We will by 5 and EC was robbed of a 3-pointer.
Somebody's math is mathing

What a game!!

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I’m sure there will be a story up soon but looks like Hubert named coach of the year and RJ named ACC player of the year.

I like our bracket. Not without danger, but a smidgen better.

After the tripping at Hansbrough Indoor, I wanted to remind everyone of the clothesline tackle "Trip" put on R.J. near the end of the first game with DOOK. I guess he didn't see R.J. coming on that one either. Another no call!

I'd have to give my vote to Hubert Davis. No other ACC Coach has done anything with their respective teams that come close to the results Davis got this season compared to what he had last season.

It's crunch time for bubble teams. There are always winners and losers. It's always contentious. A couple of years back, they added 4 more teams to the mix. So 4 more teams are happy. But that didn't change the angst among the rest one whit.

Is 68 teams the best answer? What do you think?

Conclusion​

One of my "Someday" projects has been to gather basketball data and test Dean Smith's possession theory against those of Dean Oliver, Ken Pomeroy, and the like. I also wanted to see how the game has changed. Getting the data for this project was always too expensive of a proposition. Over the past few years I've downloaded certain NCAA.org tables at tournament time, but the idea of downloading 16 tables for each of the 23 years, lining all of the teams up on a spreadsheet, and cleaning up the columns seemed like a daunting task.

In late January I discovered a deep link to those NCAA tables, and using software that I wrote, I was able to get the data into CSV files for each year, then import them into Excel pretty easily. Updating this year's stats each morning now takes all of 8 seconds for me, and you can download these daily updates using the link in the resources below.

I learned much in this journey. I've been focusing on too many variables and on the wrong variables. Knowing that the modern theory of points per possession and Dean's theory are, in the end, equivalent, now has me pondering a conversion of all of my data so that it can be equated with today's public conversations. (Though I still maintain that Dean's method is a more pure assessment of each offense and defense).

Does all of this make the NCAA Tournament make more sense? Probably not. A large one-and-done tournament is a pretty silly way to determine what the best team is. It's till The Most Wonderful Time of the Year, though.

Resources​

NCAA.org Stats Deep Link​

NCAA Statistics

Click to expand...

• year: Substitute the year (2002-).
• Ranking_period: The list of periods is revealed if you View Source in your browser, and find the line that says:"<select name="rp" id="rp" onchange="mask('Processing'); changeRankingPeriod(this.value);">. Currently they are posing 142.0 for the 03/10/2024 update, and that number doesn't consistently increase by 1 each day for some reason. They update this page daily these days, but in early years it was only occasionally.
• sport_code: You can change the sport_code entry and dig into all of the other NCAA sports.
• seq: This is the numeric code for the stat of interest. The stats I used are:

Opponent Stats​

Not many opponent stats are offered by the NCAA, but TeamRankings.com has this info. Their links are in plain, readable English, and look like this:

https://www.teamrankings.com/ncaa-basketball/stat/opponent-assists-per-game

Click to expand...

Click around there and pay attention to the Address Bar and you'll see the links to their pages easily.

Dean Smith's Book​

Dean Smith's book is available in some bookstores, but also at Amazon.

KenPom Stats Explanation​

KenPom.com has the KP stats, but the explanation of the stats is here.

Daily Stats Update​

My daily CSV of this season's NCAA stats can be found in this directory:

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/xlj3...2024.csv?rlkey=iys8uf429dxetemqb378qsrkn&dl=0

Click to expand...

ACC Press Release​

The ACC's often-updated Press Release is at this address. It is excellent, especially going into the tournament:

https://s3.amazonaws.com/sidearm.si...om/documents/2023/11/5/2023_24ACCMBBNotes.pdf

Click to expand...

Table of Contents​

1. Points Per Game
2. Possessions Per Game
3. Field Goal Percentage
4. Field Goal Percentage Breakdown (3pt, 2pt, %from 3)
5. Effective Field Goal Percentage
6. Free Throw Percentage
7. Winning Percentage Prediction
8. Percentage Loss of Ball
9. Assist to Turnover Ratio
10. Assists Per Made Field Goal
11. Tournament Selection Prediction
12. Possession Differential (Rebounding)
13. Offensive Rebounding Percentage
14. Opponent Field Goal Percentage
15. Opponent Field Goal Percentage Breakdown (3pt, 2pt, %from 3)
16. Effective Field Goal Percentage Allowed
17. Percentage Loss of Ball Forced
18. Percentage Loss of Ball Forced vs. Points Per Possession Allowed
19. Opponent Offensive Rebounding Percentage
20. Points Per Possession History at UNC
21. Points Per Possession National History
22. Points Per Possession Against Winning Percentage I (Smith and Modern)
23. Points Per Possession Against Winning Percentage II (Smith and Modern)
24. Is KenPom Any Good (Winning Percentage)?
25. Predicting Tournament Success
26. State of the Game

I will be back to amend this series from time to time, I'm sure. I've just figured out how to download all of the box score data since 2012, so that might generate some notable observations.

Thank you for sticking through this. I originally thought this would take about 10 installments, but I kept discovering more interesting correlations, trends, and exceptions.

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South Carolina’s miracle win was number one then Boston beating Phoenix in a NBA highlight then the Carolina win which lasted maybe 30 seconds. Absolutely no mention of Flip lifting his leg to trip Ingram which the entire nation saw nor the Duke fans after the game throwing objects at the Carolina players. Did anyone else notice how quickly ESPN changed programming after the final buzzer. No post game at all just like two years ago. Also after watching the replay as I felt at the time the clock operator did not start the clock for three seconds late in the game after Duke inbounds.

Prediction Contest Winners, Contest #2 (Unofficial Results)

Check your results. Official Winners announced on 3/12

Top 15 and ties qualify for Grand Prize Contest

Contest #2 Prizes
1st Place - 1-Year Subscription to Premium, plus miscellaneous prize
2nd Place - 6-Month Subscription to Premium, plus miscellaneous prize
3rd Place - 3-Month Subscription to Premium
4th Place-- 3- month Subscription to Premium

Initial rankings came out several days ago and I believe UNC came out of the gates at #32. After the loss to UConn, we dropped to #37.

A bet I would place all my money on no one guessing correctly, is the current #1 ranked team. None other than the mighty cougars of Brigham Young University. Yes, you read that correctly. I only post this part to see some of you blow a fuse over the science of the NET rankings.

Now I’ll slowly step away to watch the comedy take place. Have a great night. 😁

It is the battle of the blues and for a little while bragging rights until next weekend in Washington DC.