"My rule was I wouldn't recruit a kid if he had grass in front of his house.
That's not my world. My world was a cracked sidewalk." —Al McGuire

Saturday, December 08, 2012

Ryan's Badgers 8th biggest overachievers to come into Bradley Center at 5 p.m. today (ESPN2) as 2 1/2 to 4 point favorites

At the beginning of the season www.valueaddbasketball.com projected Wisconsin as the 25th best team in the country, but I certainly anticipated a win at the Bradley Center today due to Marquette's home court advantage.  Once it was announced Todd Mayo would not play this year it dropped Marquette out of the Value Add projected Top 40, but when Wisconsin lost Josh Gasser, one of the projected top 100 players in the country, it appeared Marquette would be a solid favorite to win a tight game today.

But give Bo Ryan his due - once again his sum is better than the projected individual players of the team.  His system is working again, putting Wisconsin at No. 9 in www.kenpom.com (making them the 8th biggest overachiever over Value Add projections based on the ratio of preseason Value Add to current Pomeroy rankings).  Jared Berggren was projected as an elite 130th best player of 4000 this year, and he has been even better at 22nd.  Ben Brust was projected in the top 10% of the country (314th) and instead has been even better in just missing the top 1% at 53rd.  Freshman Sam Dekker has almost lived up to his freshman billing at a projected 233rd best in the country, coming in just a little lower as one of the best 8% of all players in the country (320th).

We can make fun of the slow pace - and I do for fun - but put it all together and Las Vegas has moved Wisconsin to a 2 1/2 point favorite today and Pomeroy has them as a 4-point favorite to come into our building at 5 p.m. and win.

Below are the 25 teams that have most overcome their projected Value this year, followed by the 10 biggest duds led by UCLA and Memphis.  Most teams have been pretty close to their projection, and almost one-third have been with 10% of their preseason ranking (e.g. ranked 44th after being projected 40th, or 20th after being projected 22nd).  A few of the duds were due to players not actually playing, such as non-qualifications at Providence or me still having Terrell Stoglin in the database for Maryland after he had left.

Underestimated by Value AddConfActualProjectedBetter
1Florida SEC2157.50
2Gonzaga WCC8344.25
3Michigan B107294.14
4Syracuse BE5193.80
5Duke ACC4133.25
6Cincinnati BE15432.87
7Virginia Commonwealth A1018502.78
8Wisconsin B109252.78
9Purdue B1036972.69
10Belmont OVC31812.61
11Wichita St. MVC28732.61
12Illinois B10421082.57
13Clemson ACC511302.55
14Middle Tennessee SB40922.30
15Wyoming MWC621402.26
16North Dakota St. Sum661412.14
17Illinois Chicago Horz1413012.13
18Bucknell Pat39802.05
19Santa Clara WCC1232512.04
20New Mexico St. WAC991982.00
21Minnesota B1010202.00
22Virginia ACC35691.97
23San Francisco WCC1082111.95
24Boise St. MWC741421.92
25UC Irvine BW1492781.87
Value Add projection dudsConfActualProjectedBetter
1UCLA P123320.06
2Memphis CUSA2530.12
3North Carolina St. ACC2960.21
4Arkansas SEC98210.21
5Baylor B122770.26
6Texas B1241110.27
7Texas Tech B12210620.30
8Maryland ACC70220.31
9Houston CUSA199630.32
10Providence BE75240.32

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