The college basketball season is finally getting interesting enough to write an article about. Here are some of the more offbeat things happening in our power ratings:
• Baylor finally passes Gonzaga at #1, and they can thank Illinois
# Team record Rating 1. Baylor 16-0 62.91 2. Gonzaga 17-0 62.37
Gonzaga and Baylor are clearly the best teams in the country, and are really the only two teams deserving of first-place votes. In our power ratings Gonzaga has held the edge at #1 for a long time. The teams have been nearly equal in Strength (winning-margin based power rating) but the Zags have been far ahead in Success (accomplishment-based rating).
When the rankings are combined, the Zags have been #1, Baylor #2. That's because Gonzaga's pre-conference schedule was tough as nails, and they hold wins over Kansas, Auburn, West Virginia, Iowa, and Virginia, all on neutral courts (home court counts a lot in Success). Baylor's lone non-conference skin was beating Illinois.
Lately though the tide has been turning; Gonzaga's West Coast Conference slate offers little advancement in Success, while Baylor has beaten Oklahoma, Texas Tech, Kansas, and Oklahoma State. They also beat Auburn in the Big 12-SEC challenge, giving them wins over two of Gonzaga's victims.
The game that gave Baylor the top spot this week was played on Friday, January 29, when Illinois beat Iowa 80-75. That diminished Iowa's value as a Gonzaga win, and elevated Baylor's win over Illinois. It was just enough to put Baylor on top. Had Iowa prevailed, Gonzaga would still be #1.
That's how close the two teams are: they're dependent on their opponents to decide the issue for them. If both teams remain undefeated, however, it's pretty clear that Baylor will start to pull ahead as their schedule going forward is a lot harder: Ken Pomeroy gives Gonzaga a 70% chance to win out while Baylor's odds are just 1 in 6.
• Drake tumbles in Markov Chain
The other undefeated team in the country is Drake. For those of you who don't know—probably the majority—the Bulldogs are located in the middle of the state of Iowa. Drake has ranked respectably in Strength, generally in the top 40 this year. The Bulldogs were winning games by an average of over 20 points per game against a weak schedule, and both aspects are taken into consideration.
But in our Markov Chain rankings, Drake was consistently in the top five. The Markov Chain formula is meant to cover both aspects, too: the "ball" moves from team to team based on win probability, and the better teams you beat, the more likely you are to "get the ball." In Drake's case, however, their weaker schedule should have prevented the ball from going to them. But their overpowering wins—as of January 4, they won every game but one by double digits—meant that once they got the ball, they pretty much never gave it up.
# Team Record Rating 1. Gonzaga 15-0 145.70 2. Baylor 14-0 123.95 3. Houston 13-1 51.42 4. Michigan 13-1 44.91 5. Drake 11-0 37.88
That changed on Sunday when they needed overtime to beat Illinois State. Suddenly there was a near 50/50 game on their schedule, so instead of being a black hole from which the Markov ball would rarely emerge, there was an out. Drake plunged from #5 to #19, still a respectable ranking but making it look far less likely that the Bulldogs are a stealth Final Four team.
In fact, Drake's last three winning margins have all been under 10 points. What changed? Well, the Bulldogs are coming back from a lengthy Covid layoff. After beating Southern Illinois 86-55 on January 4 they didn't play until the 26th. They beat Missouri State twice, by 7 points and 5 points, before the 2-point win at home vs. Illinois State.
Pomeroy gives Drake just a 2% chance of winning out, mainly because they face Loyola of Chicago twice. Loyola's Strength is a few points better than Drake's, and they also rank in the top 25 in the Markov Chain rankings.
• Winthrop loses and plummets in Success
The only other undefeated team for most of January was Winthrop, who started out 16-0 before losing to NC Asheville on the 29th. Unlike Drake, the Eagles didn't rank very well in the Markov rankings, floating somewhere in the 60s range. That's because while the Eagles won every game, they had a lot of close calls. This kept them pretty low on the Strength totem pole too, outside the top 100.
But in Success, where win margin doesn't matter? The Eagles were flying high at #7 before their fall, neck and neck with Drake who shared their undefeated record and poor strength of schedule, but beat teams much more convincingly.
# Team record rating 1. Gonzaga 16-0 36.38 2. Baylor 15-0 29.65 3. Michigan 13-1 23.09 4. Houston 14-1 19.55 5. Villanova 10-1 12.36 6. Drake 15-0 12.07 7. Winthrop 16-0 10.93
After Winthrop's loss the bottom fell out of their high ranking and they plunged to #45. Why so far for one loss? Success takes into account who you lose to and where, and losing to 10-9 Asheville at home was a damaging hit.
• Colgate holds on in top ten of Strength
In addition to Drake, another team surprisingly high in some of our power ratings is Colgate, who at one point was #1 in Strength (though they had only played 4 games so they weren't included at the time). Colgate was #5 last week but falls this week to #10 after an overtime win at Holy Cross hurt their average.
# Team record Rating 1. Baylor 16-0 28.54 2. Gonzaga 17-0 28.09 3. Illinois 11-5 25.61 4. Iowa 12-4 25.02 5. Michigan 13-1 23.71 6. Houston 15-1 23.31 7. Alabama 14-4 21.91 8. Villanova 11-1 21.46 9. Tennessee 12-3 21.18 10. Colgate 7-1 20.99
Still, Colgate in the top ten? How did we get here? First off, our Strength rating uses no priors, meaning nothing from the last season or any pre-season "projections" affects the ratings. That means a small sample size makes a big difference. Normally these things go away by January, but this year is different, and Colgate had played only six games through mid-January, against three different opponents. They beat Army 101-57, then lost to Army by 2 points. They beat Boston U by 7 on the road, then won by 44 the next day. After beating Holy Cross by 40, and then 9, they ranked in the top five.
All of this incestuous scheduling was necessitated by Covid, and it meant that the Patriot League's ranking among the larger basketball conference was dependent on very few games: only Army and Navy played out of conference and they went 6-2 against Division I. One game that made a lot of difference was Army's 7 point loss to Florida (#19 Strength); Navy also beat Georgetown. This put the Patriot League in a better position than they normally are, and Colgate's three 40+ point wins inflated their rating.
The overtime win deflated their balloon a bit but their 8-game sample is still bloated. Or maybe Colgate's just that good? If so, they're pretty hot and cold, winning by 40+ one game, then losing to the same team the next day? Using standard deviation to rank team Strength by stability, the Raiders fall to #57, which is probably more of what they deserve. Our Median Strength ratings accomplish the same thing, pushing them down to #55 as all three of their huge wins are factored out, and their two "middle" performances are averaged to get the median performance.
The question for most people is, if they make the NCAA tournament, can they get a first-round upset? The answer is: if the team that wins by 40+ shows up, of course.
• All but five D-I teams present and accounted for
Most years we screen out non-division I teams by formula (number of games played being less than average). This year, many true D-I teams haven't played close to the average, while many non-D-I teams have played more. Also, there are 10 teams that aren't playing at all (the entire Ivy League, plus Maryland Eastern Shore and Bethune Cookman).
So we're having to make up the requirement as we go, trying to insure a reasonable number of games played while still letting in the vast majority of D-I teams. Currently the requirement is 6 games, which means out of 347 teams, 342 are listed. Right now American, Alabama A&M, NC Central, Loyola MD, and Howard are not ranked; that should change in about a week, Covid permitting.
It also means that there are currently 8 non-D-I teams counting as D-I. They are:
- Flagler (2-4)
- Our Lady of the Lake (1-6)
- Florida National (0-6)
- Columbia International (0-6)
- Saint Katherine (0-10)
- Champion Christian (0-7)
- Bethesda (0-11)
- Carver (0-20)
Interestingly most of these teams list their D-I games as "pre-season exhibitions" even if they were played in January. That's fair, since losses to D-I teams shouldn't really count on their record. The D-I winners aren't putting an asterisk by their wins though. So can a game be half exhibition, half real? Looks that way: the winners count their wins, the losers call them exhibitions.
What about when the non-D-I team gets an upset? Looks like Our Lady of the Lake's official record is 1-3, calling 3 losses exhibitions but their win over D-I Texas State is official. Flagler counts one of two losses to FIU official, while their wins over Central Michigan and North Florida both count, but not losses to Furman and South Alabama. Not surprisingly FIU counts both wins, but credit Central Michigan and North Florida for owning their losses. Flagler is the only non-D-I team that doesn't rank in the bottom 10 in Strength; in fact at #230 they're not in the bottom 100.
Assuming we are able to increase our requirement to 7 games, then 8, that means we will get rid of five of these interlopers. But we might be stuck with Saint Katherine and Bethesda. And Carver should be considered a D-I team this year anyway; if you play 20 D-I teams, you're D-I, even if you're losing by an average of over 50 points per game.
Brandon Miller is playing well, Alabama is not
Several days ago came the startling revelation that Brandon Miller brought the murder weapon to the crime scene in January's murder in Tuscaloosa, at the request of one of the accused killers. Since then Alabama's played three games and Miller has played in all three; Alabama's coach has said Miller was in the "wrong place at the wrong time" and wouldn't be held out, and indeed the police said there was "nothing they could charge him with."
Still, observers wondered how Miller would respond to the pressure of playing after the announcement. Would he be tentative, nervous, a bit shook, perhaps? The answer was clearly "no" at South Carolina as Miller scored a career-hight 41 points in the overtime win. He shot 6 of 13 from the 3-point line, 8 of 12 from 2-point range, and 7 of 8 from the charity stripe.
Before the next game Miller was "patted-down" by a teammate before the game, in a ritual the players had done before but one that prompted an apology from coach Nate Oats, saying it was in bad taste and wouldn't happen again. Apparently it was meant as a "TSA style" patdown and signified that Miller was "ready for takeoff."
Again Miller had a good game at home vs. Arkansas. Though not a career-best like last time, Miller had 24 points. He was only 1 for 6 in 3s but his 7 of 9 2s and all 7 free throws. Alabama escaped with an 86-83 win over the Razorbacks.
Coach Oats says that Miller has cooperated with the investigation in every way, but a few things might not add up in Miller's testimony. The police clearly imply that the accused killer texted Miller asking him to bring his gun to him. But Miller's attorney says Miller never saw it because it was under a pile of clothes, and didn't know it was in his car. The two facts don't jibe, and the logical conclusion is that Miller put the gun under the clothes when he brought it downtown to the accused killer, which is what one would do when transporting a gun: hide it. But no one seems eager to push the matter in any way, and one wonders if a normal person would be subjected to more scrutiny. Miller's lawyers have claimed the accused killer left the gun in Miller's car without Miller's knowledge, hidden under the clothes, which is a bit odd to say the least. Miller's car was also blocking the car of the victim when he parked it, though police say they don't know if that was intentional or not.
In any case, Miller obviously didn't participate in the violence itself, and that seems good enough for Alabama officials. In his third game since the controversy, Miller had 17 points in an overtime win vs. rival Auburn. He again hit only 1 of 6 3s and this time only 2 of 6 2s, but he hit 10 of 11 free throws, clearly not the hallmark of someone who has a burden on his mind over anything. Either Miller is an extremely cool customer, or he's confident he did nothing wrong. Perhaps both.
But while Miller has performed at least as well as he has all season, Alabama as a team has been shaky to say the least. Beating South Carolina in overtime is an extremely weak performance, and while beating Arkansas and Auburn is tough for any team, Alabama was lucky to get out of both of them with a win when normally they should win comfortably.
To put it in terms of the Strength power rating, Alabama is overall the #2 team in the country, but for the last three games they've played like the #82 team. Here's how it looks on their full-season-to-date chart:
The drop-off to game #28 (South Carolina) is immense, and it was their lowest-rated game they didn't lose. The Arkansas win was about equal to the Tennessee loss, and the Auburn win was a bit worse (they were down by 17 at one point). The last two games weren't awful and ultimately, they got the win all three times, but all three were well below their full-season average performance (the green bar in game "0"). In Ken Pomeroy's ratings the team has fallen from #14 to #19 on offense and from #3 to #6 on defense, a significant drop for just three games.
So it would seem that while Brandon Miller isn't concerned with the current events—or at least doesn't show it on the court—his teammates are not thriving under the scrutiny nearly as well.
The situation is fluid and facts are being introduced every day, and different sources have different takes, so it's hard to know what to make of Miller's actions and whether he has anything to answer for. The police say no, so that will probably be the final word. Maybe he should have done something differently, but most likely, he couldn't possibly have known at all what was about to happen.
Yet although it seems he has shaken off any pressure added by the events, his team is not performing to its usual level for whatever reason, and it's too much of a coincidence to say the revelations have nothing to do with it. When player Darius Miles was charged with the murders back in January and dismissed from the team, the other players didn't really miss a step in performance.
But something about the Miller revelation was different. Maybe they're worried about the pressure on him, and in doing so, took the pressure on themselves? Hard to say what is going on. It's also possible that a 3-game sample is too small to draw conclusions. But it's a pretty sharp drop-off at the exact same time. Bama player Jaden Bradley was also at the scene of the murder (in his own car), and he's made only 3 of 17 attempts since then. Two Bama players were ejected from the Auburn game for a verbal altercation. It's not uncommon to see two players—one from each team—ejected, but two players from the same team? When playing at home?
Will Alabama recover their national-title-level gameplay in time for the NCAA tournament? We'll see. So far they've kept winning and look like they'll be a 1-seed. But if this drop-off in performance continues, they'll be hard-pressed to make a deep tournament run later on in March.
Posted on March 01, 2023 at 10:13 PM in analysis, commentary | Permalink | Comments (0)
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