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USC Trojans
Seed: 7
Record: 26-7
Conference: Pac-12
vs.
Miami Hurricanes
Seed: 10
Record: 23-10
Conference: ACC
Date: Friday, March 18
Time: 3:10 pm Eastern
Region: Midwest
Location: Greenville, SC
Channel: truTV
USC looks solidly better than Miami at first glance. Is there a reason to pick the Hurricanes, despite that terrible defense?
USC Miami
Power Ratings
Strength: #43 Strength: #66
Median: #37 Median: #76
Markov: #49 Markov: #50
Pomeroy: #42 Pomeroy: #62
Offense: #47 Offense: #17
Defense: #49 Defense: #157
BPI: #40 BPI: #57
LRMC: #44 LRMC: #54
Other Measures:
Tempo (Offense): #153 Tempo (Offense): #160
SOS: #77 SOS: #59
Consistency: #36 Consistency: #182
Str + Reliability: #22 Str + Reliability: #64
Str + Potential: #68 Str + Potential: #64
2nd half season: #67 2nd half season: #39
Last 6 [-best]: #87 [#76] Last 6 [-best]: #38 [#34]
Injury Modifier: #42 Injury Modifier: #64
Upset Record: 3-3 Upset Record: 7-5
Pre-season polls: #27 Pre-season polls: #NR
The 7 vs. 10 matchups are interesting because there's a favorite and most of the power ratings fall that direction, with a few exceptions. Here there is a consensus among the four that USC ranks in the low 40s, Miami in the 50s or 60s. Our Median ranking amplified the Strength discrepancy quite a bit, but out Markov chain implementation draw the teams to within one spot. And while USC is pretty balanced in their play on offense and defense, Miami is all offense.
The teams play very similar tempos on offense, and the Strength of Schedule numbers are close. Miami is an average team when it comes to consistency but USC is very consistent; this makes an upset much less likely, at least Miami can't count on USC having a very sub-par game. Miami's hope comes from their own ranking in the 2nd half of the season, where they've played quite a bit better while USC is markedly worse. It's almost like they switched spots: USC fell from #43 to #67 in Strength while the Hurricanes jumped from #66 to #39. This seems to have carried through to very recent play, also.
This isn't just in my power rating; if you look at Pomeroy's rankings, USC was #17 on January 13th and are now #42 for the full season, meaning that their 2nd half was much worse than #42. And Miami rose steadily from #83 in mid-January to #62, meaning their "current" play is much better. So which do we use? The full season where USC is clearly better, or the last half where the teams have switched places?
- Wins vs. tournament teams (2): =(8)San Diego St.+15, (4)UCLA+3
- Losses to tournament teams (4): @(1)Arizona-9, (1)Arizona-20, @(4)UCLA-7, =(4)UCLA-10
- Other losses (3): @Stanford-6, Oregon-10, Stanford-3
Overview: USC started 13-0 including a win over 8-seed San Diego State, but they lost in the Pac-12 to Stanford twice and Oregon once. They met 1-seed Arizona and fell short, but they beat 4-seed UCLA and were 25-4 near the end of the season. They finished by losing 3 out of 4, losing to Arizona once and UCLA twice. Though there's no shame in losing to those teams, they lost each game by double digits. As much as their level of play declined over the 2nd half of the season, it got even worse at the end, implying that it's still happening.
The Trojans are a pretty balanced team as far as efficiency goes, ranking #47 on offense and #49 on defense (this is down from #25 and #21 in mid-January). Three things stand out about the Trojan offense: they shoot the 3 pretty well (over 35%, but they don't shoot it that often), they rebound well, and they are a terrible free throw shooting team (66.6%). On defense they rank #2 against 2-point shots, which is impressive to say the least. 6-10 junior forward Isaiah Mobley leads the team with 14.3 points per game and 8.5 rebounds.
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- Wins vs. tournament teams (3): @(2)Duke+2, (8)North Carolina+28, @(11)Virginia Tech+3
- Losses to tournament teams (4): =(6)Alabama-32, (11)Notre Dame-4, (11)Virginia Tech-1, =(2)Duke-4
- Other losses (6): UCF-6, =Dayton-16, @Florida St.-1, Florida St.-1, @Virginia-13, Virginia-3
Overview: To say Miami had a rough start to the season would be putting it mildly. The Hurricanes started 4-3 with losses to UCF at home, 76-60 to Dayton, and were blown out by Alabama 96-64. After that things got better quickly and they went on a 9-game winning streak that culminated in a road win over 2-seed Duke! The ups and downs continued as they lost to FSU twice by a point each time, beat 8-seed UNC 85-57, lost to Virginia twice but split with 11-seed Virginia Tech. They played well against Duke in the rematch before losing by 4 points.
What's clear is that Miami's Strength is weighted down by their early, bad games, and that may be why their "2nd half of season" score is such an improvement (#39). That's most of it—they rank #49 from there. It also happens that the cut-off for "2nd half of season" is the big win over North Carolina. Move it ahead one game and the 'Canes are #55. Still, they are pretty solid in recent play no matter how you measure it.
Miami's improvement has mostly been on defense; they were at #194 in Pomeroy on defense in mid-January, so their current #157 probably underestimates them. But in any case, it's still not great, as both their field goal defense and rebounding are atrocious. On offense they shoot well and don't turn the ball over. They still don't rebound well but it works out and the Canes have a top 25 offense. Leading the way is Kameron McGusty with 17.6ppg, and three others average in double figures.
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Game Analysis: USC's height could be a factor in the game, as the Trojans are #4 in the country in height and start a lineup that dwarf's Miami's by several inches. But looked at another way, it might not be such a big problem. Miami's offense doesn't rebound well anyway, so even if USC blocks them out it doesn't change their offense which runs on making shots and not turning it over. And on the other side of the court, Miami's defense isn't great and it's assumed USC will score and get offensive rebounds anyway. In other words when you have a team like Miami that has such a discrepancy between offense and defensive play, it's hard to "disrupt" the bad side of the equation. And Miami's offense might not be affected very much. One of their biggest wins came against another "tall" team, North Carolina.
The main thing to decide about this game is how we account for the movement of each team since roughly the mid-season. It clearly happened and it seems like it's still happening: Miami is getting better (basically their defense is getting less bad) and USC is getting worse equally on offense and defense. Sampled over the course of the full season USC is the better team; for the 2nd half it looks like Miami is better; and if we could take a "snapshot" or derivative of "right now" it seems that the divide would be maximizing. And losing 3 of the last 4 has to be disheartening, too.
Vegas Line:
USC by 1 1/2
Power rating: spread
USC by 2.1
Game-comparisons: % Chance to win
USC: 57.3%
Miami: 42.7%
2nd half of season (last 15 games):
USC: 45%
Miami: 55%
Miami by 0.9
Recent game performance (last 5):
USC: 28%
Miami: 72%
Miami by 3.0
USC is a slight favorite in Vegas and—for the full season sample—the Trojans are a 2 point favorite on our power rating, with a 57% chance to win that is close to the historical average of around 60% success for 7-seeds against 10-seeds.
Things change when we look at recent play. Surveying the last 15 games (avoiding Miami's blowout of UNC) the Hurricanes win 55% of the time and are a 1-point favorite. When we use the last 5 games (avoiding another Miami outlier), it's a clear Miami win.
Bottom line: I can't imagine taking Miami very far in the tournament with that defense (improving or not), but over one game anything is possible. I started this review pretty agnostic and settled in to thinking the "drift" of both these teams is real. It should be a close game in any case.
Final prediction: Miami 72, USC 71
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