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Basketball question for the numbers geeks

nelsonmuntz

nelsonmuntz

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It feels like there are more blowouts in major conference games than in past years. Is there an easy place to search and analyze this?
 
1) Just about every major conference is top-heavy this year. When you get David vs Goliath most nights, Goliath usually feasts. See my thread on the subject

2) Also contributing - bigger conferences with unbalanced scheduling. You got a bunch of outliers inserted into schedules, you get blowouts. And you have these ungodly unbalanced schedules, too - if the conference picks badly, and you get 2 against a lightweight, more blowouts.
 
pepband99 said:
1) Just about every major conference is top-heavy this year. When you get David vs Goliath most nights, Goliath usually feasts. See my thread on the subject

2) Also contributing - bigger conferences with unbalanced scheduling. You got a bunch of outliers inserted into schedules, you get blowouts. And you have these ungodly unbalanced schedules, too - if the conference picks badly, and you get 2 against a lightweight, more blowouts.
Expand ...

I liked your thread, but I am trying to figure out if these unholy blowouts are just perception, or there is a growing gap in competitiveness between the top and bottom teams WITHIN the major conferences. This could be talent oriented, or could be winning teams running up the score because it helps them with the efficiency ratings.
 
pepband99 said:
1) Just about every major conference is top-heavy this year. When you get David vs Goliath most nights, Goliath usually feasts. See my thread on the subject

2) Also contributing - bigger conferences with unbalanced scheduling. You got a bunch of outliers inserted into schedules, you get blowouts. And you have these ungodly unbalanced schedules, too - if the conference picks badly, and you get 2 against a lightweight, more blowouts.
Expand ...
RuffRuff touched on this in your other thread. I'm not surprised by this.

In the past, you could be a mid major and get a kid who blossomed into a really good junior or senior for you. Think about a lot of those upset teams in the Dance, senior backcourts or a really good upperclassmen who gets hot. Now? Those guys leave the mid major the first time they get a big program's eye. Think about a guy like Malachi Smith. Shows really well for Dayton and instead of them having him back and building around him? Zip. He's coming off the bench for the #2 team in the country and getting a bigger paycheck.
 
Interesting question. I regularly take a look at the results for the top 25 teams most days.

I've seen some scores where the ranked team or higher ranked team won by a large margin, while other times the margins are tighter or even the ranked team ended up losing. I've also noticed that most nights there are few to no upsets over the ranked teams. Again I'm not sure if this is any different than prior years.

I really can't say if things are any different this year than past years. But if it is, it could be due to programs loading up on transfers via the portal at the expense of less desirable programs or ones that aren't offering as much NIL .

I wouldn't be surprised if the bottom half of some of the major conference programs lost some of their more talented players via the portal to the programs that are doing well this year, while not being able to replace them with equally talented players, while the programs at the top of these conferences are loading up on talented transfers and some incoming freshmen.

If anyone finds some statistics that support this, please share it in this thread.
 
.-.
Deepster said:
RuffRuff touched on this in your other thread. I'm not surprised by this.

In the past, you could be a mid major and get a kid who blossomed into a really good junior or senior for you. Think about a lot of those upset teams in the Dance, senior backcourts or a really good upperclassmen who gets hot. Now? Those guys leave the mid major the first time they get a big program's eye. Think about a guy like Malachi Smith. Shows really well for Dayton and instead of them having him back and building around him? Zip. He's coming off the bench for the #2 team in the country and getting a bigger paycheck.
Expand ...
Yup. You even have second tier 1's feeding top tier, ala Silas. There is a talent consolidation happening at the top of the sport. This will equal more blowouts, less cinderella's and a short list of teams in March that can win it. College hoops is about 18-20 teams max that have any chance of winning a title these days - it's the usuals. It you take a look at the top 20, it's basically them sans Nebraska/Vanderbilt, plus Vill, Bama, StJ, UK. You're not going to find teams like Butler out of the Horizon getting to the title. The FAUs & SDSU's in the F4 is never happening again. I'm even surprised Few is still competing at his level - although he's going the old guy route and international, which is pretty smart for his program. Teams like St Mary's are starting to fade.
 
DogMania said:
Interesting question. I regularly take a look at the results for the top 25 teams most days.

I've seen some scores where the ranked team or higher ranked team won by a large margin, while other times the margins are tighter or even the ranked team ended up losing. I've also noticed that most nights there are few to no upsets over the ranked teams. Again I'm not sure if this is any different than prior years.

I really can't say if things are any different this year than past years. But if it is, it could be due to programs loading up on transfers via the portal at the expense of less desirable programs or ones that aren't offering as much NIL .

I wouldn't be surprised if the bottom half of some of the major conference programs lost some of their more talented players via the portal to the programs that are doing well this year, while not being able to replace them with equally talented players, while the programs at the top of these conferences are loading up on talented transfers and some incoming freshmen.

If anyone finds some statistics that support this, please share it in this thread.
Expand ...

Somewhere there is a post that the Top 12 have by far the fewest losses of a Top 12 this late in the season in a long time, possibly forever.

I do not remember so many intra-conference blowouts in the past, especially of games that seem to get completely out of hand in the last 10 minutes.
 
Deepster said:
RuffRuff touched on this in your other thread. I'm not surprised by this.

In the past, you could be a mid major and get a kid who blossomed into a really good junior or senior for you. Think about a lot of those upset teams in the Dance, senior backcourts or a really good upperclassmen who gets hot. Now? Those guys leave the mid major the first time they get a big program's eye. Think about a guy like Malachi Smith. Shows really well for Dayton and instead of them having him back and building around him? Zip. He's coming off the bench for the #2 team in the country and getting a bigger paycheck.
Expand ...
A good thought, but bad example. Malachi is 5th year, he couldn't play for Dayton again. He could only get that post-grad year by transferring
 
nelsonmuntz said:
Somewhere there is a post that the Top 12 have by far the fewest losses of a Top 12 this late in the season in a long time, possibly forever.

I do not remember so many intra-conference blowouts in the past, especially of games that seem to get completely out of hand in the last 10 minutes.
Expand ...
It's kind of why it feels like the only fun games to tune into these days is when ranked opponents are playing each other. Very few surprises these days - one of the downfalls of the NIL era. You almost wonder if there is a psychological component to it when teams with little NIL go up against teams with a lot, and simply realize the other team is good because of the $$. The SEC is actually a little bit more fun this year because they aren't so heavy at the top, games seem to be a bit more competitive.
 
DRBackup said:
A good thought, but bad example. Malachi is 5th year, he couldn't play for Dayton again. He could only get that post-grad year by transferring
Expand ...
That is not a thing other than in the Ivy League
 
Not sure where you could see this easily. Think it would be a task for one of the networks' research teams.

I think Torvik's game log Verifying Browser... or stat-reference stathead would be the best bets, but it would be a real project to compare years.

Sort Torvik by +/- min whatever threshold you set and filter by high majors and count them up I guess?
 
.-.
RuffRuff said:
College hoops is about 18-20 teams max that have any chance of winning a title these days - it's the usuals. It you take a look at the top 20, it's basically them sans Nebraska/Vanderbilt, plus Vill, Bama, StJ, UK. You're not going to find teams like Butler out of the Horizon getting to the title. The FAUs & SDSU's in the F4 is never happening again. I'm even surprised Few is still competing at his level - although he's going the old guy route and international, which is pretty smart for his program. Teams like St Mary's are starting to fade.
Expand ...
We already had it in the transfer portal era with San Diego State and FAU and UConn won it all with transfer portal players as a 4 seed.

Since the 64 team era 33 of the 36 teams to win it all were 1, 2 or 3 seeds. 26 of them were 1 seeds.

Mark Few has always brought in a lot of international players.
 
superjohn said:
We already had it in the transfer portal era with San Diego State and FAU and UConn won it all with transfer portal players as a 4 seed.

Since the 64 team era 33 of the 36 teams to win it all were 1, 2 or 3 seeds. 26 of them were 1 seeds.

Mark Few has always brought in a lot of international players.
Expand ...
That was a different portal era, NIL hadn't really firmed up yet and the lofty dollars weren't being dished quite yet. I'm not expecting as chalk as last year, but I'm not expecting a ton of surprises either.

Few has, but he's also had a ton of American kids. Now all the teams are going international, so it's no longer a trump card. If you look at the top teams, they all have a Euro on them. Mara, Krivas, Sarr, even Reibe.
 
auror said:
Not sure where you could see this easily. Think it would be a task for one of the networks' research teams.

I think Torvik's game log Verifying Browser... or stat-reference stathead would be the best bets, but it would be a real project to compare years.

Sort Torvik by +/- min whatever threshold you set and filter by high majors and count them up I guess?
Expand ...

I had hoped there was a games database that I could sort by conference and download a .csv or excel file. I guess not.
 
nelsonmuntz said:
I had hoped there was a games database that I could sort by conference and download a .csv or excel file. I guess not.
Expand ...
You can get the results downloaded from Torvik in a csv, but I don't think it has conference info in that csv.
 
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