college basketball

Desperately grasping at something, anything, that would stop me from gagging after yesterday's loss had me ask myself: "If this fractured team is miraculously capable of piecing things back together the rest of the season, will it make up for last night's embarrasing loss?"

We all know the schedule:

• MSU at home
• Purdue on the road
• IU at home

After yesterday, I hate everything, and I'm sure some of you may even object to me asking the question, but I had to ask because I sure as hell don't know.

4 wins from another B1G Title.

Now let's bang...

 

...posbang, that is.

Duke 81-MD 83

Can I get a woo?

 

 

Tim Hardaway Jr. is #68 in this preseason ranking:

http://www.cbssports.com/collegebasketball/story/15755657/2011-12-season...

Personally, I'd take him over William Buford of OSU (in the top twenty there), who I see as less versatile as Hardaway. Anyway, it's probably asking too much for a preseason ranking to be anything more than a discussion topic.

The California Institute of Technology (my alma mater!) broke a 310 game conference losing streak, beating Occidental College (president Obama's alma mater!) 46-45 on a last second free throw.  The Caltech Beavers play in the very competitive SCIAC (Southern California Intercollegiate Atheletic Conference), in NCAA DIvision III.

 

The last time the Beavers won a conference game was Jan. 23, 1985 - almost two years before I was born.  People are gonna get hammered tonight in Pasadena.

 

 

http://sports.espn.go.com/los-angeles/news/story?id=6149755

http://espn.go.com/blog/collegebasketballnation/post/_/id/23931/caltech-celebrates-win-like-its-1985

 

 

Or, why my bracket is a mess.

To follow up on the previous KenPom charts and graphs, I decided to pick my NCAA tourney bracket based on Ken's predictions and see how accurate he is.  The way I used the data is as follows:  I assumed that M = (AdjOffence - AdjDefense)* (AdjTempo)/100 gives an average margin of victory for the dataset.  Then, M1 - M2 = margin of victory difference between the two team playing.  To apply to the Michigan/Ohio State games gives
Michigan = (107.0 - 92.7) * (62.7/100) = 8.99
Ohio State = (118.9 - 89.8) * (65.8 / 100) = 19.1
Which predicts a 10.1 point margin of victory for OSU, pretty close to the actual KenPom prediction.

I'll save you all the eye chart of the data table.  If you're interested, it's here: 
http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AtVjC1g8WVJfdFFJR0F4ZEhRNGQyVTZB...
The relevant data:

					predicted	actual
team	adjusted tempo	adjusted offense	adjusted defense	difference	rd1
Duke	66.6852	121.47903	85.90015	23.72584729	28.71596632	29
Kansas	68.3863	121.44865	86.07246	24.19246742	24.84369214	16
Wisconsin	60.2126	116.45837	87.28726	17.56468378	11.29768539	4
Ohio St.	65.8254	118.95206	89.81885	19.17705202	17.99644835	17
Syracuse	70.746	117.86636	89.08539	20.36138504	17.3322846	23
Kentucky	69.4046	115.499	87.67961	19.30793635	17.37462094	29
Brigham Young	72.8212	117.39741	89.58698	20.25188885	8.889108347	7
West Virginia	63.4144	117.45049	90.03022	17.3883997	15.9712738	27
Kansas St.	71.0506	115.80342	88.85456	19.14732672	18.92650121	20
Maryland	70.1779	119.08432	91.72191	19.20236473	14.6032751	12
Georgetown	66.568	117.55443	90.86621	17.76581429	12.0774709	-14
Baylor	65.821	119.55356	92.74282	17.64709718	12.01782068	9
Purdue	67.1526	109.82044	86.43841	15.70164108	5.331953813	8
California	68.4634	121.03346	95.61323	17.40355375	4.205805859	15
Villanova	72.8674	118.6973	93.87151	18.0899077	19.06129835	3
Clemson	69.0581	110.39498	87.65073	15.70674691	0.24014592	8
Texas	72.7178	113.39859	90.23584	16.84344222	5.30461363	-1
Temple	61.2054	107.49016	85.70485	13.33378613	4.035245019	-13
Florida St.	66.8561	105.16445	83.88638	14.22568776	2.918960477	-7
Utah St.	61.5388	116.42159	92.9556	14.44068865
Missouri	70.5163	109.76675	87.83338	15.46660099
Xavier	70.7384	115.82011	92.69146	16.36083695	1.677395019	11
Texas A&M	65.6301	111.89438	89.90554	14.43129768	-0.009390973	16
Michigan St.	67.1182	112.03972	90.26292	14.61619618	10.01710655	3
Minnesota	66.6113	114.14477	92.1013	14.68344193
Butler	65.1637	109.60831	88.44321	13.79196227	0.483029584	18
Georgia Tech	69.6931	109.49437	88.67489	14.50974102	2.127220831	5
Marquette	63.7768	114.2881	92.58042	13.84446366	-1.604015104	-2
Washington	73.212	112.62146	91.52044	15.44847876
Pittsburgh	61.8641	111.69304	90.87344	12.87985816	10.70287965	23
Virginia Tech	69.215	107.40448	87.82223	13.55385434
Northern Iowa	59.905	107.33922	87.87319	11.66112527	-0.983365598	3
Old Dominion	64.0632	107.91845	88.5319	12.4196443
Texas El Paso	69.45	107.47143	88.3081	13.30893269
Tennessee	69.4899	106.15591	87.3393	13.07564347	0.873802425	3
Vanderbilt	69.7518	114.01593	94.1034	13.8893481	3.130584581	-1
Nevada Las Vegas	67.3486	109.46974	90.69505	12.64449087
Notre Dame	63.7293	119.82189	99.29155	13.08384197	0.66419767	-1
Louisville	67.2914	114.92586	95.31303	13.19774789
San Diego St.	64.6273	110.97383	92.09351	12.20184105
Mississippi St.	67.3041	109.28839	90.90574	12.37227714
Arizona St.	62.2639	110.10876	91.62218	11.51046568
St. Mary's	67.99	114.92716	95.70062	13.07212455
Oklahoma St.	68.0078	112.20736	93.99986	12.38252019
Dayton	66.2161	105.97277	88.83869	11.34551955
Miami FL	66.4123	113.37386	95.10575	12.13227202
New Mexico	68.6401	114.31427	95.96488	12.59503965	7.920566861	5
Richmond	64.1081	108.36048	91.18129	11.0132523	-2.058872242	-9
Florida	65.4107	112.27696	94.90552	11.3627805
Wake Forest	70.2826	106.582	90.16424	11.53882859

Calculating the probable winners in this fashion gave a win/loss of 24/8.  And, four of those that are wrong were predicted to be 3 point games, and ended up +/- 3.  Here's the corresponding chart.



I calculated the total average margin of error (absolute value) for all games at 7.44, and margin of error in games correct at 7.07, and margin of error in games wrong at 10.6.

I next calculated the distribution of error.  Since I used absolute value in the previous calculation, I ended up with half a bell-curve distribution.  Data:

+/-5	+/-10	+/-15	+/-20	+/-25
14	9	4	4	0

Chart: