NCAA Tournament Scores and Discussion Thread

[ShockTalk]

BBrmFCP[1].jpg

Interesting happy dance by Sir Charles after picking UNC to win prior to the game. Poor Kenny.

Scroll down for the video.

[Jamar Howard 4 President]

This is what I wondered was how well the entire conference did. Thanks. I wasn't sure how it would come out if you included Texas, Baylor, ISU, Texas Tech. Better than I expected to be honest. How did they do against actual score per game rather than per possession? Does that come out pretty similarly, or does it change quite a bit due to the number of possessions?

Big 12 defenses as a whole were 9-7 in holding opponents under their season average. KU/WVU/OU were 7-3. Of course, removing tempo is a step backwards in terms of analysis. When a game is up-tempo and has a bunch of extra possessions, scoring is going to be up for both teams.

Iona averaged 80 pts on 72 possessions for the year. (1.11 pts/poss) Against Iowa State, they beat their season scoring average by 1, but it took 78 possessions to do so. (1.04 pts/poss)

Same goes for Austin Peay vs KU. Averaged 76 pts on 70 possessions for the year. (1.09 pts/poss) Against KU they scored 79 pts in 77 possessions. (1.03 pts/poss)

[SHOCKvalue]

Creighton fans celebrating in ernest, clamoring to buy Villanova National Championship t-shirts. One poster is wearing his BIG EAST t-shirt to work tomorrow lol. I kid you not. It's like they won the National Title themselves over there.

I just love it. This now vindicates their conference and proves it's a power conference.

No. It proves Villanova is a high major program and can win championships, as they were in the real Big East. I mean it's just as goofy as saying when Butler reached back-to-back title games that the Horizon League is a conference capable of making championship games and it vindicates the conference.

You seriously can't make this **** up. Only Creighton fans... lol.

You can park your Camry next to a Ferrari, take a picture of the union to post later on Twitface, but you're still driving the Camry back home.

I'm not even sure if Creighton is at the level to be analogous to a Camry. Maybe the example should be with a Corolla. CU at the QuietLink is 18K Corollas strong. Hear them roar; meow.

[Kung Wu]

The rest:

Texas Tech held Butler (1.162) to 1.09 PPP in their game.
Iowa State held Iona (1.096) to 1.04 PPP, Arkansas-Little Rock (1.081) to 0.97 PPP, and Virginia (1.185) to 1.22 PPP.
Baylor allowed Yale (1.087) to score 1.18 PPP.
Texas allowed UNI (1.072) to score 1.19 PPP.

So the rest was a mixed bag. If you include these, 11 out of 16 times, the Big 12 team held their opponent to fewer PPP than their season average (stats are adjusted per KenPom). Some of these were expected...Baylor's defense was ranked lower than Yale's offense and Iowa State's defense was ranked lower than Virginia's offense.

EDIT: Damn, Jamar beat me to it!

So basically you're saying, if your conference teams are rewarded with higher seeds than they should be, and therefore allowed to play crappier teams than they otherwise would be, then their defense will perform about average when it should be higher? :)

[Jamar Howard 4 President]

So basically you're saying, if your conference teams are rewarded with higher seeds than they should be, and therefore allowed to play crappier teams than they otherwise would be, then their defense will perform about average when it should be higher? :)

@Kung Wu:, you should be a politician. Spin. Spin. Spin.

Texas Tech's defensive performance vs Butler had nothing to do with how much Tech "deserved" to get to play Butler. Regardless of how the game was set up, the game was played, and Tech's 93rd ranked defense held a very strong Butler offense below their average efficiency.

The exact opposite is true for Baylor, who took their mediocre defense and gave up a lot of points to Yale.

Add it all up and the Big 12 played 16 tournament games and generally played good defense relative to the level of their opponent's offense. Concepts such as "they were overseeded and got to play crappier teams than they deserved" are fair to discuss in certain context, but it is totally irrelevant to this specific discussion.

[The Mad Hatter]

I'd be interested to know if holding teams under their offensive average in the NCAA tournament is actually indicative of anything. Those season averages include plenty of games against flat out bad teams for any team. Presumably for most teams, their average opponent was not an NCAA caliber team (or necessarily close to it), so their regular season efficiency ought to be higher than what they produce against any NCAA tournament team. In other words, being held to under your season scoring efficiency seems like an expected result of playing an average NCAA caliber team, not a sign of the other team being an exceptional defense within the field of NCAA teams.

The more relevant question, it seems to me, is not whether an NCAA team is harder to score on than the average opponent a team has faced all year, but how the B12 NCAA teams compare to the defensive performances of other NCAA teams. Otherwise it is an apples to oranges comparison.

[Jamar Howard 4 President]

I'd be interested to know if holding teams under their offensive average in the NCAA tournament is actually indicative of anything. Those season averages include plenty of games against flat out bad teams for any team. Presumably for most teams, their average opponent was not an NCAA caliber team (or necessarily close to it), so their regular season efficiency ought to be higher than what they produce against any NCAA tournament team. In other words, being held to under your season scoring efficiency seems like an expected result of playing an average NCAA caliber team, not a sign of the other team being an exceptional defense within the field of NCAA teams.

The more relevant question, it seems to me, is not whether an NCAA team is harder to score on than the average opponent a team has faced all year, but how the B12 NCAA teams compare to the defensive performances of other NCAA teams. Otherwise it is an apples to oranges comparison.

I'm ready to let this issue drop as I know most people here just don't care, but here is one little additional tidbit.

Villanova put up 95 on OU and embarrassed them. That is true. Interestingly, it wasn't the worst defensive performance vs Nova in the tournament this year. Also, do you know who played by far the best defense against Villanova all tourney? KU did.

Villanova vs...

Team	pts	poss	pts/poss	Season Long Defensive Rank
UNC Ashville	86	66	1.30	68
Iowa	87	69	1.26	39
Miami	92	59	1.56	47
Kansas	64	65	0.98	4
Oklahoma	95	63	1.51	18
North Carolina	77	64	1.20	27

[Dan]

The Big 12 sent 7 teams to the dance. 4 got knocked out in the 1st round by SFA, Yale, UNI and Butler.

[Jamar Howard 4 President]

The Big 12 sent 7 teams to the dance. 4 got knocked out in the 1st round by SFA, Yale, UNI and Butler.

...and?

[Cdizzle]

...and?

That's more than half.

[Jamar Howard 4 President]

That's more than half.

Strawman or complete rabbit trail to a new topic. Which one?

[Cdizzle]

Strawman or complete rabbit trail to a new topic. Which one?

Neither. Just a simple statement of fact based on numbers. I thought you of all people could appreciate it.

[pie n eye]

If I read the words straw man one more time on a basketball forum...

[Dan]

Point is, they have a lot of teams (also see pac 12) that aren't that great but get the benefit of riding the RPI coat tails of the big boys in their conference. You can add up the tournament wins from the conference but they only come from 3 teams.

[Ricardo del Rio]

Pie,

Forgive me, please.

I suspect that some, if not many, do not know what a straw man argument is.

A straw man is a common form of argument and is an informal fallacy based on giving the impression of refuting an opponent's argument, while actually refuting an argument that was not advanced by that opponent.

Again, please forgive me, Pie. I will say no more.