could just as easily be 9-7 instead of 12-4 if a couple of bounces went the other way.

[ShockTalk]

Lol, I get it that you feel we are disrespected, but we are far from getting screwed. I don’t see how you can honestly and objectively watch this team and have an logical argument against where KenPom and the NET has them rated.

They have the potential to be better, but until this team can complete on the boards and beat the lower level teams by double digits instead of by less than five points, we are what we are.

I’m very happy that the guys have been pulling out wins in these close games and they are showing us a lot by doing so. This team has some intangibles and a lot of times we have the best player on the court. The fact that they have been able to compile the record they have under the circumstances they were dealt says a lot about their heart but there are also lots of red flags with the main ones being rebounding and not being able to put away the weaker teams. We could just as easily be 9-7 instead of 12-4 if a couple of bounces went the other way.

Teams we've beaten by 10 or more: Emporia, Newman, and Tulsa (once).

Teams we've beaten by 6-9: Cincy (6), Tulane (8).

7 wins by 5 or less.

[Woodrow]

How many more are we gonna have to cancel? SMU game postponed for the 2nd time. This season sucks.

[David Rahm]

Replying to Shocks 771.
Do you really think we should be below a 5_13 Kentucky team, 30 spots below Mississippi after beating them at their place?
Not to mention Drake, Loyola, Indiana at 11-8; Penn State (that perennial basketball power) at 7-9; Seton Hall at 11-8; Duke at 7-8; Connecticut at 8-5; Wright State (REALLY) at any record, Notre Dame at 8-10; Stanford at 12-8, Georgia tech at 9-7, (Holy) Toledo at any record, Utah at 9-7, St. Johns at 13-8, Mississippi State at 11-10, Northwestern at SIX and ELEVEN, Providence at 10-10; Rhode Island at 9-12, and South Carolina at 5-8????? You really think we should, at this moment in time, be behind these 21 teams?

I don't. I lived in Vegas for 25 years and would tell you now we would be favored against all those teams except Duke, Kentucky (possibly): and ND (possibly).

So I ask again, where is the logic behind these ratings except for an unbounding love of "Power Conferences"

Which of these teams has the pedigree we have had in the past decade (except Kentucky and Duke)?
Which of these teams has won 22 or more games several years in a row?

We keep winning, regardless of how ugly!

The whole ratings deal is a scam and I am tired of WSU getting treated in such a crappy fashion!

[Aargh]

Check out the WAC. NMSU has only played 4 conference games and 4 OOC games. Chicago State's league record is 0-0.

[ShockTalk]

Replying to Shocks 771.
Do you really think we should be below a 5_13 Kentucky team, 30 spots below Mississippi after beating them at their place?
Not to mention Drake, Loyola, Indiana at 11-8; Penn State (that perennial basketball power) at 7-9; Seton Hall at 11-8; Duke at 7-8; Connecticut at 8-5; Wright State (REALLY) at any record, Notre Dame at 8-10; Stanford at 12-8, Georgia tech at 9-7, (Holy) Toledo at any record, Utah at 9-7, St. Johns at 13-8, Mississippi State at 11-10, Northwestern at SIX and ELEVEN, Providence at 10-10; Rhode Island at 9-12, and South Carolina at 5-8????? You really think we should, at this moment in time, be behind these 21 teams?

I don't. I lived in Vegas for 25 years and would tell you now we would be favored against all those teams except Duke, Kentucky (possibly): and ND (possibly).

So I ask again, where is the logic behind these ratings except for an unbounding love of "Power Conferences"

Which of these teams has the pedigree we have had in the past decade (except Kentucky and Duke)?
Which of these teams has won 22 or more games several years in a row?

We keep winning, regardless of how ugly!

The whole ratings deal is a scam and I am tired of WSU getting treated in such a crappy fashion!

There are a few in your list I would put in the same category as WSU. A few more, I'd have to look at just who've they played, in and out of conference so far.

But, hey! We're talking the Big 10 Invitational Tournament here!!

My pet peeve is giving a team 4 bites at the apple: non-con, conference, conference tourney, AND the Dance. Particularly conference. If a team cannot do well (.500 or better) in conference and don't win their conference tourney, they're done as far as the NCAA tourney is concerned.

[shoxlax]

Still waiting for conference tournaments to get cancelled to make up regular season games.

[Shock Top]

Dammit!

Why is Shane quoting this schmuck??

Feel the room..

[MikeKennedyRulZ]

Teams we've beaten by 10 or more: Emporia, Newman, and Tulsa (once).

Teams we've beaten by 6-9: Cincy (6), Tulane (8).

7 wins by 5 or less.

Key words: beaten, wins

nuff said

[AG1219]

Replying to Shocks 771.
Do you really think we should be below a 5_13 Kentucky team, 30 spots below Mississippi after beating them at their place?
Not to mention Drake, Loyola, Indiana at 11-8; Penn State (that perennial basketball power) at 7-9; Seton Hall at 11-8; Duke at 7-8; Connecticut at 8-5; Wright State (REALLY) at any record, Notre Dame at 8-10; Stanford at 12-8, Georgia tech at 9-7, (Holy) Toledo at any record, Utah at 9-7, St. Johns at 13-8, Mississippi State at 11-10, Northwestern at SIX and ELEVEN, Providence at 10-10; Rhode Island at 9-12, and South Carolina at 5-8????? You really think we should, at this moment in time, be behind these 21 teams?

I don't. I lived in Vegas for 25 years and would tell you now we would be favored against all those teams except Duke, Kentucky (possibly): and ND (possibly).

So I ask again, where is the logic behind these ratings except for an unbounding love of "Power Conferences"

Which of these teams has the pedigree we have had in the past decade (except Kentucky and Duke)?
Which of these teams has won 22 or more games several years in a row?

We keep winning, regardless of how ugly!

The whole ratings deal is a scam and I am tired of WSU getting treated in such a crappy fashion!

Kenpom in my opinion is the best ratings out there. Once you get to about mid season it only takes into account actual results and stats to formulate their ratings. That way you can have on paper an accurate idea of how one team would fair against another team.

It uses a wide variety of statistics and is thus weighted for who you played and where. How efficient are you on offense/defense? Rebounding? Pace? Turnovers? Free throws? It’s all accounted for.

You mention Vegas, take a look at Kenpom for a slate of games. The Vegas lines are almost always within a point or two of the Kenpom anticipated or projected score. It's because his system has proven effective over years. We used to be highly ranked in Kenpom, then we would get "screwed" with a low seed. Guess what, we would go pound teams in the NCAA Tourney. I believe we were favored as a 7 seed over 2 seed KU and also over 3 seed Notre Dame in 2015.

We have been winning games this year. A lot of close games, but winning is what matters. You mentioned a lot of teams and their win loss records, but let's take a closer look into why we are where we are.

We are 62nd in the nation in Offensive Efficiency. We are terrible at Effective Field Goal percentage (305th). This takes into account how well we shoot the ball and breakdown of shots as well 3 points vs 2 points. We are not a good shooting team. Next, we are fantastic at Turnover %, (19th), we don't turn the ball over on offense, thus leading to more shots and more opportunities to score. We are decent at Offensive Rebounding (103rd). Getting more chances on a possession leads to more points. We are really doing a good job at getting to the line. Our Free Throw Attempts to Field Goal Attempts is 16th. Get those free points!!!!!

Our Defensive Efficiency is where we can move up the rankings. We currently sit at 118th. This is not like a normal Shocker team. We do a good job at effective FG % (45th). The teams we are playing are not shooting great from the field. We are not forcing turnovers on the defensive end (268th). Our defensive rebounding is atrocious (332nd). We are allowing opponents to get nearly 1/3rd of their missed shots. Wow!!! We are just average at defensive free throws per field goal percentage (141st).

When you factor in all of these actual statistics for games that we have played, we come in at 81st best in the country. This does not mean that we shouldn't be able to beat a team above us or we shouldn't lose to a team below us. All it means is that statistically speaking, if every team plays their average game, We are the 81st best team.

We have been hurt by letting lesser teams back into games late, and also our poor rebounding on the defensive glass will catch up to us. Clean up the rebounding issues, make some more shots on the offensive end, and you will see our ranking jump.

[shocks771]

Kenpom in my opinion is the best ratings out there. Once you get to about mid season it only takes into account actual results and stats to formulate their ratings. That way you can have on paper an accurate idea of how one team would fair against another team.

It uses a wide variety of statistics and is thus weighted for who you played and where. How efficient are you on offense/defense? Rebounding? Pace? Turnovers? Free throws? It’s all accounted for.

You mention Vegas, take a look at Kenpom for a slate of games. The Vegas lines are almost always within a point or two of the Kenpom anticipated or projected score. It's because his system has proven effective over years. We used to be highly ranked in Kenpom, then we would get "screwed" with a low seed. Guess what, we would go pound teams in the NCAA Tourney. I believe we were favored as a 7 seed over 2 seed KU and also over 3 seed Notre Dame in 2015.

We have been winning games this year. A lot of close games, but winning is what matters. You mentioned a lot of teams and their win loss records, but let's take a closer look into why we are where we are.

We are 62nd in the nation in Offensive Efficiency. We are terrible at Effective Field Goal percentage (305th). This takes into account how well we shoot the ball and breakdown of shots as well 3 points vs 2 points. We are not a good shooting team. Next, we are fantastic at Turnover %, (19th), we don't turn the ball over on offense, thus leading to more shots and more opportunities to score. We are decent at Offensive Rebounding (103rd). Getting more chances on a possession leads to more points. We are really doing a good job at getting to the line. Our Free Throw Attempts to Field Goal Attempts is 16th. Get those free points!!!!!

Our Defensive Efficiency is where we can move up the rankings. We currently sit at 118th. This is not like a normal Shocker team. We do a good job at effective FG % (45th). The teams we are playing are not shooting great from the field. We are not forcing turnovers on the defensive end (268th). Our defensive rebounding is atrocious (332nd). We are allowing opponents to get nearly 1/3rd of their missed shots. Wow!!! We are just average at defensive free throws per field goal percentage (141st).

When you factor in all of these actual statistics for games that we have played, we come in at 81st best in the country. This does not mean that we shouldn't be able to beat a team above us or we shouldn't lose to a team below us. All it means is that statistically speaking, if every team plays their average game, We are the 81st best team.

We have been hurt by letting lesser teams back into games late, and also our poor rebounding on the defensive glass will catch up to us. Clean up the rebounding issues, make some more shots on the offensive end, and you will see our ranking jump.

Thanks for taking the time to describe KenPom to everyone because I didn’t have the energy or desire to get into the breakdown of the metrics, but what you said is exactly why we are where we are.

Here were WSU’s KenPom Ratings in our best stretch, which was 2011-2018

2011- 27th overall (31st on offense, 48th on defense)
2012- 11th overall (11th on offense, 26th on defense)
2013- 17th overall (35th on offense, 20th on defense)
2014- 6th overall (17th on offense, 11th on defense)
2015- 13th overall (19th on offense, 15th on defense)
2016- 13th overall (67th on offense, 1st on defense)
2017- 8th overall (13th on offense, 13th on defense)
2018- 21st overall (4th on offense, 111th on defense)

There were several years in this stretch that I would agree with you that were were criminally disrespected by the selection committee.

However, this year is definitely not one of those years. People get so caught up in the win/loss record that they truly can’t see the strengths and weaknesses of teams. If we want to move up we absolutely have to get better at defensive rebounding and putting away the weaker teams on our schedule. You can make fairly quick jumps in these computer rankings if you become more efficient and we have to clean it up significantly on the defensive end if we want to make the tournament.

The thing about KenPom is if you were favored by say 5-6 points and you let a late 12 point lead fall to say a 4-5 point win you are going to stay virtually the same in his rankings or you might even drop a spot by not hitting the projected winning margin. We’ve done that a lot. If we could hold those 10-15 point leads in games we are favored in by 5-6 points then we can gain 2-3 spots in the rankings. Add up all of those games we have let decent leads slip away into tight games and you are looking at probably 15-20 spots in the KenPom ratings. WSU would get strong consideration with the record they have if they could get up into the low 50’s in KenPom, but now the only way that’s going to happen is getting wins over Houston, SMU and Memphis and then whipping up on the lower level competition. It’s going to be very difficult to make a move and we are going to have to come pretty darn close to running the table to make the tournament this year.

Also, our KenPom rating would bet virtually identical to where it is today if USF would have hit that free throw at the end of regulation and if UCF would have hit the game winner the other night. We might be 1-2 spots lower at worst but our record would be 10-6 instead of 12-4. The offensive and defensive efficiency metrics tell it all along with some luck and this year we rank 10th in luck so we are fortunate to have the record we do.

[rrshock]

So will SMU have to play 2 here when they come? Only seems right at this point.

[Shockm]

Thanks for taking the time to describe KenPom to everyone because I didn’t have the energy or desire to get into the breakdown of the metrics, but what you said is exactly why we are where we are.

Here were WSU’s KenPom Ratings in our best stretch, which was 2011-2018

2011- 27th overall (31st on offense, 48th on defense)
2012- 11th overall (11th on offense, 26th on defense)
2013- 17th overall (35th on offense, 20th on defense)
2014- 6th overall (17th on offense, 11th on defense)
2015- 13th overall (19th on offense, 15th on defense)
2016- 13th overall (67th on offense, 1st on defense)
2017- 8th overall (13th on offense, 13th on defense)
2018- 21st overall (4th on offense, 111th on defense)

There were several years in this stretch that I would agree with you that were were criminally disrespected by the selection committee.


Also, our KenPom rating would bet virtually identical to where it is today if USF would have hit that free throw at the end of regulation and if UCF would have hit the game winner the other night. We might be 1-2 spots lower at worst but our record would be 10-6 instead of 12-4. The offensive and defensive efficiency metrics tell it all along with some luck and this year we rank 10th in luck so we are fortunate to have the record we do.

We've always had close games. Some of what we are doing this year in close games at the end is we have good experienced players who are "clutch" in what they do at the end of games. We are a better free throw team than our percentage, but we seem to hit more free throws when the game is on the line than not. You didn't mention what would have happened if we had hit an extra shot against OSU or if they had missed their last second game winning shot against us. There is no doubt that our rebounding has held us back and I think that some players are more capable to rebound than are doing it, and that is a coaching thing imo. However, we have had luck go against us too this year.

This year we seem to have more close games than usual, but you aren't taking into account that in each close game, there have been plays that we didn't make too. This "luck" thing goes both ways during a close game.

[shocks771]

We've always had close games. Some of what we are doing this year in close games at the end is we have good experienced players who are "clutch" in what they do at the end of games. We are a better free throw team than our percentage, but we seem to hit more free throws when the game is on the line than not. You didn't mention what would have happened if we had hit an extra shot against OSU or if they had missed their last second game winning shot against us. There is no doubt that our rebounding has held us back and I think that some players are more capable to rebound than are doing it, and that is a coaching thing imo. However, we have had luck go against us too this year.

This year we seem to have more close games than usual, but you aren't taking into account that in each close game, there have been plays that we didn't make too. This "luck" thing goes both ways during a close game.

Ok man, you feel free to believe in what you believe and I will live in a more realistic world that the numbers and analysis reflects. I hope you are right and the numbers are wrong, but unfortunately that rarely happens. Maybe this team can be one of the outliers.

[pie n eye]

Yeah, we’re 12-4 but what’s our “Vs. KenPom expectation record”?

You all are right about how we can move up but who really cares? Haters gonna find a way to hate. Ainters gonna find a way to aint. Keep winning and all that crap will take care of itself.

The only thing that really matters is trying to improve on the things the team does poorly. If we do or if we don’t, the other stuff will sort itself out.