Graph of KenPom AdjO v. AdjD with current tournament teams and past champs

[EdgewoodNHV]

Pretty fascinating graph. Shows KenPom's rankings of Adjusted Offense vs. Adjusted Defense on a graph along with former champions to give you a sense of team's overall performance.

If you're looking to be optimistic, St. Joe's is only marginally more efficient offensively than us, but significantly worse defensively.

Pessimistically, Villanova looks like a very difficult out on this graph.

Edit: For those curious, previous champions' rankings are shown PRE-tournament.

Source: http://i.imgur.com/LAQLUYF.jpg

 

[caw]

Interesting. A bit flawed I imagine because it's based on the full year. For example it doesn't take into account injuries and different lineups which may be getting more PT in the tournament.

 

[HuskyHawk]

Interesting. A bit flawed I imagine because it's based on the full year. For example it doesn't take into account injuries and different lineups which may be getting more PT in the tournament.

Exactly. Michigan State for example, where do they rank when everyone is playing? That's only been a couple of games for them. I also wonder how it measures competition. Creighton is very efficient offensively, but they are mostly facing weak defensive teams. Still, every recent champion is in that lower quadrent, and based on the names I see there, I expect that will be repeated.

 

[caw]

Exactly. Michigan State for example, where do they rank when everyone is playing? That's only been a couple of games for them. I also wonder how it measures competition. Creighton is very efficient offensively, but they are mostly facing weak defensive teams. Still, every recent champion is in that lower quadrent, and based on the names I see there, I expect that will be repeated.

Likely though he obviously expanded the lower quadrant to include the two outliers which were just fantastic on one of the two metrics and decent on the other.

I mean everyone knew UNC was amazing offensively but mediocre defensively, with the inverse for UL. Neither fits with the others.

Cuse looks like the weakest champion, shocking!

Seriously a bit shocked this a more efficient defensive team but less efficient offense than 2011. I would have thought the inverse. I guess that is Kemba and FTs and Oriakhi.

I agree with the MSU example.

Also a player like Lamb and hopefully Brimah are marginalized by this. A player that comes on at the end of the year and just suddenly is a solid contributor.

It's interesting to see where UConn stands. Basically if UConn can play more efficiently on offense they would fit in with the contenders. I tend to think it's easier to be more efficient on offense than to suddenly be more efficient on defense. Wonder how efficient UConns offense would be if you took out the games against UL?

 

[Tenspro2002]

My takeaways:
- Villanova, Virginia, and Wichita State are properly seeded and should be getting more respect than people are giving them
- Having a Wichita State-Louisville matchup in the Sweet 16 is borderline criminal on the part of the Committee -- those are two top-6 teams
- It seems really inexplicable why first-four participant Tennessee was so lousy; they look a lot better by these metrics than someone like Memphis, who is comfortably in the Tournament
- Louisville's defense last year was almost literally off the charts
- Duke, Creighton, and Michigan are extremely talented on offense, but don't play enough defense to be a credible contender
- Our defense is championship-worthy, even better than our 2011 team, despite our size disadvantage at multiple positions, but our offense isn't quite up to snuff (which we didn't need fancy metrics to tell us)

 

[Penfield]

Does this chart show how the championship teams fared for the whole season or just the tournament?

Also why isn't the chart displayed the opposite ways (best teams in upper right corner)? It just makes more sense that way.

 

[BleedBlue14]

According to this graph we are most similar this year to our 2011 championship team and Carmelo's Cuse champs. Very interesting. Despite all the champs being in the lower left quadrant, I still think there is hope for us to win it all, statistically we are close enough. And defense usually wins games. Its also interesting that besides 2003 Cuse, we are one of the champs closest to the origin of the graph. That tells me if anyone can win it going against the odds, its us.

Also, I really think its flawed to say Arizona is better defensively than Louisville as the graph is showing. Quite frankly, I don't think there is a better defensive team than Louisville right now.

 

[champs99and04]

Awesome graph, thanks for posting. One thing to keep in mind, though, is that the the profiles of the historical champions are post-tournament, so there is the chance that whoever wins the title this year is not currently in the lower quadrant (I'd be curious to know where our 2011 team was prior to the tournament).

In some regards, 2014 MSU is a lot like our 2004 team - a bit under-represented by the data because of major injuries, but potential for dominant tournament showings. The same could probably be said for 2009 UNC, as Lawson was in and out of the lineup for much of the year.

 

[caw]

Just for fun, top 15 most efficient defenses in the country:
Zona
VCU
UVA
OSU
UF
UL
SDSU
St. Louis
Cinci
Wichita state
UConn
SMU
Gonzaga
Nova
Illinois

That breaks down to:
1 from the Pac10, ACC, SEC, MW, MVC, WCC, BE
2 from the A10 and B10
4 from the AAC

UConn had 9 games against top 15 defensive teams. So the question I have is this: is UConns offense that bad or did they just play a disproportionate number of games against top defensive units?

Of course the other AAC teams can say similar things. I don't think any other team can though.

To be fair UConn was only 3-6 in those nine games. So that's how you beat UConn, play extremely good defense.

EDIT: I think from the eye test we can see that Cincy isn't a great offensive team, but UConn and UL seem to be better than listed. UL in particular. To think they scored that well while playing some tough defenses makes them even more impressive.

 

[Jerry1714]

Does this chart show how the championship teams fared for the whole season or just the tournament?

Also why isn't the chart displayed the opposite ways (best teams in upper right corner)? It just makes more sense that way.

Season

 

[Penfield]

Season

Thanks, and as someone else pointed out it takes into account the tourney as well.

I was wondering if we were looking at two different things - reg season vs tourney - which we are not. Also was wondering if a team could play their way into the "winners" quadrant w/ tourney results, which apparently they can. Bodes well for UConn if we can get our offense going a bit better.

Also looks like a good tool to use when picking brackets.

 

[EdgewoodNHV]

Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't use it as a be-all, end-all, and I think the "winners" from previous tournaments include the tournament results, so it's not an apples to apples comparison. That being said, you'd have to believe that the teams with very good ratings in both AdjO and AdjD are probably much more likely to win than others.

Just something I saw on reddit (/r/collegebasketball) and thought I'd share.

 

[OkaForPrez]

- It seems really inexplicable why first-four participant Tennessee was so lousy; they look a lot better by these metrics than someone like Memphis, who is comfortably in the Tournament

Careful with Tennessee, their ken pom is inflated single handedly by their 30 point win over Virginia. If you were to take that game out of their year, they would freefall.

My question for the person who prepared this view is this: Are the historical champions indicative of their ratings before the tournament or after they had won 6 in a row. Any team that wins 6 straight against tournament teams is going to gravitate towards the bottom left. If the green dots represent teams at the end of the season after the tournament, then potentially the qualifiers are all the teams on the periphery (including us) vs. just the 5-7 that are in the quadrant now.


Edit - apologies I haven't refereshed the page and its been up in the background at work. My concerns covered above

 

[EdgewoodNHV]

Careful with Tennessee, their ken pom is inflated single handedly by their 30 point win over Virginia. If you were to take that game out of their year, they would freefall.

My question for the person who prepared this view is this: Are the historical champions indicative of their ratings before the tournament or after they had won 6 in a row. Any team that wins 6 straight against tournament teams is going to gravitate towards the bottom left. If the green dots represent teams at the end of the season after the tournament, then potentially the qualifiers are all the teams on the periphery (including us) vs. just the 5-7 that are in the quadrant now.


Edit - apologies I haven't refereshed the page and its been up in the background at work. My concerns covered above

Ratings are calculated from before the tournament wins, according to the thread on reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/CollegeBasketball/comments/20otdo/kenpom_adjdadjo_2014_pretournament/

 

[Strummer]

Likely though he obviously expanded the lower quadrant to include the two outliers which were just fantastic on one of the two metrics and decent on the other.

The axes are based on a linear scale, which means that the scatterplot shown would look the same no matter what scale you used for the axes, assuming the scale was linear.

The only thing the graph maker did was choose where to place the two lines. Clearly, placement of the lines was based on the championship cluster, but this is not a coordinate system, so the lines have no meaning other than to highlight where the champions fall. He could have simply used an oval/circle to point out the cluster, or include no lines at all.

Clearly, ANY quantitative measure of humans playing a complex sport will be incomplete. That's just the way it is. For example, is defensive efficiency the number of points allowed per 100 possessions? Okay. I'll buy that. But what about a team that is great at forcing a team to go deep into the shot clock and then limit the offensive rebound? In other words, if every shot attempt is a "possession," then great defensive rebounding is unaccounted for by the pure "defensive efficiency" number. I have a hard time believing that our 2011 team is the 3rd worst defense out of the last 10 tourni years.

Obviously, there is also an issue with what's included. If you repeated the same graph with O and D efficiency for just the last 1.5 months of the season, I'd bet good money that the 2011 team suddenly is among the best at D efficiency.

Fact is, in that year, we were flat out shutting people down, and we'd always seem to get the stop and the board when we needed it.

Another weakness is not accounting for the level of competition against whom the numbers are generated.

That said, the graph is very interesting, and thank you for posting it.

 

[SubbaBub]

There is no metric for heart.

 

[pj]

It's interesting to see where UConn stands. Basically if UConn can play more efficiently on offense they would fit in with the contenders. I tend to think it's easier to be more efficient on offense than to suddenly be more efficient on defense. Wonder how efficient UConns offense would be if you took out the games against UL?

UConn was at about 113 in offensive efficiency before Napier and Kromah cooled off, Daniels was injured, and we had the run of games against tough defenses (SMU, Cincy, Ville). That would place us near the 2011 championship team.

Daniels is starting to come back but Napier is still grabbing his finger and Kromah still seems cold. I think we've seen that the team is not strong and big, athletic, physical defenses can disrupt the offense. So I don't see this as a championship team. But I do think they can do some damage. I see the Villanova game as evenly matched.

 

[caw]

The axes are based on a linear scale, which means that the scatterplot shown would look the same no matter what scale you used for the axes, assuming the scale was linear.

The only thing the graph maker did was choose where to place the two lines. Clearly, placement of the lines was based on the championship cluster, but this is not a coordinate system, so the lines have no meaning other than to highlight where the champions fall. He could have simply used an oval/circle to point out the cluster, or include no lines at all.

Clearly, ANY quantitative measure of humans playing a complex sport will be incomplete. That's just the way it is. For example, is defensive efficiency the number of points allowed per 100 possessions? Okay. I'll buy that. But what about a team that is great at forcing a team to go deep into the shot clock and then limit the offensive rebound? In other words, if every shot attempt is a "possession," then great defensive rebounding is unaccounted for by the pure "defensive efficiency" number. I have a hard time believing that our 2011 team is the 3rd worst defense out of the last 10 tourni years.

Obviously, there is also an issue with what's included. If you repeated the same graph with O and D efficiency for just the last 1.5 months of the season, I'd bet good money that the 2011 team suddenly is among the best at D efficiency.

Fact is, in that year, we were flat out shutting people down, and we'd always seem to get the stop and the board when we needed it.

Another weakness is not accounting for the level of competition against whom the numbers are generated.

That said, the graph is very interesting, and thank you for posting it.

All that and I'm not sure if you are agreeing with me, trying to expound on my point or disagreeing? Yes the actual quadrant doesn't matter when looking at the championship teams but the two outliers do expand the range past the main nucleus. Both show that being absolute studs on one axis can make up for being midrange on the other axis. Or maybe I should say three outliers with a pretty mediocre overall Cuse team. That would leave you with five teams that really fit in with the main nucleus of teams and the question of if Cuse has a stud like Melo or Kemba and if Zonas defense is really good enough to carry their somewhat mediocre offense.

 

[champs99and04]

The axes are based on a linear scale, which means that the scatterplot shown would look the same no matter what scale you used for the axes, assuming the scale was linear.

The only thing the graph maker did was choose where to place the two lines. Clearly, placement of the lines was based on the championship cluster, but this is not a coordinate system, so the lines have no meaning other than to highlight where the champions fall. He could have simply used an oval/circle to point out the cluster, or include no lines at all.

Clearly, ANY quantitative measure of humans playing a complex sport will be incomplete. That's just the way it is. For example, is defensive efficiency the number of points allowed per 100 possessions? Okay. I'll buy that. But what about a team that is great at forcing a team to go deep into the shot clock and then limit the offensive rebound? In other words, if every shot attempt is a "possession," then great defensive rebounding is unaccounted for by the pure "defensive efficiency" number. I have a hard time believing that our 2011 team is the 3rd worst defense out of the last 10 tourni years.

Obviously, there is also an issue with what's included. If you repeated the same graph with O and D efficiency for just the last 1.5 months of the season, I'd bet good money that the 2011 team suddenly is among the best at D efficiency.

Fact is, in that year, we were flat out shutting people down, and we'd always seem to get the stop and the board when we needed it.

Another weakness is not accounting for the level of competition against whom the numbers are generated.

That said, the graph is very interesting, and thank you for posting it.

You raise some interesting points. Especially among young teams, I think a metric that values a November game the same as a March game is flawed. That may very well have been the case with our 2011 team.

In regards to rebounding, I'm fairly certain it is accounted for in Pomeroy's system, with one trip up the floor counting as one possession. If you grab six offensive rebounds in one sequence, it still counts as one possession. This is why our defensive efficiency rating last season was so ordinary despite holding opposing teams to low shooting percentages - we were oftentimes unable to close possessions with rebounds and as a result of that we decreased our margin for error. Consider, also, that everything is adjusted based on competition level. If you hang 90 points on Louisville, that's weighted a lot more heavily than if you score 90 on Temple.

It definitely isn't a perfect system, but with 30+ games worth of data I think it's a reasonably accurate forecaster of things to come.