" title="Spartans Weblog">Spartans Weblog

Having now killed six months since the last college basketball game was played, I am now completely out of anything new or original to say about the Michigan State basketball team.  Thankfully, a very special guest has agreed to offer up his preseason thoughts to the Spartans Weblog faithful and get this season started in blogtacular fashion.

John Gasaway is better known here by the affectionate acronym TAFKATBTW: The Artist Formerly Known As The Big Ten Wonk.  From 2004 to 2007, John authored the fairest of all the college basketball blogs in the land, preaching the joys of tempo-free stats and breaking down big-time college hoops in these here Midwestern parts.

Last year, he shocked Big Ten fans everywhere, making a bizarre decision to move to a platform where (1) more people would read his work and (2) he might be able to, you know, make a living at being a college basketball expert.  Like I say: Bizarre.  He now writes at basketballprospectus.com and, along with his colleague Ken Pomeroy, has a book coming out later this month (October 28, to be exact): College Basketball Prospectus 2008-2009: The Essential Guide to the Men’s College Basketball Season (note: links to the book are affiliate links).

While we still haven’t completely forgiven John for abdicating his Big Ten bloggerdom throne, we are certainly interested to hear his thoughts on the upcoming season.  Off we go.

Spartans Weblog: First things first: In a Steven Colbert-like fashion, I’d like to graciously give you the chance to (1) concede your error in abandoning the greatest basketball conference in all the land (on a tempo-free basis) to pursue analysis of 330 much-less-interesting Division 1 basketball teams and (2) announce your return as the Big Ten Wonk for the upcoming season.

Failing that, tell us what you’ve enjoyed about your new perch at BP and what we can expect on the site for the upcoming season.

TAFKATBTW: This season you can expect Basketball Prospectus to be the first responders for interesting and surprising stuff in college hoops. Our mission statement has stayed the same lo these many (um, two) years. As long as Ken and I are finding out things that make us say, “Huh, I didn’t know that before,” then we’re doing what we should be doing, whether it’s in the form of a book or a website or whatever.

As for conceding error? Never! The Big Ten was quite rightly a big part of my Prospectus writing last year. In fact, given the slow-motion programmatic implosion set in place by Kelvin Sampson, there were times last year when I was more focused on the Big Ten than I was during the blog’s final season (when I was busy covering year 2 of the Florida dynasty). When the Big Ten does something glorious or ignominious, rest assured I’ll be there.

SW: Let’s put that national-level perspective to use: Barring a catastrophe in which all five of their starters collide instantaneously with each other in a rebounding drill and all sustain major injuries, North Carolina will enter the 2008-09 season as the unanimous #1 team in the nation.  Is there any statistical reason to doubt their supremacy?

TAFKATBTW: Losing Marcus Ginyard for eight weeks due to a stress fracture at least makes the Heels more human. They still merit honorary number 1 status, mind you, but one can certainly envision Carolina (gasp!) losing games.

The thing that I would admonish everyone to remember, though, is that North Carolina is the favorite even if they look underwhelming–heck maybe especially if they look underwhelming (within reason, of course). Think back to those aforementioned 2007 Florida Gators for a second. They went into that season with all five starters returning from a national championship team. Then they lost a close game to Kansas in Las Vegas at the end of November and a funny thing happened. Once the Gators had been proven mortal, the discussion expanded durably to include teams like Kansas, North Carolina, and Ohio State. Then to cap things off, Florida had an absolutely wretched February, culminating in a ten-point loss to an LSU team that went 5-11 in the SEC that year and that played that particular game without Glen “Big Baby” Davis. In fact, the Gators were actually outscored over their last five conference games.

Nevertheless the selection committee completely ignored all of the above, which of course was correct. They made Florida the overall 1 seed in the tournament, a step which would have been patently absurd if this were simply Team X at 26-5 instead of the defending national champions with five returning starters. The Gators promptly proved the committee correct, gliding with relative ease (more ease than Kansas last year, certainly) to a second national title.

Moral of the story: a team like Florida in 2007 or, I think, North Carolina in 2009 needs to be evaluated in terms more suited to the NBA than the college game. If Carolina drops some games, my working assumption will be not that there’s some dire flaw in their team but rather that they’ve taken an NBA-like “Wake us up when it’s the playoffs” approach. That’s exactly what the Gators did two years ago and it worked beautifully. They took February off and still got the overall 1-seed.

SW: Speaking of the Tar Heels, our Spartans have the privilege of playing them in early December.  How do you see the two teams matching up?  Does the Official Favorite Player of the Spartans Weblog, Goran Suton, stand a chance against Tyler Hansbrough?

TAFKATBTW: On the chalkboard State is well-positioned to give Carolina a game. The Heels of course get their points from transition, offensive boards, and free throws. The Spartans are, we think, deep and athletic enough to run with UNC and, of course, MSU is traditionally a good defensive rebounding team. If your official favorite player can stay out of foul trouble, that would be huge, not because (no offense) he has Oden-level indispensability but merely because it would mean Hansbrough isn’t shooting a ton of free throws.

SW: We Green and White types still hold up the 2000 national championship team as the model of how to build a national title contender: defense, rebounding, and a deep, veteran team that plays cohesively.  Do you think this model still works? Or, with most recent Final Four teams having multiple NBA-early-entry-level players, was that team the last of its breed?

TAFKATBTW: As your own historical research has shown, that 2000 team had a great offense, as well. People forget that Mo Peterson, for example, made more than 42 percent of his threes that year. In fact I like to think of that 2000 team as a little like latter-day Kansas or Memphis teams: excellence on both sides of the ball.

Now, is “2000″ so very different in college hoops sociology from “2009″? I’m not so sure. People, myself included, love to talk about one-and-done but clearly the best of both worlds is to have that “deep veteran team” that nevertheless features a few non-seniors who are about to enter the draft. If Chris Douglas-Roberts could have made some free throws last April, your description of national champion Michigan State in 2000 would have translated seamlessly to national champion Memphis in 2008: both were defensively incredible teams who could score. Instead the Tigers lost to, um, a defensively incredible team that could score. From my chair it’s too early to proclaim the death of that particular breed.

SW: Turning to the grounds you once stomped exclusively, one trend that’s evident across the Big Ten this year is the lack of front-line depth (MSU excepted, knock on wood).  Is it possible this portends the Big Ten finally picking up the pace this season, thereby reducing the number of fans falling asleep in their seats?

TAFKATBTW: As Jake or Brett (I refuse to go get it) says at the end of “The Sun Also Rises,” “Isn’t it nice to think so?” But I doubt it. Todd Lickliter, for example, got his Big Ten gig by playing an extremely perimeter-oriented brand of ball that was nevertheless every bit as extreme in the slowness of its pace. Last year, Colorado was the only major-conference team in the country to decelerate more dramatically in-conference than did Iowa in year 1 of the Lickliter era. Northwestern is of course the same: a slow perimeter-oriented team. Wisconsin’s usually more up-tempo than people realize but still they’re never going to set any land speed records. Both Bruce Weber and Matt Painter profess to hold a Gene Keady-level belief in the importance of reversing the ball and, in theory, “making the defense work” before you dare attempt a shot. Increased tempo will come to the Big Ten eventually but it will probably require the attitudinal equivalent of a viral schematic fad, like the spread in football.

Not that a slow pace can’t be effective or entertaining or both. Georgetown in 2007 was really slow and really good.

SW: Finally, tell us about this book you and Mr. Pomeroy have penned.  Are there pictures?  Or at least graphs?  Can you leak a couple major statistically-based, counterintuitive predictions that make the book worth forgoing a case of light beer in order to purchase?

TAFKATBTW: A case? Dude, hop on-line now at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or wherever and you can still pre-order a copy for only a few pennies more than it would cost to get a six-pack of something tres snooty like Anchor Steam. Now that’s what I mean by VALUE in these tough economic times! In fact, Ken and I are hoping to be what Shirley Temple was for the last such era: a much needed escape from reality. (During the upcoming book tour, Ken will be singing “Good Ship Lollypop.”)

The book is awesome. I can say that because I only wrote part of it. Purely as a reader I have devoured the other parts and said to myself, “By gar, every person in the country should buy this book. Or maybe five copies of it. Please.”

We’ve got your previews, of course: 115 or so, covering every team in the most visible ten conferences. And we’ve got your illuminating stats, packaged in a nifty section at the back of the book.

Most of all we have new thoughts! We’re talking serious, deep-dish, chin-stroking ruminations here. Such as….

Arc Madness, Ken Pomeroy
Two Cheers for One-and-Done, John Gasaway
Translating Success: Projecting College Players at the Next Level, Kevin Pelton
Ten Freshmen to Watch, John Perrotto
Testing Hoops Axioms Using Play-by-Play Data, Ken Pomeroy
The Incredible Vanishing Turnover, John Gasaway
At Cross-Purposes: The NBA, the NCAA, and the At-Risk Athlete, Will Carroll
Judging the Best Teams without Judging, Ken Pomeroy
Basketball off Paper, John Gasaway

Pre-order today and save!

SW: You’ve talked me into it; I’ll forego the 72 ounces of microbrew for a hand-crafted batch of tempo-free analysis.  I’m looking forward to reading the book, having enjoyed the baseball and NFL versions your sister sites have been putting out for a number of years.

With that, let me offer my gratitude for your willingness to share some of your preseason prognostications with us.  We don’t do as much saluting around here and you used to, but this occasion is worthy of one: Ex-Wonk, we salute you!

Oh, and my wife wanted to have a quick word with you.  Something about how, if you hadn’t abandoned your Big Ten Wonking, her husband wouldn’t have felt compelled to start his own blog, and maybe he’d pay attention to his children once in a while, and when is he going to get around to repainting that fence  . . .

TAFKATBTW: Please tell Ms. Spartan Weblog that if she buys her own copy of the book I’ll gladly paint the fence.

Tags: big ten wonk