Unverified Voracity Surveys

Site note: A UMHoops/MGoBlog joint CIL is tentatively on for tonight's Illinois game. Tip is at 8:30, game is on BTN, CIL gets going about 15-30 minutes before.

Correction: Dennis Franklin wore #9, not #6 as claimed yesterday, in case you were looking for him in the afro-tastic team picture.

Survey results. The survey hit its maximum very quickly; results can be seen here (for most questions) and here (for the open-ended "what do you hate" question). General impressions:

• Mobile MGoBlog was the big winner in the "new feature" category and will be implemented ASAP. Better integration with MGoVideo was also popular. A unified ticket search came in third.
• About 50% are registered (FYI: even if you aren't interested in posting, logged in users can customize how they see the blog. You can turn some blocks on and off, change the way comments appear, etc.)
• About 10% of people who tried to register never get a response. (If this happens to you, email me.)
• Most people read the board and diaries, with about half participating on the message board and a small number posting diaries, which is about right, IMO.
• Page speed was mostly "good."
• People seem to think the level of self-policing in the comments is about right, but they'd like to see better organization of the user-produced content.
• Advertising is at a tolerable level.

Sorry if you got locked out; I dislike Wufoo's pricing schemes. (I don't want to sign up for something monthly and have to cancel, but I'd pay ten bucks to have a single unlimited survey.)

Clone wars. UMHoops digs out some Kenpom stats and compares this year's basketball team to the 2005 West Virginia team that introduced the world to Gansey and Pittsnogle, et al. The key chart:

The offenses are eerily similar and can quickly be compared: Michigan doesn't shoot as well—though they're not bad—but values the ball more than anyone else in the country; they don't get offensive rebounds or free throws, as they are an extreme POT, which you can see by the percentage of three pointers chucked skyward.

Defensively it's a bit tougher. Michigan looks superior in just about every number up there except turnover percentage, but WVU's defense went up against a lot of good offenses. Michigan not so much.

One thing I did find interesting: Michigan isn't actually that bad on the defensive boards: 33.8 is just about the national average. That's still not good, as an average power conference team with 60+% of its schedule to date against mid- and low-majors should have above-average rebounding. I feel like that sentence was very confusing, but am at a loss to fix it. Rephrase: Michigan's probably a poor defensive rebounding team but not a disastrous one.

A side note: there's been some discussion of Kenpom's grim forecast for Michigan—8-10 in conference and 18-13 overall before the Iowa game, now up to 9-9 and 19-12—and what this says and etc. While I think the Kenpom ratings are worth looking at, keep in mind that they can't account for the absence of Laval Lucas-Perry—currently the team's most efficient offensive player—for about 60% of the season. That's probably worth a game or two (or three!) in Kenpom's projections.

Dylan has an array of interesting observations as well; check his post out.

Elsewhere. The Wall Street Journal takes note of the Big Ten's basketball revival, and does so with heavy deployment of tempo-free statistics.

Is it just me or have mainstream basketball writers taken to advanced stats much more quickly than writers covering any other sport? Baseball writers often take pride in their ignorance. Football broadcasts still propose that 3=7 whenever they mention redzone efficiency. Advanced hockey stats aren't yet important enough to sneer at. Basketball guys, on the other hand, took one look at Kenpom and said "hey, that makes sense." Wonder why that is.

Etc.: Rick Reilly declares beer pong the "next great American pastime," causing reader Jeremy Hekhuis to ask "if reilly is calling something the next great pastime, hasn't its time come and gone?" and causing me to respond "yes."