hand checks
The ref is seeing what you are: there should be a few more banners up there.
Somebody on the board over the weekend put up a thread mentioning some of the oft-repeated myths and memes in college basketball concerning this team or that player. I thought I would take a crack at a few of those surrounding the crackdown on handchecks and charges this year.
With the New Charge Rules Scoring is Up
Though there's still time to sort things out, but here's Adjusted Offensive ratings for all teams on Kenpom:
Missed SEO opportunity in not labeling this graph "Climate Change"
You can see something needed to be done, since offense had been declining steadily at all levels of D-I*, and bottomed last season. And you can see something was definitely done. I am comparing only the first half of this season to the entireties of the others so perhaps offense naturally declines as the year progresses and you play more conference foes who know your schemes. If so it hasn't affected Michigan that much. Here's the average points scored by Michigan and their opponents (some M's score plus Opp's score divided by 2) in regular season games over that period:
 |
| Another explanation for the increase in scoring this year is the exponential growth in Canada's swag markets over the last two quarters. [Fuller] |
| Season | First 19 | After 19 | Diff |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2003 | 68.8 | 67.7 | -1.2 |
| 2004 | 65.6 | 66.5 | +0.9 |
| 2005 | 63.7 | 61.7 | -2.0 |
| 2006 | 67.9 | 72.9 | +5.0 |
| 2007 | 62.2 | 62.4 | -0.2 |
| 2008 | 68.1 | 63.5 | -4.6 |
| 2009 | 66.8 | 63.8 | -3.0 |
| 2010 | 65.1 | 59.5 | -5.6 |
| 2011 | 64.4 | 65.0 | +0.6 |
| 2012 | 64.7 | 62.0 | -2.7 |
| 2013 | 68.9 | 69.2 | +0.2 |
| 2014 | 70.8 | - | - |
| Avg 2003-'13 | 66.0 | 64.9 | -1.1 |
A point less. Confirmed.
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* [Except the '05 to '06 dip for the mid-majors, which was conference expansion. That's when Cincy and Louisville et al. joined the Big East, and the mid-majors replaced them by plucking football-first degree factories in Florida (UCF, FIU, USF) plus smallish rocky mountain schools and the Trojan Troy Trojans of Troy (We're from Troy!)].
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[Jump for a few more]
Meta: Chicagoans—if we did a Q&A-type event downtown the night before NW'ern would you come? Jared of SPW offered to host it as part of his killer Northwestern package; trying to gauge interest.
As per tradition, bye week Saturday is Wife Day, when sports fans stop to appreciate those who married us—only to discover they had also married this thing that makes us sometimes psychotic, often inconsolable, and constantly spending vast sums for tickets and road trips and apparel. Oh, you are perfectly right to bitch about somebody who plans their wedding on any October Saturday (I hope your every anniversary falls on top of a rivalry game, a hated hockey opponent, the opening throws of basketball season, and the World Series). But let's recognize—male and female (17% of our readership)—that this does make us a particularly needy breed of spouse.
Weeklies: Gifs and F+-ing. Best and Worst made a comic book reference I actually got, and points out the defense was actually doing a good job until the point in the 2nd quarter when they got Roberson'd. He rightly calls out the staff for still making major offensive line changes this late in the season, though I think we're happy they made them. Inside the Box score also brought up the O-line carousel:
* Midway through the first quarter, Joey Burzynski got hurt. So let's review our situation at Left Guard this year. Glasgow started the season there, only to move to center in an attempt to shore up the middle. Chris Bryant was the next man in. He's either injured or not as effective as the staff would like, so he was replaced by Burzynski. When he got hurt, Kyle Bosch entered the lineup. Yep, our 4th string left guard.
Turns out the offensive line should have been playing Indiana all along.
You've seen the Borges be Trollin with Hoke in a rainbow chariot by Drkboarder. But you probably skipped the link. Therefore you missed the rest like:
…and a chicken coop parade for ND, and CMU as the crying Indian in that don't-litter commercial from the '80s, and Akron/UConn as Indiana Jones obstacles. These are going to be weekly he says.
More F/+ please! Here is dnak439 with an updated chart of Big Ten teams by Fremeau's F/+: offense (y-axis) and defense (x-axis).
Hooray for being in the good quadrant; hard to believe MSU's offense is as good (bad?) as Penn State's. Iowa's tracking higher than Northwestern since AIRBHG whiffed on Weisman and nailed the Wildcats' entire backfield. Dnack also made a thing that tracks your rooting interest to get Michigan the Bo Division crown.
[Jump for new and improved Stauskas, GRIII levitates, hand checking enforcement effect on Big Ten teams, the Seeya! chant]
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