It's February, time to start digging around Torvik

[OkaForPrez]

T-Rank - Customizable College Basketball Tempo Free Stats - T-Rank

T-Rank College Basketball Ratings and Rankings. And fun.

barttorvik.com

With respect for the Pom Pom's (Pomeroy fan's if you will), Torvik is more my cup of T.

We're now halfway into the conference regular season and there's some data to munch on. Shall we?

According to Dr Torvik (I don't know if he's a Doctor) UConn has 3! players in the top 20 of the analytics POY race. Stop reading and put them in order in your head right now.
















If you said Cam Spencer (7), Alex Karaban (19), and Tristen Newton (20). You are correct! There are only three players in the country with an ATO of 3.0, a True shooting % above 60 and a steal rate above 2% (Cam, Richie Saunders of BYU and Jeremey Roach of Duke) Cam shoots 3x the triples of either of those peers. Cling Kong has been scrubbed for usage as Trovik requires you play in at least 40% of the minutes available for the season. His BPM (Box plus minus) is 8th in the country and he's at 38% for minutes so he's about to come back into view. Speaking of ORTG, who has the highest on the team?


















If you said Tolo well done! Get the heck out of here you didn't say Tolo . His steal, slam and splash against X were enough to shoot him all the way up to a 147.6 ORTG on a very, very small sample size. That would be good enough for 22nd in the country amongst high majors when you allow all the crazy small sample size players into the soup.

Other fun player notes. Alex is the #2 ranked sophomore in the country behind Kyle Filipowski. (Again, recall DC only not factored here due to the time missed). Steph is now 6th overall among freshmen, behind JT Toppin of New Mexico, Reed Sheppard of Kentucky, Walter and Missi of Baylor and Owen Freeman of Iowa. Hassan Diarra ranks 45th in ORTG among high major conference players. He would be starting on a lot of teams this year. Slamson Johnson leads the country in EFG% among high majors who have played 40% of the min available at a whopping 73.7%

Here's a graph of all players with a min % of 35 or greater, usage of 18% or greater an offensive rating of 115 or greater.

This is a pretty strong who's who list in CBB this year but only one team, UConn, has 4 players on this list. Many power teams have 2:

Creighton has Kalk and Scheierman
Carolina has Bacot and Davis
Auburn has Broome and Williams
Marquette has Kolek and Igadaro
Houston has Sheed and Cryer
Clemson has Hall & Shieflinn
Purdue has Eddy and Braden Smith

Alex, T New, Cam and Cling are all on here and Castle was the best looking player on the floor last game. Scary.

Here's the top 20 teams plotted out for Adj O and Adj D

Uconn looks to be in a 1B by the metrics behind Houston and Purdue and ahead of hte likes of Auburn, Arizona, Alabama and BYU. That said this is where UConn ranks for the season which includes the Clingan and Castle absences.


Lots of data for your Friday afternoon to suggest we're very very good.

 

[auror]

Great post.

What's a Tolo?

(I know who he is, it's just a baffling abbreviation considering it's chopping 1 random letter off each syllable).

 

[storrsroars]

Great post.

What's a Tolo?

(I know who he is, it's just a baffling abbreviation considering it's chopping 1 random letter off each syllable).

I was sure I knew who it was until you threw up this baffling statement in parens.

"Tolo" is actually in his name. No chopping random letters.

 

[OkaForPrez]

Great post.

What's a Tolo?

(I know who he is, it's just a baffling abbreviation considering it's chopping 1 random letter off each syllable).

I'm fairly certain he goes by "tolo". His instagram is @tolo._

 

[auror]

I was sure I knew who it was until you threw up this baffling statement in parens.

"Tolo" is actually in his name. No chopping random letters.

I'm fairly certain he goes by "tolo". His instagram is @tolo._

I think I was pronouncing it in my head as "a-pos-sto-los" like a double s, but if it's a-pos-to-los that makes a lot more sense. In my head it was chopping the first s and the 2nd s from the 2 syllables (stolos to tolo). Obviously I'm wrong

Ignore my distraction.

Other thoughts about the actual post:

• Zach Edey is a monster.
• The other Xavier Johnson is way better than Indiana's.
• It's interesting that Torvik's POY differs so much from Pomeroy's. Newton is top 10 in the country for Pomeroy. I think Ken's uses usage as a bigger component, whereas Torvik likely has PORPAGATU as the base adjusted by team strength, so minutes played will be more of a factor.
• Houston's defense rates out as the best in the last 5 years.

 

[Mr. French]

I gotta be honest I left the thread but was too ashamed to ask “who’s Tolo” even after going through our roster. I didn’t know his IG or anything I just know his name and it wasn’t connecting, lol - also my bad but funny.

 

[CTBasketball]

Big fan of Torvik. I found his lines are usually more accurate than KenPom, they aid my degenerate betting activities.

 

[OkaForPrez]

I think I was pronouncing it in my head as "a-pos-sto-los" like a double s, but if it's a-pos-to-los that makes a lot more sense. In my head it was chopping the first s and the 2nd s from the 2 syllables (stolos to tolo). Obviously I'm wrong

Ignore my distraction.

Other thoughts about the actual post:

• Zach Edey is a monster.
• The other Xavier Johnson is way better than Indiana's.
• It's interesting that Torvik's POY differs so much from Pomeroy's. Newton is top 10 in the country for Pomeroy. I think Ken's uses usage as a bigger component, whereas Torvik likely has PORPAGATU as the base adjusted by team strength, so minutes played will be more of a factor.
• Houston's defense rates out as the best in the last 5 years.

Houston and Purdue are the only two teams that really scare me. DOOMED. Houston has been relentlessly consistent in the quality of their performances. Nearly every game is indexing at max. As @Kemba Time put it to me via text, the only question mark they have is how well their defense will hold up against an elite team. Kansas isn't an elite offense but they have elite physicality. Will be interesting to see that game this weekend. As for Purdue, just the unknown about whether Clingan would neutralize Eddy or if Eddy would overpower Donovan and take away one of our strengths.

Everyone else I feel like we have a clear advantage over when playing our best ball. And if we're not playing our best ball, no use in worrying about it.

 

[CL82]

Had to look it up.

Shrugs

 

[auror]

Houston and Purdue are the only two teams that really scare me. DOOMED. Houston has been relentlessly consistent in the quality of their performances. Nearly every game is indexing at max. As @Kemba Time put it to me via text, the only question mark they have is how well their defense will hold up against an elite team. Kansas isn't an elite offense but they have elite physicality. Will be interesting to see that game this weekend. As for Purdue, just the unknown about whether Clingan would neutralize Eddy or if Eddy would overpower Donovan and take away one of our strengths.

Everyone else I feel like we have a clear advantage over when playing our best ball. And if we're not playing our best ball, no use in worrying about it.

Houston, UConn, and Purdue have separated themselves into a tier, both in predictive metrics and also they're the top 3 in resume as well (according to WAB and SOR).

It seems unusual to have such a clear top 3 in both measurements. Looking back a few years in the WayBack machine, it does not seem to be common. I have to think it's likely 1 of those 3 teams wins the title. It's a top-heavy year.

 

[ToolzieFan]

Houston and Purdue are the only two teams that really scare me. DOOMED. Houston has been relentlessly consistent in the quality of their performances. Nearly every game is indexing at max. As @Kemba Time put it to me via text, the only question mark they have is how well their defense will hold up against an elite team. Kansas isn't an elite offense but they have elite physicality. Will be interesting to see that game this weekend. As for Purdue, just the unknown about whether Clingan would neutralize Eddy or if Eddy would overpower Donovan and take away one of our strengths.

Everyone else I feel like we have a clear advantage over when playing our best ball. And if we're not playing our best ball, no use in worrying about it.

Houston’s defense has been awesome. They’re apparently high hedging VERY aggressively in a time when drop coverage is becoming more widespread. That’s where having big guards could be an advantage. Newton and Castle might very well be able to find open men quickly against them. Or maybe hedging wouldn’t be so easy against our 7’3” screen-setter extraordinaire.

This is a brief look at Houston’s strategy on Twitter. I haven’t watched the whole video on YouTube.

 

[caw]

Houston’s defense has been awesome. They’re apparently high hedging VERY aggressively in a time when drop coverage is becoming more widespread. That’s where having big guards could be an advantage. Newton and Castle might very well be able to find open men quickly against them. Or maybe hedging wouldn’t be so easy against our 7’3” screen-setter extraordinaire.

This is a brief look at Houston’s strategy on Twitter. I haven’t watched the whole video on YouTube.

I do wonder what the percentages are for UConn offensively speaking. I don't think Newton/Whoever the ball handler is calls their own number near 40% of the time considering the assist numbers.

 

[auror]

We don't run a ton of direct ball screen offense relative to most teams, so they'd have to guard our stuff like most teams do with switching. They do have a lot of switchable guys though and are well practiced with rotations. They'd do as good a job against us as anyone this season.

Hurley also runs a high hedge and Whaley often blitzed, so he has some familiarity with how to run and counter that defense. Clingan would be a good short roll target and could pass over the defenders to hit the corners or just attack the hoop. We'd likely run a lot of Karaban ghost screen pops, too.

 

[imno1]

Big fan of Torvik. I found his lines are usually more accurate than KenPom, they aid my degenerate betting activities.

He has Houston as a 6 pt fav at Kansas today

 

[HuskyFich]

Moving on up!!!

 

[ToolzieFan]

Since Clingan’s return on 1/17:

T-Rank - Customizable College Basketball Tempo Free Stats - T-Rank

T-Rank College Basketball Ratings and Rankings. And fun.

barttorvik.com

 

[Waquoit]

Houston's turd exposed all these guys. I could see UH losing and still having faith in the numbers but they got waxed.

 

[auror]

Texas' top 30 road win, Kansas and UNC's top 15 home wins, and our double digit road win has pushed us up to 28.64 adjEM on KenPom, up a full point from yesterday. We're close to where we were following Gonzaga game before Clingan got hurt.

 

[superjohn]

He has Houston as a 6 pt fav at Kansas today

That aged like milk.

 

[HuskyFich]

He has Houston as a 6 pt fav at Kansas today

Anyone favored in top 10 matchup on the road at Allen Fieldhouse is the Vegas version of throwing bread to ducks. What a ridiculous line.

 

[Palatine]

Kansas got behind Houston and scored on nine of its first ten possession (according to Self).