OkaForPrez
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There are 12 pre-tournament cut lines that tend to indicate a National Champion:
Gonzaga fits 11 of these this year.
Illinois and Virginia 10.
Michigan, Houston 9.
We can't do anything about our seed, conference tournament or head coach having not been there before.
We do well on the KP and defensive/rebounding metrics, so where do we fall short?
Fix those three things and we look the part of a title contender. Get hot shooting, watch the fouls, feed the big fella.
- 4 Seed or Better (Ha!)
- Ken Pom top 25
- Top 25 Adj 0 KP
- Top 40 Adj D KP
- 3 PT % > 35%
- Top 90 in Offensive Rebounding %
- Opp Two pt % < 42%
- Opp Free Throw Rate <31%
- Front Court Player averaging >12 PPG
- 4 Players in Double Figures
- Head Coach has been to a sweet 16
- Win RS or Conference Title
Gonzaga fits 11 of these this year.
Illinois and Virginia 10.
Michigan, Houston 9.
We can't do anything about our seed, conference tournament or head coach having not been there before.
We do well on the KP and defensive/rebounding metrics, so where do we fall short?
- We don't shoot the three well enough.
- We're at 33.6% on the season, below the 35% cut line.
- The solution here of course is we need Super Tyler to catch fire. Whoever did that super sayain Kevin Ollie back in '14 needs to get on a Tyler Polley version stat.
- We foul too dang much
- 36.9% FT Rate for our opponents vs. the 31% cut line.
- We're better than we were early in the season but we still haven't found the sweet spot between our aggressive defense and fouling. We need the Dre's, Zay's and Adama's to keep our opponents off the stripe. In Adama's case that's doubly important because...
- We don't have a frontcourt player averaging 12 PPG or more
- Adama avg. 7.5 PPG this season, but he's put up 16, 10, 14 and 13 in his last four games. He's blossoming into that player that all NC teams seem to have. Could he be this year's X factor Daniels?
Fix those three things and we look the part of a title contender. Get hot shooting, watch the fouls, feed the big fella.