tempo-freeeeeeee

Quality looks. Photos via Dustin Johnson and UMHoops.

(Stats via Kenpom($).)

With a 90-80 win against Oakland on Saturday, Michigan has completed the competitive section of their nonconference schedule with the exception of their annual inexplicable nonconference opponent stashed in the heart of the Big Ten schedule. This year's: @ Arkansas on January 21st. Why does Michigan do it? I have no idea. It's a persistent mystery.

Anyway, we won't learn much of anything about the team we don't already know as they take on Arkansas Pine Bluff, Alabama A&M, and Bradley. The former two are ranked 300+ by Kenpom; Bradley is 209 and has a loss to Wofford on their resume. We have 95% of the data we'll have by the time Penn State rolls into down on the 29th. So what have we learned?

The Big Ten is insane. Michigan checks in at #39 in the Kenpom ratings, which is good enough for a projected conference record of… 8-10. Glurp. That's because there are five teams in the league currently ranked in the top 15: #1 Wisconsin, #3 OSU, #12 Michigan State, #13 Indiana, and #14 Purdue. Michigan is currently leading a second tier from 39 to 52 with Illinois, Minnesota, and Northwestern. Nebraska's by itself in the 70s; Penn State and Iowa are horrible.

The Big Ten has a monster lead on the #2 Big Twelve for the title of best tempo-free conference in the country. It is a brutal league. Without a hugely disappointing tourney, it will be a runaway winner in the KenPom rankings for the second straight year.

Michigan is not in the top tier because of their defense. Their offense is 21st nationally (about which more later); their defense is 80th. The league has four defenses allowing less than 90 points per 100 possessions*; Wisconsin and OSU are 1-2 nationally at 81 and 83.5. Michigan's giving up 95, which is good for ninth. They beat out only Northwestern, Iowa, and Penn State.

That's a disappointing backslide for a team that you'd expect to be better on D. Darius Morris was the only loss and Michigan went from one of the youngest teams in the country to middle of the pack, but Michigan was 34th last year. Small sample size caveats apply; IIRC last year at this time Michigan's defense was just as shaky and they pulled it together in the Big Ten.

*[adjusted for schedule strength]

They are #1 in the country at something. Go ahead, guess. You'll never get it. No, none of those things: Michigan is #1 nationally in making two pointers. I should have told you to sit down. I cannot be held responsible for people falling over at this news.

Now that you've recovered, it makes some sense, doesn't it? I mean, Jordan Morgan missed a bunny against Oakland and Greg Kelser joked about how that will cripple his 77% shooting, and you were like "whoah." There is one guy on the team with enough minutes to register in the stats who's shooting under 55% percent, that Jon Horford at a horrendous awful terrible 53%. Michigan's four highest-volume two point shooters are at 76% (Morgan), 58% (Smotrycz), 56% (Hardaway) and 55% (Burke).

This is partially an effect of the schedule. The defenses they've gone up against have not generally been high quality. It was somewhat ugly against Virginia, possessor of the one elite defense they've faced so far. Michigan went 12 of 28 from two and only stayed in the game with blistering three point shooting—they actually shot better from 3 in that game than 2, 46%-42%.

That's an abnormally good defense, sure, but half of Michigan's Big Ten games are going to be against Virginia-quality Ds. This is a three-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust conference. That second half against Duke, when they tore up ALL OF THE PLUMLEES, is encouraging. They're #1 for some reason, it's not all schedule.

The rest of their offensive stats are basically in line with expectations. They shoot a ton of threes (20th), are only decent at making them (86th), rarely turn the ball over, rarely grab offensive rebounds, and rarely get to the line. POT, now and forever.

That's not a revelation. That's just how Beilein plays the game. We should be looking at these items in relation to last year. The four factors:

• SHOOTING. Massively improved thanks to the aforementioned two-point fiesta. Third nationally.
• TURNOVERS. Poor relative to last year. There is no easy finger to point: everyone's TO rates are up. Burke does have an alarmingly high 22.6; raise your hand if "freshman PG's most obvious flaw is an excessive quantity of turnovers" surprises you. Right, that's Josh Pastner and no one else.
• OFFENSIVE REBOUNDING. Less putrescent than usual! Last year they were the Maryland-Baltimore County of offensive rebounding. This year they're Marist. This gives you no context at all. They're up three percent, good for a significant leap.
• FREE THROW RATE. Also less putrescent than usual; they've gone from the Towson of free throw rate to… well, not good but also not terrible.

Smotrycz needs to stay on the floor. Smotrycz has improved massively in just about any category you care to name save one: fouls per 40 minutes. He's at 5.9 this year and was at 6.4 before staying out of foul trouble against Oakland. Minutes that do not go to Smotrycz go to Stu Douglass and Matt Vogrich, statistically inferior players in almost literally all possible ways. And those stats don't even account for the defensive problems Michigan has when Smotrycz is on the bench. Michigan will get significantly better if Smotrycz can get his minutes percentage from the 50s into the 70-75 range.

The same assertion goes for Morgan but at least he has a positional analogue on the roster. Michigan's backup 4 is 6'4" Zack Novak.

Defensive issues. The main one: too many quality three-point looks from opponents. They have not been burned by it yet but Oakland missed an array of wincingly wide-open three pointers, as did Virginia. Duke… did not miss, nor did they shoot a lot of quality threes. But the overall point is this: Michigan is facing almost as many threes as they jack themselves. If they're still near 300th in threes faced at the end of the season opponents will have made it rain and Michigan will be staring at a disappointing tourney seed.

The other stuff is the usual: they're mediocre at defending twos, rarely get turnovers, and foul too much. They're kind of short, kind of young, and not that athletic, so none of these things are surprises, but, like, Wisconsin. Michigan can be better defensively—they were better last year—and getting that leap from mediocre to quality will be the difference between a season spent idling near the bubble and waiting for Stauskas/GRIII/McGary and a decent shot at a Sweet 16.

Novak usage. Zack Novak's shooting 64% from two, 44% from three, and has a TO rate under ten. His offensive rating is off the charts… and his usage is in the "limited roles" range. While you can't really run an offense through him, if Michigan could focus a little more on getting him shots it seems like he would reward that effort. That pump-and-step-in jumper he's developed is money.

--------------------------------------

Some Oakland-specific things? Sure.

Trey Burke! That is all.

Trey Burke! No it's not. How crazy would it be if he was backing Morris and eating up half of the minutes currently being forked over to Douglass and Vogrich? Ah, hell. That crossover-in-a-phone-booth that led to a wide open Hardaway three was fantastic, as were many other things. He just needs to get an increment better here (TO rate) and there (three point shooting) to be a bonafide collegiate superstar.

NBA: you hate 5'11" point guards. Leave him to us for now.

Laval Lucas-Perry. The festival of charges and other ill-advised decisions combined with defensive lapses to paint a picture of why LLP and Beilein had a falling out that led to his transfer. I was going to point out that he would still be welcome on a team with zero bench but I looked him up and he's shooting 26% from three and 48% from two. Michigan's getting that out of Douglas.

He does get to the line a lot, FWIW.

Tim Hardaway, come out and play. In the second half it seems like Michigan tries to run its offense through Hardaway for three or four possessions in a row, which is because he has two shots and two points in the first 20 minutes. He refuses to force the issue, which is why his turnover rate remains abnormally low for a guy with high usage. I'd still like to see Michigan force Hardaway into the game earlier; once he starts shooting regularly other opportunities open up.

Brundidge: there is no Brundidge. They have already burned Brundidge's redshirt unless they're going to Devin Gardner him an injury, so insert usual concern about Eso Akunne getting the backup point minutes, such as they are. Akunne looks about as comfortable at the point as I would and the offense gets extraordinarily ponderous when he's in the game.

He hasn't missed a shot yet, though. Let's give him time at the two. I'm not sure if I'm serious here. Vogrich is one for a billion from three, so Akunne may actually provide more value at the moment.

One of the main points of optimism around these parts when it comes to the basketball team is its youth. Young players are usually not so efficient, usually not so safe with the ball, and teams featuring swaths of them usually don't play very well unless they're about to get some Final Fours vacated up in here.

Earlier this year I made the case that when people point to the ill-fated '09 team as a reason to rein your excitement in they weren't necessarily wrong, but they weren't necessarily right, either. Citing a Big Ten Geeks study that showed going from freshman to sophomore results in more improvement than going from a sophomore to senior, I pointed out how absurdly young Michigan was in not only minutes but in usage:

In 2009 freshmen played 31% of Michigan's minutes. This year it's 44%.

What's more, the second and third highest usage guys on the team are freshmen who play at least 60% of minutes. In 2009 Douglass and Novak had low usage and Laval Lucas-Perry was a mid-year transfer who only played 33.% of Michigan's minutes. The percentage of possessions used by freshman this year is vastly higher. Two years ago: 26%. Now: 45%.

Now that the season's over we've got a bit of an issue, though: Tim Hardaway did not have an average freshman year, nor did Jordan Morgan. We can expect Generic Freshman to improve a lot, but what about Incredible Freshman? The threat of regression to the mean looms.

The guys at Big Ten Geeks were kind enough to provide the raw data that they used for that study and I've set about whittling it down. My first thought was that I would chart freshman and sophomore ORtgs and throw together a polynomial trendline that would probably show guys who start off with a bang like Hardaway and Morgan improve a lot less than guys like Adreian Payne, the hyped MSU freshman who struggled to an 89.5 ORtg—horrible—in about nine minutes a game this year, because of regression and getting better quickly etc etc. That didn't come off because the data is a giant hairball.

Next idea: let's whittle down the data set to freshmen with profiles similar to Michigan's freshman trio and see what happened as sophomores. The Geeks study looks at minutes, ORtg, shot%, eFG%, and TO% from players who entered BCS conferences from 2000 to 2005. Only conference games are considered, which is fine for the Geeks' refinement of a vast lump of data but maybe not so good when we're looking at individual players on which we don't have a ton of info. I'm using the entire freshman seasons for Hardaway, Morgan, and Smotrycz; I'll point out conference numbers for each.

Tim Hardaway, Jr.

Min%	ORtg	Shot%	eFG	TO%
76.2	108.8	26.3	52.0	11.1

Hardaway's in-conference ORtg was a hair under 112. Full season numbers are a good chunk more pessimistic.

Freshmen with usage and efficiency as high as Hardaway are extremely rare. Of the almost 700 players in the Geeks study only 14 finished their freshman years with a shot percentage over 25, an ORtg greater than 106, and played half their team's minutes. The names on the list are tantalizing even once you get past the group of total superstars who outperformed Hardaway's freshman year. Those superstars:

• JJ Redick (Duke): 115 ORtg
• Tyler Hansbrough (UNC): 120
• Chris Lofton (Tennessee): 128
• Anthony Roberson (Florida): 115
• Craig Smith (BC):  113 with 29 shot%
• Chris Taft (Pitt): 112 with 28 shot%

These guys* are in Hardaway's range:

• Darius Rice(Miami): 110
• Rick Rickert(Minnesota): 112
• Caron Butler(UConn): 110
• Kevin Pittsnogle(Yes That Pittsnogle): 107
• Mike Sweetney (Georgetown): 108
• Dominic James (Marquette): 107
• Aaron Bruce (Baylor): 107

I probably don't have to tell you about Butler, Sweetney, or Pittsnogle. Darius Rice actually sat out his freshman year as a non-qualifier; he was Miami's star player for the entirety of his career. Rickert was kind of a headcase, entered the NBA draft after his sophomore year, got punched by Kevin Garnett, and became an Australasian National Basketball League All Star. James had an explosive freshman year but turned into Bracey Wright afterwards and eventually didn't get drafted.

Bruce is from Australia (seriously) and his career, like his toilet, went in reverse: he was awesome as a freshman but his minutes, points, an efficiency steadily declined over the course of his career, or at least would have if he didn't shoot 33% on twos as a sophomore despite being a 40% three point shooter. What happened? Well, Baylor almost got the death penalty because their coach covered up a murder. Baylor's nonconference schedule was cancelled. So… yeah. That's kind of an outlier. Let's drop him.

What happened to the guys in the range as sophomores? Here's a table. I bolded improvements.

Team	Player	Min Delta	ORtg Delta	Shot% Delta	eFG Delta	TO Delta
Mia	Rice	1.2	-3.3	1.5	-2.5	-0.4
Minn	Rickert	11.3	-8.4	4.9	-8.4	-6.9
UConn	Butler	14.4	3.4	4.0	5.9	-0.3
GTown	Sweetney	14.0	6.1	-2.1	-0.5	0.3
Marq	James	6.4	-8.1	-0.9	-11.7	-2.2
WVU	Pittsnogle	-10.5	-1.1	4.5	0.0	-0.3
AVERAGE		7.1	-1.6	2.1	-2.9	-1.9

On the whole they shot more but less effectively, turned it over slightly less, and played slightly more. Individually, James collapsed and Rickert turned into Dion Harris (apparently except punchable). Rice ended up treading water.

Pittsnogle was a heroic, heroic shooter to keep up his 53.6(!) eFG rate while launching almost a third(!) of WVU shots when he was on the floor but didn't even start. Someone should ask Beilein how he could have played a guy who shot 50% from 2 and 43% from 3 less than 20 minutes a game in 2005-06. Butler and Sweetney took major steps forward, especially Butler. Butler was off to the lottery; Sweetney stuck around, then got drafted in the top ten.

The Upshot

Tim Hardaway's freshman season was ridiculous, and as a bouncy 6'5" wing forward his closet comparable on the list is Caron Butler. Unfortunately, Michigan can't expect him to do what Butler did—that leap in production is Morris-like and obviously an outlier—and his cohort ran in place as sophomores, losing efficiency but taking more of the load. His late-season improvement suggests he's already better than his full year numbers indicate, though, and while he can't add many minutes he can maintain his shooting over the course of the season and become more of an assist guy as he develops a drive to the bucket.

*[Ed: The dataset included Carl Landry, a JUCO transfer, and former UGA guard Ezra Williams. I dropped Landry for obvious reasons and after looking Williams up on the internet I think there's an error somewhere. ESPN shows no games for him; Statsheet shows a 42% FG shooter who shot 30% from 3 and had 2 assists per game, so his shiny ORtg seems improbable. The dataset also shows Williams dropping ORtg at the same time Statsheet says he went from a 30% three point shooter to 40% while nearly doubling his attempts. Not sure if that's a data error or just an amazingly strong effect from dropping nonconference games; either way I think his individual case is not representative. He was a good, not great, college player FWIW.]

Jordan Morgan

Min%	ORtg	Shot%	eFG	TO%
59.6	109.0	20	62.7	19.2

Morgan's in-conference ORtg dips to just under 107. While I think the full-season number for Hardaway is more realistic, here I think the conference number might be better. We'll use the same methodology as Hardaway, though.

Morgan doesn't narrow down the dataset quite as extensively but he's not far off. His parameters: >50% minutes, ORtg between 106 and 112, Shot% between 18 and 22. Results: a list of 13 players featuring Dee Brown, Devin Harris, Rajon Rondo, Courtney Sims, Josh Shipp, Ryan Gomes, and some guy named Williams who played for UNC I'm pretty sure is named Jawad but can't be certain. The average player on the list was awesome in college. Morgan crushed all of them in eFG% save Colorado C, McDonald's All-American, and eventual first round pick David Harrison. This is a tribute to Beilein, Morgan, and especially Darius Morris.

We've got some more names here so let's narrow it down to forward/center types. We'll add in an average for all 13 players as well. Those guys:

Team	Player	Min Delta	ORtg Delta	Shot% Delta	eFG Delta	TO Delta
Colorado	David Harrison	2.7	-7.9	0.4	-16.9	-4.7
LSU	Brandon Bass	-6.8	7.4	4.5	5.8	-2.6
Prov	Ryan Gomes	0	2.0	5.7	-2.1	1.4
Mich	Courtney Sims	-0.5	-11.2	1.4	0.3	8
AVERAGE	just the posts	-1.2	-2.4	3.0	-3.2	0.5
ALL	all 13	4.0	-1.2	3.0	-2.3	-1.3

You know all about Sims and his infuriating career. As a sophomore his TO% shot from a bad 17.5 to an impossible 25.5; he only played half the available minutes each year. He'd end up randomly dominating four games every year, then disappearing for long stretches.

Harrison's massive eFG% regression was all but inevitable after he put up a 66.1 as a freshman. He bounced back to near-freshman numbers the next year and ended up a late first round pick.  Bass blew up, left for the draft, and went at the top of the second round. Gomes got better, then just kept getting better. After going 0 for 3 from three in his first two years at Providence he was a 38% three-point shooter as a senior. He was drafted at the tail end of the second round but stuck in the NBA; he's now a Clipper. He's averaged about 12 points a game the last few years.

The Upshot

These are all very good college players (and Courtney Sims), but I think we all know a significant chunk of Morgan's production would not exist if he wasn't running the pick and roll with Darius Morris. His cohort ran in place and the posts actually took a small step back. Harrison's eFG% change is a bit ominous, since he's the only player on the list with a number anywhere near Morgan's insane 63%.

Evan Smotrycz

Min%	ORtg	Shot%	eFG	TO%
44.2	99.8	23	51.8	15.4

Smotrycz drops to a 96 ORtg—one spot worse than Douglass—in conference play.

I thought Smotrycz's relatively pedestrian numbers would bring a flood of candidates but when you look for guys with between 35 and 55 percent of minutes, an ORtg between 96 and 102, and a shot percentage between 21 and 25 you only get eight players.

There are ten that popped up but I chucked out a couple of JUCO transfers for obvious reasons. One, former FSU guard Monte Cummings, was in the army, served a tour of duty in Bosnia, and then hit FSU at 24. He's now in the Finnish league but got in some trouble for weed. He has a more interesting life than you do.

Anway, this is a less notable group of names but the good news is they collectively blew up as sophomores:

Team	Player	Min Delta	ORtg Delta	Shot% Delta	eFG Delta	TO Delta
Bama	Alonzo Gee	18.6	-7.7	1.9	-15.5	-5.1
Stanford	Lawrence Hill	40.5	22.6	5.0	12.3	-1.3
Stanford	Josh Childress	32.8	9.7	1.9	0.6	-2.5
Oregon	Luke Jackson	17.8	22.0	3.6	6.8	-6.1
Nova	Allan Ray	14	17.5	8	10.7	-3.6
Rutgers	JR Inman	34.3	-6.4	4.1	-9.6	-2.0
Kansas	Julian Wright	23.0	6.3	1.2	-5.0	-4.6
BC	Sean Marshall	1.4	6.3	3.5	5.2	-1.2
AVERAGE		22.8	8.8	3.7	0.7	-3.3

(Only Ray and Gee were above 100 as freshmen here, so the numbers are biased towards the lower end of the range—even if you take Smotrycz's conference numbers this is a pretty fair comparison.)

So that's a bunch of guys who got insanely better, Gee, and one guy (Inman) who took to Facebook to accuse his former head coach of "cook[ing] a steak of turmoil" for ruining his senior year, seemingly because he can't play basketball.

The Upshot

It's probably not realistic to expect Smotrycz to see all of the vast improvement his cohort did because I'm betting all of the players above played on teams that lost players in the offseason. If Darius Morris does what it seems the world expects him to that won't be the case at Michigan and Smotrycz isn't suddenly going to be logging 85% of Michigan's minutes. However, there's no reason he can't be significantly more efficient even if he's coming off the bench.

Collective Upshot

Caron Butler, Jordan Morgan, and Josh Childress

The freshmen == improvement meme gets a little sketchy once you get into the rarefied air Morgan and Hardaway reside in. Both of their cohorts essentially didn't improve at all. They didn't get worse—increased usage is naturally paired with decreased ORtg—but each leap into the stratosphere was coupled with one guy treading water and one guy regressing badly.

Michigan fans who watched the two guys play all year know who is who in that situation. Morgan is probably going to tread water. His offense is dependent on other players, his eFG% already massive, and his athleticism is just okay. He's likely to regress to the mean in his shooting and while he'll cut down on the turnovers* and up other bits of his game all that adds up to pretty much the same guy. His improvement will have to come on the defensive end (read: STOP FOULING).

Hardaway, on the other hand, exists in even more rarefied air if you look at the tougher conference schedule. His three point shooting streak extends over the second, tougher half of an entire frickin' year and he's got the physical ability to dominate his position, unlike Morgan. Also his dad is Tim Hardaway.

As for Smotrycz, everyone's giving him an owlish look and hoping he spends the offseason sleeping in the gym so he can be the guy he was supposed to be after he blew up on the AAU circuit two summers ago. His cohort saw three people turn into All-American-type players, three people get a lot better and two guys regress. Split the difference and Michigan should be able to expect efficiency out of him similar to what they got out of Hardaway this year, albeit at considerably reduced usage. Josh Childress is a bit much, but of Michigan's three freshmen he's the most likely to look like a different player next year.

*[Of course Courtney Sims is the lone significant exception to this rule. Argh.]

Oh, I'm an idiot. WCBN's fundraising drive lasts until March 20th, which is… um… four days ago. I said I'd give them a plug. This is it. Their online donation form is still up, though, so this isn't completely useless.

Pads! OH MY GOD IT'S SPRING PRACTICE VIDEO

Excellent savvy on the part of the athletic department to defuse any panic about Michigan wearing white pants this fall. Someone in the department has learned about the internet.

The Wolverine Blog has some spring practice content up, with five guys with the most to lose and most to gain. Maize and Blue Nation has had "whispers come across his desk" that may be random unreliable internet stuff but include reassuring comments like "Craig Roh three point stance" and "Thomas Gordon seeming competent at safety."

Think about that bit: Thomas Gordon seems like the most likely of what will be three or four moved linebackers to be a competent free safety due to his size, speed, and high school position. He was a strongside linebacker last year. Cam Gordon is a strapping guy headed for 230 pounds everyone thought would play linebacker even when he was a receiver. He started at free safety. This year we might (will probably?) see those guys switch positions.

/shakes fist at sky

The second-dumbest thing. Apparently I'm not done with people who say stupid things about Jalen Rose, but what am I supposed to do when Jason Whitlock writes this?

And if it’s clear Rose and Jimmy King were speaking in past tense, there would’ve been no need for Rose to send Hill and Jay Williams tweets before the documentary aired explaining that’s how the Fab Five felt 20 years ago.

Or it was clear but since it was not explicit Rose made it so before the damn thing ever came out, for all the good that did. Whitlock then goes on with his usual condescending What Ails Black Folk crusade because that's what he does. Here's Dave Zirin at the Nation—high up on the list of websites I never thought I'd have cause to link to on MGoBlog—annihilating Whitlock*.

Meanwhile, Frank Beckmann should drop the "mann" from his last name:

I love that Jack Sharp looks like he could be Purdue's head coach. I don't love that a guy closely associated with the University is essentially Glenn Beck.

*[This is not an endorsement of the Nation's opinion on anything other than Jason Whitlock. I still remember that back in the day the most ludicrously communist Daily columnist during my time as an undergrad got a coveted internship there that he used to write more ludicrously communist pieces. It is a silly place.]

Bah, Burlon. Brandon Burlon's strep infection/bad reaction to antibiotics is probably going to knock him out for the entire weekend. Red's already said playing Friday is out of the question and this doesn't sound like he's going to be able to go at all:

Burlon — out of the lineup for both games this past weekend at Joe Louis Arena — has been plagued by an “inflamed esophagus,” according to Michigan coach Red Berenson.

The junior defenseman has been in and out of the hospital since last Monday when he came down with strep throat. He’s had trouble eating solid food and has lost about 15 pounds over the past week.

Also in that article: Shawn Hunwick is having a mid-life crisis because he never wants to leave Michigan. His first action is taking a fifth year. Suggestion: master's degree. It worked for me.

Gotta collect 'em all. Ray Vinopal's transfer destination is Pitt, which is indeed closer to home—it's about an hour—and also features a bunch of Michigan's former coaches, including his position coach. Because this is a Michigan safety we're talking about he will become an All-American now that he's free from the clutches of Angry Michigan Safety-Hating God.

Guh. You don't even need to know what SDPI is to know this is true:

/shakes fist at Greg Robinson hire
/also 3-3-5 installation
/actually hasn't stopped shaking fist since January 2nd

HT: Blutarsky.

Even more hockey recruiting. The United States of Hockey checked out a recent NTDP game and reports back on goalie John Gibson, amongst others:

John Gibson: The big goaltender looks like a pro goalie when he plays. He takes up so much net whether he’s standing up or on his knees. During the shootout, when he came out to challenge, I think the net basically disappeared. When I say the moves Gaudreau and Girgensons put on Gibson were nasty, I mean… just filthy. The big guy made 35 saves, including several key stops late.

I asked one of the team staffers if Gibson was excited about his season and his commitment to Michigan. The reply, “Gibby doesn’t get excited about much of anything.”

So Gibson is the exact opposite of Shawn Hunwick. Warning: don't read the bits on Rocco Grimaldi. They will make you sad he is headed for North Dakota.

Kenpom is the bible. Pete Thamel's NYT article on how accepted Kenpom is amongst college basketball coaches makes me wonder what it will take for halftime statistics to feature offensive rebounding percentage. The brilliant/frustrating thing about tempo-free numbers is that they're stupidly easy to explain (with the admittedly vast exception of "offensive rating"): we took this number, and then we divided it by something. This allows coaches to say things like this:

“I’m not a math geek,” said the George Mason assistant coach Chris Caputo, who does all of the team’s scouting reports. “But it gives me a quick statistical synopsis of who they are before we watch tape and personnel. What do they do well? What are their strengths and weaknesses? Where do their points come from? It’s a snapshot of relevant statistics.”

No football or baseball coach that confesses he looks at advanced metrics would start off his statement "I'm not a math geek," or at least they'd obviously be lying. With Kenpom it's plausible Caputo just knows how to divide.

The frustrating part about all this is how stubborn the broadcasting establishment is about incorporating this stuff. I'm tired of seeing "FG%" next to "three pointers" and trying to figure out on the fly what each team's percentage on twos is.

Ain't nobody there. Mmmm fluffy headline:

Brady Hoke reaffirms Wolverines' love for recruiting from Detroit

I'll take that over "Darius Morris can't be sure he's returning to Michigan State" any day, though. The Hoke Media 180 continues unabated. Let's hope it's as important as the media thinks it is.

Etc.: Northwestern won't be adding D-I hockey either. Notre Dame seems to be preparing for life without Michael Floyd. Minnesota and Wisconsin nonconference schedule issues. Derek Dooley gets a "year zero," which seems fair but makes me think about Nick Sheridan. The Hoover Street Rag has fired up its annual hockey tournament preview. Yost Built on the BTHC—FWIW, I doubt that both Alaska schools will end up in the same conference because I don't think you can exempt four games up there, thus depriving them of their main enticement.