Miracle Covers

NCAA Round 2

Worried about a top seed who nearly lost in round 1? Here’s something to consider.

There are two schools of thought on being tested by a lesser opponent early in the tourney. The optimistic view is that a close game like that serves as a useful wake-up call, and that most teams play such a close game somewhere along their NCAA Tournament path. The pessimistic perspective is that struggling in the early rounds reveals weaknesses that better teams can take full advantage of in later rounds.

Can we learn anything about these situations from the numbers? Using the incredible new treasure trove of NCAA history offered by sports-reference.com, I went through the last 10 NCAA Tournaments to find examples of top-three seeds playing games decided by five points or fewer in the first round. In that span, no No. 1 seed has gotten such a serious scare from a 16, but five No. 2 seeds have eked out victories and nine No. 3 seeds have won by five points or fewer.

The second seeds who were tested in the first round indeed struggled the next time out, going just 2-3. By comparison, No. 2 seeds who were more dominant in their opening-round wins won 58.8 percent of the time. (One oddity from these numbers: Third seeds were more successful in the second round overall than second seeds over the past decade. In 2000, three of the four No. 2 seeds failed to reach the Sweet Sixteen.)

At the same time, third seeds saw little to no carry-over. They went 7-2 in second-round games, which is better than their peers who got off to a better start.

Official color commentator of Miracle Covers Bill Raftery was the subject of a recent SI article. He had the quote of round one telling America that Scottie Reynolds, “stroked it admirably today,” and causing anyone who was playing the Bill Raftery Drinking Game to take a sip. Unofficial onion count : 1

“He’s the only person I know who can say, ‘F— you’ and make you think it’s a compliment,”

NCAA Conference Win Totals

Bookmaker has a prop up listing how many games each conference will win in this year’s NCAA tournament. My initial instinct was 7 1/2 wins for the ACC was way too low. The best (or second best) conference has six teams! How can they only be expected to win 7 or 8 games? Wayne Winston had a nicely formatted chart that used the Sagarin Ratings to project out win probabilities for each team. I aggregated these by conference and came up with the following (substitute your own numbers from Pomeroy or someplace else as you wish):

Projected Conference Win Totals

I definitely didn’t expect it, but the Big East under certainly looks appealing. Unsure probability wise how 1.5 wins stacks up with the +115 on the under (Needs to hit 47% to break even), but it’s about as anti-public as you can get.

EDIT: After some feedback from a couple of people, I re-ran these numbers using the Pomeroy projections and this morning’s changed lines. MUCH better.

When Good/Great Programs Have a Down Year – Part 2

Following up on Pat’s post, below records against the spread for selected teams this year compared to their actual record the past two seasons:

There have been some attempts to try and predict teams by using the number of minutes returning and then a variable to represent the quality of freshmen, but I’m not aware of anything that’s actually worked and worked well. See Texas on this year’s list as a perfect example. They were winning unimpressively (and not covering) before finally starting to lose games when 2010 rolled around.

The tom and bottom teams on this list are always going to be the ones most over/under valued by the general gambling public. Finding & betting on these teams before they get all popular is kind of the idea.

For example, anyone who was paying attention to Notre Dame basketball noticed their sudden transition into a slower paced team in February.

“I went to sleep that night and just thought, ‘We’ve got to do something different,’’ Brey said of his Solomon-inspired epiphany. “We’ve had burn – where we run the clock in the final four minutes – in our playbook forever. So I just told the guys, ‘We’re going to extend burn to 40 minutes.’’

The burn has scorched opponents. Since Brey put the brakes on the usually run and gun, up and down Irish, Notre Dame has ripped off five wins in a row and gone from not being in the NCAA Tournament conversation to playing for a seed. The Irish defeated Seton Hall 68-56 Wednesday night.

Notre Dame lost by a basket against West Virginia in the Big East semis, ending their six game win streak, but every since their 91-89 loss to Louisville has hit the under.

John Gasaway from Basketball Prospectus added this bit of goodness:

Notre Dame defense, first 14 Big East games vs. last five
Pace: possessions per 40 minutes; Opp. PPP: opponent points per possession

Pace Opp. PPP
First 14 65.8 1.13
Last five 56.9 0.97

Speaking of transformations, this is not a matter of a coach simply taking his foot off the accelerator. More like yanking the emergency brake so hard it flew off. Notre Dame is now locked in a pace cage match to the death with Wisconsin and Arizona State for the title of slowest late-season major-conference team.

Why is the Irish D so much better all the sudden? Partly it’s because in their sassy new Big Ten look ND has improved noticeably on the defensive glass while committing fewer fouls. (Again, feel free to draw a Wisconsin parallel.) But far and away the largest single before-and-after difference here is opponents’ threes. They used to go in (over the first 14 Big East games) 37 percent of the time. Now (last five games) they go in just 24 percent of the time.

Interestingly, everything else has stayed the same, even at the dramatically slower pace. Just like before, teams playing Notre Dame never turn the ball over and, indeed, opponent two-point percentage has actually gone up a hair. It pretty much all comes down to the threes.

Certainly I can envisage the Irish playing better and more locked-in perimeter D in games this slow, just like it makes sense that more minutes for a 6-7 athlete like Carleton Scott would have an impact.

It took bookmakers three full games to even have a hint as to what was going on, and it wasn’t until after the fifth game against notoriously uptempo Seton Hall that the lines even started getting adjusted. And Notre Dame has still been smashing the under which means the lines still weren’t right. Here’s the list:

The Irish play Old Dominion in an early game Thursday and the line is currently 122. Old Dominion plays at a similar tempo to UND’s last two opponents Pittsburgh and West Virginia. It’s worth a look if not a play. Of course, those that actually watched the games over the last few weeks (hint: not me) and took action already should be sitting on enough cash to make this play.

One last bit of reading material to recommend for bracket selections: Seth Davis, who you’ll see on TV a lot over the next three weeks, called a bunch of coaches and asked them for their off-the-record thoughts on a bunch of teams in this year’s field. The insights are very telling. I’ll quote my favorite below and then tell you to read HERE and HERE.

KENTUCKY: The main question with them is obviously their inexperience. Regardless of what people say, freshmen are freshmen, and all it takes is one freshman moment in a single-elimination tournament to end your season. The second thing is their perimeter shooting. Statistically their percentages are respectable, but their volume of outside shots is not high. Nobody gets up and down the floor like John Wall, but when you get into the tournament, the pace tends to slow down. Teams that are averaging 75 points a game are going to get 70 or fewer. If people put a premium on possessions, they are going to have to make perimeter shots. DeMarcus Cousins’ emergence offensively has taken the focal point off of Wall, and to [John] Calipari’s credit they’re going more inside-out. Against Wall, you have to change your looks and try to get him confused, and he will turn it over by trying to go too fast. Then at the end of a shot clock, you have to make him make jump shots. There is no doubt Cousins is the best post player in college basketball. He’s a load on the block, and it’s incredible he gets one of every four shots taken off the offensive glass. [Patrick] Patterson is almost an afterthought, but he hit the big three against Vanderbilt, so you know he’s going to make big plays.

Read More: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2010/writers/seth_davis/02/22/hoop.thoughts/1.html

NCAA Degen Pick’Em Brackets

It is THAT time of year again!

NCAA THEME

You know Gus Johnson is ready, even in games where the outcome is already decided!  You know it must be March!  Just make sure you don’t bet any games Steve Lavin is announcing in, you might get coolered.

The pool is a $10 buy-in, must be paid by the Final Four to be eligible.  Please put your name as your bracket name so I can keep track of I need to pay out (besides me :P), as well as to instruct that onto anyone you forward this onto.

http://tournament.fantasysports.yahoo.com

Group #: 151780

PW: degens

I’ll leave you with a wild buzzer beater in a Divison 3 game to get your gambling juice flowing!  I’ll probably also post some of my picks for the 1st 2 rounds on Wednesday.  GL!

Buzzer beater

When Good/Great Programs Have a Down Year

I think this is the important gambling point I am going to take away from college basketball this year.  With most legitimate players having a shelf-life of one to two years, it seems that college basketball programs are more susceptible to year-by-year fluctuations in talent than virtually any other gambling related sport.  Consequently, even good or really great programs can have occasional off years.

The obvious examples of this in the 2009-2010 CB season were Connecticut and North Carolina.  Both had records around .500 which are an anomaly to say the least and they were both train wrecks against the spread, North Carolina was 9-19 and UConn at 12-18.

I think this relates to the overall issue that when betting sports its preferable to abandon preconceptions as much as possible and be a cold judge of actual talent.  Vegas gradually revalued both teams during the year, but this was a slow process, and gamblers who had the nuts to go against name recognition obviously did pretty damn well.

This should be a topic of conversation on this Blog at the beginning of the next CB season.

NBA picks – A Recap

So yesterday I went 1-4.  There were actually six games but the Philly one was not listed Sunday morning, we will ignore that game and pretend it didn’t happen.  Accordingly, I finished the week at 28-24-1, or at 54%  Which I think means that if I had placed thirty dollar bets on everything, and everything had been -110, I would have a net positive of thirty-six bucks.  Take that Vegas.  Tremble.  I might be wrong on the math if anyone wants to check that out.  This upcoming week, college basketball.  And speaking of which, Fairfield (+8) plays Siena this evening in the MAAC Chamionships.

NBA Picks – Mar 07

Worst day of the week at 3-6 yesterday.  Now at 27-20-1.  The experiment concludes………..

Los Angeles Lakers (+2.5) @ Orlando

Houston (-2) @ Detroit

Washington (+12) @ Boston

Oklahoma City (-3.5) @ Sacramento

Portland (+6.5) @ Denver

NBA Picks – Mar 06

Went 6-4-1 yesterday.  That’s brings us to 24-14-1 on the week, or right around 63%.  Let’s go

Golden State (+10.5) @ Charlotte

Atlanta (+1.5) @ Miami

New Jersey (+8) @ New York

Houston (-3.5) @ Minnesota

Dallas (-1) @ Chicago

San Antonio (-1.5) @ Memphis

Cleveland (-3.5) @ Miliwaukee

Los Angeles Clippers (+13.5) @ Utah

Indiana (+12.5) @ Phoenix

NBA Picks – Mar 05

Went 1-2 yesterday.  That’s brings us to 18-10 on the week, or 64%.  Looks like eleven games on tap tonight.  Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeere we go

Milwaukee (-4) @ Washington

Los Angeles Lakers (-3.5) @ Charlotte

Detroit (+12) @ Cleveland

New York (+8) @ Toronto

Boston (-6) @ Philadelphia

Golden State (+13) @ Atlanta

Orlando (-10) @ New Jersey

Sacramento (+8.5) @ Dallas

Indiana (+10) @ Denver

New Orleans (+8) @ San Antonio

Oklahoma City (-4.5) @ Los Angeles Clippers